Buyer Enablement: What is it and Why is it Important?

What is buyer enablement?

Buyer enablement empowers buyers in the same way sales enablement empowers sales reps. Because empowering people is what enablement is all about. Giving them the tools they need not just to succeed, but to flourish.

Salespeople like feeling informed and knowledgeable, so they can provide a great experience to prospects. Why not take that empowerment to the next level? That’s what buyer enablement aims to do.

Enablers arm buyers themselves with the information they need to make informed buying decisions. With the right buyer enablement content, you'll warm prospects up and earn their trust before they ever speak to a sales rep.

*The real value of buyer enablement is in warming prospects up before they ever speak to a sales rep.*

Why is buyer enablement important?

Buyer behavior is changing.

Nowadays, your average B2B buyer acts much like you do when you shop for yourself.

Let’s say you need a new fridge. You’ll do your own research. You’ll look up the various brands, and how they compare. Modern B2B buyers? They do the exact same thing.

*The modern buyer researching your solution before they've even spoken to a sales rep.*

By the time your rep is actually speaking to the buyer, their customer journey is well underway. Today, reps aren’t the first point of contact. You need to adapt to this change.

Brett Trainor, Founder, The Corporate Escapee, summed up this need for buyer-centricity:

“The biggest shift needs to come from the sellers. In my experience, buyers don't care about MQLs, opportunities, or pipelines. They just want a frictionless process to buy your product when they are ready”.

Why buyer enablement is the answer

You have to understand a buyer’s preferences before, during, and after they buy. At least, you do if you want to give them a great experience.

Remember that saying: No one likes to be sold. But everyone loves to buy.

Your buyers have likely already done their research on both you and your competitor’s features, as well as having asked their peers for advice, before you talk to them.

They don’t need a seller to rattle off a list of features. They already know what they are.

Modern buyers want more.

What more could they want?

If your sales reps aren’t just there to give buyers a list of features, and get them to hand over their company card details, what are they there for?

Adopting a buyer enablement mindset means turning your sales reps into subject matter experts (SMEs). Ones that can help buyers solve their pain points.

As an informed SME, sellers can help their prospects navigate all the information available today, rather than just sell to them. It’s this shift from selling to helping. that engages the prospect while building trust and rapport.

Good buyer enablement, then, involves putting yourself in the prospect’s shoes. Understand your prospects and what they want from the buying experience.

The ways you’ll actually carry this out are twofold:

Equip your reps with the tools and knowledge to give prospects what they want.
Create buyer enablement content to help buyers before they’ve ever spoken to a rep.

*The business who helps their prospects the most, wins.*

How buyer enablement ties in to the buyer journey

Picture this: You get a call. It’s your work number. You pick up and realize… Sales call. You look at your crazy to-do list. You sigh.

What’s your first instinct?

It’s to hang up.

The used car salesman stereotype is not a positive one, and unfortunately, sales as a whole often gets painted with this same brush. A prospect’s first instinct when they don’t recognize your brand name is to hang up, too.

How to get prospects to look forward to hearing from your sales reps

So how do you, as an enabler, get prospects to look forward to hearing from your sales reps?

Here’s the answer: You have to actually help them solve their problems. Big problems, that represent real pain.

But first, you have to get your foot in the door. Which means you need to communicate with them in a way that’s zero pressure.

(And if you can position yourself in their peripheral vision before they even know they have a problem, that’s even better.)

The six stages of the buyer journey

Remember the stages of the buyer journey:

Awareness
Consideration
Interest
Preference
Validation
Purchase

Most sales reps will only have any luck speaking with those in the latter half of the journey. Buyers in the first half? They’ll probably be against speaking to anyone at all.

But once they’re aware they have a problem, and are thinking about solutions, they’ll start to become interested in learning more.

And “learn more” just happens to be a phrase you’ll see on call-to-action and opt-in buttons everywhere. And this is exactly what these prospects will start to do. They’ll start telling you, “Hey! I’m interested in your stuff!”

This makes for way easier sales conversations.

Good buyer enablement content does this…

The right content can even help prospects become aware they have a problem in the first place.

So, strong buyer enablement will warm prospects up. It’s like grabbing buyers by the scruff of the neck and moving them through the buyer journey until they’re screaming to buy.

At the same time, by solving their problems, and leading them through the stages of a complex buying process, you earn your prospects’ trust.

This helps your salespeople get a foot in the door. When the prospect is ready, they’ll hear, “Hi, I’m calling from X”, and they’ll actually be happy to hear your org’s name.

This is where you want to be, and this is exactly where buyer enablement can get you.

Buyer enablement helps solve buyers’ jobs-to-be-done

Let’s get practical.

Gartner performed some research that identified six main buying “jobs”:

Problem identification
Solution exploration
Requirements building
Supplier selection
Validation
Consensus creation

These are the six things that B2B buyers need to get done before they can make a purchase.

But notice, these aren’t simple things.

Even identifying the core of the problem can be tricky. Exploring potential solutions involves figuring out exactly what you need, as well as what you explicitly don’t want. You have to talk to people, gather information, and trawl websites for answers.

Read through the above list again. Ask yourself, if you had to solve each of these problems, what would help?

A trusted advisor at each stage would be a great start. And information you trust that helps you solve each problem would be great, too.

If you accept Gartner’s jobs-to-be-done model of the B2B buying process, then, solving each of these issues for your buyers becomes the roadmap for doing good buyer enablement.

Benefits of buyer enablement

1) Boosts trust

Buyers can perceive sales reps one of two ways:

The untrustworthy used car salesman
The solver of their problems

As an enabler, there’s a lot you can do to help your reps be the savior.

The first is to helpfully insert yourself into the buyer’s journey as early as possible.

But (and this is crucial) – your approach needs to be: No Pressure.

Everyone hates a conditional favor, after all. (We all remember that one friend from college who would wash your two dishes before you could get to them, then expect you to do the same for their mountainous pile of pots and pans.)

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Note: This is a long-game tactic, and it can be hard to get leaders to invest in long-game tactics. You really do need to provide value with zero expectation of anything in return. But get this right, and you’ll reap the rewards.

Offer genuine value to your buyers, and they’ll begin to trust you and your brand more and more.

2) De-risks the purchase

As buyers move through the buyer journey, they start to want to understand the risks and opportunities involved in the buying process itself.

Lack of knowledge means uncertainty, and uncertainty represents risk.

Give your buyers all the information they need to make their buying decision (even if that means realizing yours is not the right solution for them). Do this, and you’ll capture all the prospects for whom your solution is the best.

Also, by strengthening your prospects’ understanding and de-risking the purchase, you make it far less likely that any buyers will sit on the fence and do nothing. (You can also use other content to emphasize the risks involved with not taking action – a classic marketing trick.)

3) Easier, faster stakeholder alignment

One of the most challenging parts of buying some new piece of B2B tech is stakeholder alignment.

In Gartner’s jobs-to-be-done framework described above, it’s the final hurdle: Consensus creation.

If just one person in the buying committee blocks the decision, it’s game over for the purchase. Not good.

Use buyer enablement to help your point of contact achieve that alignment from earlier on in the buyer journey. Your chances will improve dramatically.

As with de-risking the purchase, you also reduce the chances that your buyer sits on the sidelines and does nothing.

If they think it’ll be impossible to get a crucial individual’s sign-off on the deal, they may not even try. But if you can build enough goodwill with helpful and impressive buyer enablement to get everyone in the committee on board early, you speed up the part of the buying process where many deals get stuck.

4) Stronger customer loyalty

The benefits of good buyer enablement don’t stop with an easier sale.

The customers you win (and even some that you don’t) will speak highly of you because of your willingness to help, and because of the stress your guidance plucks from their shoulders.

As a result? Don’t be surprised when your customers become advocates and ambassadors for your brand.

Also, expect to improve your churn and retention rates. More loyal customers means you have more leeway when things go wrong before people consider jumping ship. And, customers will want to stick around longer, and may even be more interested in doing favors for you. Including taking part in customer research surveys and interviews.

What is buyer enablement content?

Buyer enablement content is the stuff you use to help buyers before your reps get to them. It’s most relevant in the earlier stages of the buyer journey, when you’re still warming prospects up. (But it can be useful later on, too. Recorded product demos, for example.)

Buyer enablement looks a lot like modern marketing. You create lead magnets that are actually useful for your prospects. This is your buyer enablement content. You solve the specific problems your prospects actually have, to build trust and offer value before revealing your core offer.

Types of buyer enablement content

Here are some useful types of buyer enablement content:

Calculators
One-off free consulting sessions
Bespoke recommendations
Guides on what prospects need to know at various stages of the buying process
Sales demos
Case studies and customer reviews

Other types of content will, as neutrally as possible, aim to help buyers understand the buying landscape. That means objective buyer’s guides on one solution versus another.

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Note: This is difficult to do well, because content that disparages competitors is easier to dismiss as biased.

Enablement content example

As an example, consider a guide aimed at helping buyers choose a CRM. Buyers feel uncertainty, and uncertainty means risk.

They’re worried about not considering some crucial aspect. What features do they definitely need? What can they safely overlook if they’re pressed for time?

You can put together a buying guide called, “10 things enablement leaders need to know before switching CRM.”

Or, to target those even earlier in the buyer journey, you could develop a calculator that calculates how much money they could be losing as a result of some specific pain point.

(For example, the cost of pulling 30 reps into an hour-long training session, versus the cost-savings of using an AI-powered LMS that delivers tailored training sessions to reps’ specific weaknesses.)

Why buyer enablement content matters

Also, let’s be real. Sales is not a well-trusted profession. (Remember your first instinct when you get a cold sales call…).

Buyer enablement content is low-pressure. That’s why it works. Buyers feel you’ve helped them – genuinely helped them, without pressure or expectations. By the time they speak to a salesperson, they’re ready to be sold. They trust your brand, and this helps your sales reps get their foot in the door.

With content, there’s no one on the other end of the phone, waiting for you to pay up. There’s just you and a PDF, or an online calculator, or a set of recommendations based on your answers to a quiz.

*Pushy salespeople push prospects away. Use buyer enablement to earn their trust and bring them on-side.*

How to implement a buyer enablement strategy

Understand your buyers

This is one of the most basic steps you can take, but it can make a significant impact.

You already know all about buyer personas, but take yours to the next level and understand everything there is to know about your target buyers. That means understanding their buying process too, not just their pain points.

Learn what their ideal customer journey looks like, as well as how they want sellers to interact with them, and incorporate that into your personas.

Here are some broad buyer categories to help:

Types of buyers

The economic buyer
- Concerned with the financial ROI of your solution
The technical buyer
- Concerned with technical aspects and product security
The advocate buyer
- Already bought into your solution. Advocates for its adoption in their org, and aids your reps.
The user buyer
- Will use the product day-to-day as an end user. Evaluates features and ease of use.
The operations buyer
- Concerned with how well the solution will integrate with their existing tech stack.

Understanding which type of buyer you’re speaking to can help you anticipate their needs, and enable them in the right ways.

Streamline the prospect’s experience

Buyers have a lot on their plate when it comes to completing a purchase. There’s the needs-assessment, researching suppliers, getting buy-in from all the relevant stakeholders...

It’s time-consuming.

How can buyer enablement make a difference here?

Firstly, reps can streamline every interaction.

For example, they can leave a meeting scheduling link in their email signature. This avoids wasteful back-and-forth as you organize dates.

Secondly, you can make it easy to contact the business.

Provide email addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIn profiles, Slack channels… Let prospects reach you via the platforms they already use. If a prospect can’t engage with you easily, they’ll give up and go elsewhere.

Thirdly, listen.

Listen to your buyers’ concerns, requests, and queries. If you can help with anything they say, do so. Too many sellers are just there to pitch. If yours can make the buyer’s journey as easy as possible by helping them, your org will stand out from the crowd.

Add value to every interaction with engaging content

You can’t just pitch to a prospect and be done with it. To achieve the best results, you have to give value in every interaction with your buyer.

Make sure the content your prospects see is just as valuable and thought-out as the internal material your reps receive. You can add tons of value with content that both simplifies the prospect’s buyer journey and enhances it.

Whitepapers, informative videos, and templates are useful and worthwhile to any buyer. They enhance the buyer’s experience, regardless of whether the interaction ends in a sale or not.

Your potential sale revolves around meeting the prospect’s needs. So put yourself in their shoes and ask, “What does this buyer want?”

How to measure buyer enablement

When it comes to measuring success, many of the typical enablement measures of success apply.

These three metrics are excellent topline stats for reporting and tracking:

Sales win rates
Sales cycle length
Average order value

But there are more metrics you might want to bear in mind:

Average conversation duration on first contact

If your buyer enablement content successfully warms prospects, then reps’ first conversations should be with warmer leads.

This should lead to longer conversations, and a more enthusiastic, interested buyer. (You can track this as a qualitative metric by speaking to your reps and gauging how enthusiastic buyers are on first contact.)

Content engagement and adoption rates

How useful is your content? Are people using it?

Although it’s true that you’ll sometimes create content for sellers aimed at helping them become better buyer enablers, bear in mind that this stat largely relates to whether customers themselves are downloading and using your content.

Summary

B2B selling has evolved. Buyers want to inform themselves, on their own terms, before they speak to a salesperson.

Help them do this by producing content that guides them through the buyer journey in a way that’s low-pressure. Solve their problems for them, and you’ll provide real value and generate goodwill early on.

In summary, if your sellers can add real value to a prospective buyer’s experience, while simultaneously empowering them to make an informed decision, you’re likely to see success.

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Buyer enablement: What is it and why is it important?