Vendee Services
HL Shack will serve as a shopper for foreign purchaser who buys goods by bulk in China.
We will arrange HASSLE FREE logistics through, www.hlexpress.net
- Plastic bag
-Container
-School bag
-Smartphone
-E-Bike
-Motorcycle
-Mountain bike
-Car (new or second hand)
-Used clothes
-Power bank
-Mechanical Equipments
-Tools
-Boxes
- School Supplies
-Sandals
-Shoes
- Furniture
- Appliances
-Gadgets
-Tires
- Wheels
-Any thing you could think of
- We can customize them with your own brand
HL Shack Business Tidbit
The buyer’s experience matters. When customers have a favorable purchase experience, they are more willing to buy your product and tell their friends.
So what is the buying experience?
The buying experience is how the customer feels when evaluating a product throughout the buying process. It starts from the first time a potential customer hears about the company to the moment they sign a contract. Every touchpoint in between makes up the buyer's experience.
When we talk about buyer enablement, we often talk about the 6 distinct stages of the B2B buyer’s journey:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision/Purchase
- Onboarding/Implementation
- Service/Use
- Growth/expansion/renewal
It’s the job of modern sales teams to support the buyer in each stage of the customer journey. Adding to the complexity, customers will now often move freely back and forth through the stages during their time with your company.
How has the B2B buying experience changed?
The buying experience is a lot less transactional and linear than it was in years past. Especially when it comes to more complex B2B products, selling is much more about buyer enablement than the traditional style of selling.
That is, supporting the buyer’s decision of which product to purchase, rather than trying to convince them to buy what you are selling.
Now, with product-led growth (PLG) on the rise, the buying experience extends to when the buyer is actually using the product. It’s the goal of PLG companies to design a buying experience that drives product adoption.
In a very real sense, the purchase period never really ends and the line between a buyer and a customer is blurred. In a crowded and competitive marketplace where many alternatives exist, it’s never been harder to gain new customers, and it’s become increasingly easy to lose them. Instead of winning customers over once, modern B2B companies, especially those using the SaaS model, need to win their customer’s loyalty each and every day.
The sales responsibility is no longer just the sole purview of the sales team or salespeople. Instead, customer experience managers and support representatives are charged with maintaining a positive customer experience, reducing churn, and ensuring clients are fully onboarded and using your product to its fullest potential.
This is all really an extension of the modern sales lifecycle. These teams help to provide a positive experience post-sale.
The best companies focus on building an experience that creates end-user evangelists and upsell opportunities. By optimizing the buyer experience end-to-end, companies differentiate from the competition, which leads to higher close rates and more revenue.
The overall buying experience actually outranks product and price.”
A positive buyer experience also builds brand love and accelerates word of mouth. There’s no downside to investing in customer satisfaction.
In this post, I share recommendations for how to optimize the buying experience. I focus on the middle part of the funnel when a customer is ready to learn more about the product—the consideration and decision phases.
Here are eight ways to improve your buyer’s experience.
1. Support the different ways customers want to buy
Every buyer has a preference for how they want to evaluate software. There are a number of different ways that companies can support a customer to reach a buying decision while providing a great buying experience overall.
Some buyers want to talk to a human in a product demo. Other buyers want to watch a video on their own time. More often, buyers want access to a free trial to play around with the product themselves.
The best software companies in the world provide ways to support these different purchase processes. For example, Hubspot gives companies both a free trial or demo option.
Enterprise buyers (or anyone with heavy implementation) will always eventually need to talk with the sales team. However, enterprise buyers are increasingly wanting to learn about the product ahead of time.
For example, Workday gives buyers the option to watch a video or read a datasheet before talking to sales.
2. Reduce Friction From Your Website
Every software company should streamline their website experience. Start with the website’s forms. Too many companies make the buyer put in a bunch of information before getting to sign up for a demo or use the product.
But that’s designed to make for a better selling experience—not a better buyer experience. There are better ways to get the data you need for your CRM.
The less fields, the higher the conversion rate.
To get that missing customer data, companies can use enrichment tools like Clearbit and Zoominfo on the form’s backend. These tools provide all the ancillary information based on the signup’s email address.
Another option is to use multi-step forms. These forms make sure you’re capturing at least some of the information in case a buyer abandons the form.
3. Create content that answers every buyer question
The marketing team needs to work with the sales team to figure out the common questions in the sales process from different buyer personas. From there, the marketing team creates content that helps the sales team expertly answer the buyer’s questions.
Created for specific points in the buying journey, this content can be internal or external.
Internal content never gets shared with the buyer, but enables the sales team to do their job. For example, a competitor battle card helps the sales rep answer the buyer’s questions about the differences between the two products.
External content, on the other hand, gets shared with a buyer.
A couple of the standard questions that every company needs to answer in the sales process:
- How much does it cost? What’s the difference between package A and B?
- What’s the ROI?
- What are the best practices to do XYZ?
- What makes your product different?
- How do you approach security?
- How do other companies use your product?
- What’s the functionality of Product ABC?
4. Guide buyers through the decision process
For enterprise sales cycles and technical products, it’s not always straightforward to purchase a product. There are many stakeholders involved, different approval processes, complex pain points, technical requirements, and a procurement process that involves everything from security to legal.
The leading software companies today use a mutual action plan (MAPs) to guide buyers through the process. MAPs keep the buying team aligned with a shared to-do list.
The typical mutual action plan includes some of the following phases and steps:
- Discovery: Intro meetings and product demos
- Validation: Stakeholder meetings, executive buy-in, and scope plus budget
- Free Trial / Pilot: Pilot kickoff, training, feedback meeting
- Procurement: Legal review, security evaluation, budget and contract Finalization
- Implementation: Company kickoff, admin and end-user trainings, check-in meetings
For each step, there’s a clear owner, timeline, and associated resources.
Of course, MAPs are not a one-size fits all approach. Mutual action plans should be adapted based on the product, customer needs and company size.
Enterprise companies might need a multi-phase plan, whereas an SMB might just need clear next steps. Sales organizations need to customize the MAP based on the buyer’s needs.
5. Weave in social proof throughout the experience
Robert Cialdini, the famous psychologist, popularized the concept of social proof. It’s the simple idea that people are more willing to buy something when they’ve seen someone else buy it.
Companies need to focus on turning customer love into case studies. I’d recommend both written case studies and short video interviews. Online reviews from websites like G2 are also helpful in showing that a wide range of users love the product—especially end users.
Short videos also make great content for social media platforms like LinkedIn or Instagram. Consider using a video editor to make your content more engaging by adding captions and a bit of visual flair.
When it comes to closing the deal, revenue teams should have a strong referral program. Access to references will make buyers feel comfortable with their decision.
Lastly, buyers want to see that the product works for companies like them. For example, if you’re selling to a law firm, they want to see case studies of other law firms—not that a tech company used your product.
By investing in different case studies—company size, product utilization, industry, and geography—you’ll be ready to provide social proof to a large number of buyers.
6. Provide a personalized buying experience
Buyers want to feel like you understand their problems and that the product will solve their unique challenges. The modern buyer demands personalization.
Sales reps need to provide a personalized experience to the customer. When the experience feels cookie-cutter, buyers will have less willingness to buy the product.
Personalization starts with a strong qualification process. By asking questions, sales reps start to understand the buyer’s challenges. From there, reps can share a customized solution that will fit the buyer’s needs.
One of the best ways to provide a personalized buying experience is by sharing notes with the buyer. This shows that you’re listening and working to solve their unique problems.
Here are some examples of what’s typically shared back with the buyer:
- Objectives: What does success look like?
- Challenges: What are the problems with the current solution?
- Opportunities: What are you looking for in a new solution?
- Buying team: Who are the key stakeholders?
- Process: What does the decision process look like?
- Resources: What kind of budget, time and team are available?
By sharing this information, a sales rep builds trust with the buyer and shows that everyone is aligned. Most sales reps will share this information back in email or in a Powerpoint presentation, but increasingly, sales reps are using workspaces like Dock or Notion to collaborate with buyers.
Subtle touches also help to create a personalized experience. Simply showing your buyer’s logo in presentation slides can go a long way. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve met enterprise reps who build custom websites for buyers.
The challenge is making personalization scalable for the sales team. I typically follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of the content is the same across buyers, and 20% is personalized. Generally, the bigger the contract, the more time and effort you’re able to invest in to provide a personalization experience.
7. Show you’re human and build rapport
Nobody wants to buy from a sleezy sales rep. People want to buy from people they like.
The best sales reps are collaborative and consultative. They help to guide the buyer through the process in a friendly and honest manner. They work to understand the customer’s problems and provide a recommendation on the best solution.
Building rapport starts on an introduction or demo call and then extends throughout the process as the conversation goes back and forth between email and more Zoom calls.
One of the best ways we built human connections with buyers at Lattice was through dinners. There’s no better way to create a relationship with someone than over food and drinks. We would invite a bunch of prospects and customers to a fancy dinner. The conversation was not about Lattice. It was about getting to know other people in the industry and learning from each other.
Naturally, this helped build brand love, contributed to an exceptional buyer experience, and allowed buyers to get to know the Lattice team as a group of friendly people—not just a piece of software.
8. Collaborate with champions to prepare for stakeholder conversations
In every B2B sales cycle, there’s a point of contact who is the champion for the deal.
They are typically the person who is leading the evaluation for the buying team. This deal champion may or may not be the ultimate decision maker, but their opinion is extremely important in making a purchase decision.
The best sales reps work with champions to prepare for internal conversations. This can mean sending over a piece of collateral like an ROI analysis or security FAQ to address specific concerns. In enterprise sales cycles, it might mean collaborating on a presentation to the executive team.
Increasingly, sales reps are creating sales deal rooms that organize all the information for buying teams. These sales deal rooms host everything including product demo videos, mutual action plans, security FAQs, ROI analysis, product explainers, case studies, and more.
How to Create a Product Buying Guide for Your Business (In 4 Steps)
Product buying guides can be created exactly as you would create a new blog post on your site, which means it’s super simple to get started with, and provides a good way to organize multiple guides. For example, you could create a Product Buying Guide blog category where customers can browse your resources.
Step 1: Define Your buyer to Know Who You’re selling for
Determining who are most likely to read your buying guide before you create it can help you tailor your content to their needs and values. For example, if you know your visitors value good deals and saving money, you’ll want to highlight differences in price between brands and styles in your guide.
Likewise, if you’re aware many of your customers fall into a certain demographic, you’ll want to create guides for products that are likely to appeal to the group. If your customer base is largely urban, a product buying guide for hiking shoes probably won’t generate much traffic. A guide for headphones or bicycles might be more appropriate.
Step 2: Format Your Guide for Fast and Easy Reading
Most people who consume content on the internet do so much differently than they consume printed content. The majority only scan online content, so dense paragraphs with minimal section breaks aren’t likely to hold a reader’s attention. How you choose to display your content could make the difference between a sale and a ‘bounce.’
Fortunately, there are several best practices for writing online content you can follow. The key is to make important information obvious to anyone looking at the page. Bullet points, subheadings, and text emphasized with italics or bolding will draw in readers’ eyes. Putting most of your vital information in these forms will help keep visitors on your site.
Images and videos can also improve online content. They create visual breaks between long sections of text, and can sometimes deliver information more clearly than written content.
Step 3: Utilize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Draw In New Customers
Most customers use search engines to find new products. If you make the effort to optimize your site for search engines, you could tap into an extensive pool of new customers. Much like blog posts, buying guides are an opportunity to help your site rank for certain keywords and draw new customers to your site.
Your product buying guide’s title, URL, and keywords will play significant roles in your SEO’s success. These are some of the most important factors search engines consider when ranking pages. For WordPress sites,
Considering search intent, or the results a searcher hopes to see when they query a search engine, is another useful strategy. By optimizing for search intent you can target certain kinds of customers you hope will read your guide. The title How to Buy a washing machine, for example, would help your guide rank better for corresponding searches.
Step 4: Include a Call To Action (CTA) to Make the Sale
A well-written CTA encourages visitors to take action. When it comes to e-commerce, CTAs have been shown to increase conversion rates and sales. By making it fast and easy to make purchases, a CTA link or button can provide the extra push needed to get a visitor to commit to your product and become a customer.
The Wayfair refrigerator buying guide mentioned earlier in this article provides some examples of CTAs. The links to the Shop All Refrigerators category, and the encouragement to look specifically at certain styles mentioned in the guide, are meant to galvanize visitors to shop. Providing links to their own products decreases the likelihood of readers leaving Wayfair and buying from a competitor.
You can include several links or buttons throughout your guide as Wayfair does, or simply add one clearly defined CTA at the end of your post to guide readers to a category page for the product in your guide. How you style it is up to you, but make sure it’s easy to find and its purpose is clear.
Conclusion
When it comes to competing in the e-commerce world, product buying guides can separate your brand from the pack. By increasing your site’s visibility, building trust with customers, and enabling fast and easy purchases, buying guides can give your business a significant boost.
In this article, we’ve discussed product buying guides and how they can benefit your e-commerce business. Then we explained how to create a product buying guide:
- Define your audience to know who you’re selling for.
- Format your guide for fast and easy reading.
- Utilize SEO to draw in new customers.
- Include a CTA to make the sale.