How to tell if you have a valuable buyer enablement offer
Having a valuable buyer enablement offer, something that you provide to your buyer before you start talking about your product or solution, is an essential step to creating demand in buyers that are not currently in the market for what you provide.
In this article we’ll look at why a buyer enablement offer is so important, and I’ll provide you with an audit template for you to assess what you have today.
What is a buyer enablement offer?
A buyer enablement offer is a tool, template, calculator or guide that helps your buyer with some part of their job in advance of them buying or implementing your product or service.
We call it an offer because we are not asking for anything in return - we are offering it to our potential buyer to help them in their world.
We also call it an offer because it reminds us that it must be built around and add true value to our buyer.
Why is it important to have buyer enablement offers?
Buyer enablement offers bridge the gap between your value proposition (why your product or service meets the gains and pains of your buyer) and your outreach (the emails, calls, referrals, events you use to connect with your buyers).
This is the pipeline pyramid and it shows we have an important step in between those where we need to provide the buyer with something of value before we talk about our value proposition.
Anecdotally, at any time:
3% of the market is buying now
7% intends to change
30% have a need but are not ready yet
30% do not have a need
30% not interested in your company
If we try to take our value proposition straight to the market we introduce two challenges:
We are restricting ourselves to the 10% that are buying now or intend to change.
When we do reach those 10% they have no relationship or trust with us - meaning that someone else probably does and is more likely to win their business.
Having a valuable buyer enablement offer gives your marketers, your sellers, and indeed your customer success managers, tools of value to take out to your buyers and engage in a valuable discussion.
What makes a great buyer enablement offer?
For a buyer enablement offer to be valuable to the buyer it must solve a specific challenge they are dealing with well in advance of them actually initiating a buying process.
Gartner talks about “problem identification” being the first job that any buying group needs to complete, and that makes a great place for your buyer enablement offer to focus - can you help your buyers to identify a meaningful and expensive problem with their current situation?
Are they wasting money?
Are they taking too long to do something?
Are they missing out on revenue?
Do they not have the right skills to do something?
Are their competitors beating them at something?
Do they not understand an upcoming regulation?
Are they losing staff because of something?
These problems are C-Suite challenges.
Senior executives are focused on increasing the money coming in, reducing the money coming out - and anything else that helps one, or ideally both, of those.
Gartner goes on to say that the offer or tool you create must be:
Consider the iPad comparison on Apple’s website.
It is relevant to the iPad buyer
It is useful for a non-technical buyer
It is easy to use
It is credible in the recommendations it provides
In addition Gartner suggests that B2B buyer enablement offers should be:
Be shareable - there are around 20 people in the buying group
Be aligned to emotional needs - not just an ROI number
Providing confidence - that you understand the business challenge they face
Lead back to unique differentiators - putting your company on a future shortlist
Review your current buyer enablement offers
Take a look at your current offers and let’s decide whether they cross this threshold.
Typically your offers will be in the resources section of your website, or they may be buried in your sales enablement platform for sellers to use, or they be on your social feeds.
You want to look for anything a buyer can use internally. The word ‘use’ is important.
A webinar about your new product release is not a buyer enablement offer.
A datasheet on your security credentials is not a buyer enablement offer.
These are related to your value proposition and your pitch. They don’t help a buyer in their own problem identification.
They are just content - not a tool or offer.
Even a business case/value assessment/ROI builder I don’t count - has this really been built to help the customer? Or has it been built to help your sellers nudge a buyer over the line at the end of the process?
I have created a template for you to audit your buyer enablement offers.
Once you have listed everything you find you can score them against these criteria:
Is it designed for the buyer or is it designed for us?
Is it targeted at a customer in their problem identification phase?
Is it something the customer ‘uses’ by inputting their own information/data?
Is it something the customer would pay for if it was chargeable?
What next?
Having audited your buyer enablement offers do you feel you have enough coverage across different geographies, different customer segments, different stages of the buying process?
Do your sellers have access to five or more valuable offers that they can take out to their territory over the course of the coming year?
If not, its time to build a plan to create some more.
Good luck and enjoy your research!
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