{"id":2600,"date":"2009-01-14T16:08:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T16:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/2009\/01\/14\/whitepaper-wednesday-what-influences-buyers\/"},"modified":"2021-07-16T10:19:48","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T14:19:48","slug":"whitepaper-wednesday-what-influences-buyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/whitepaper-wednesday-what-influences-buyers\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitepaper Wednesday &#8211; What Influences Buyers?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome back to another weekly installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on the Purchasing Certification Blog. This week, I\u2019m going to focus on a topic that is actually discussed in two separate, unrelated whitepapers \u2013 the factors that influence buyers. Those whitepapers are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cResearch Excerpt: How Clients Buy: 2009 Benchmark Report\u201d from RainToday<\/li>\n<li>\u201cMarketing To A B2B Technical Buyer\u201d from Enquiro Research<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Unlike most whitepapers that I review, these whitepapers are targeted at marketers, not purchasing professionals. But I have always found it fascinating when marketers research corporate purchasing behavior. I think it is valuable to understand how marketing and sales views you as a purchaser and the techniques that they try to use to earn your favor.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t miss updates on Procurement &amp; Supply Chain, Subscribe here!<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cHow Clients Buy\u201d whitepaper studies buyers of professional services such as accounting and financial consulting, architecture, engineering, and construction services, human resources consulting, IT consulting and services, legal services, management consulting, marketing, advertising, and PR, and training services. The whitepaper is based on a survey of over 200 buyers of these services who, collectively, are responsible for $1.7 billion in annual spend.<\/p>\n<p>The whitepaper lists the top five methods that professional services buyers use to initially identify and learn more about professional service providers. Those methods were:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Referrals from colleagues<\/li>\n<li>Referrals from other service providers<\/li>\n<li>Personal recognition or awareness<\/li>\n<li>In-person seminar<\/li>\n<li>Presentation at a conference or event<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I found it personally interested that the Internet or search engines did not make it to the top 5!<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cTechnical Buyer\u201d whitepaper had similar statistics. First, it broke down the technical purchase cycle into four phases: Awareness, Research\/Consideration, Negotiation\/Vendor Finalization, and Purchase. Then, it specified what influences technical buyers in each phase. Unfortunately, it breaks it down into online and offline influences, but does not present combined influence statistics.<\/p>\n<p>For the Awareness phase, which corresponds to the \u201cinitially identify\u201d section of the \u201cHow Clients Buy\u201d whitepaper, it lists search engines and the supplier\u2019s Web site as tied for the top two online influences and word of mouth from a colleague or peer and word of mouth from a friend or relative as the top offline influences.<\/p>\n<p>With regard to all phases of the purchase cycle, the whitepaper states \u201cWhen we asked technical buyers to rank influencers on a scale of 1-7, online influencers like vendor websites and search<br \/>\nengines outperformed offline influencers like trade shows and even paid consultant\u2019s word of mouth\u2026What was most interesting, was that technical buyers actually placed a higher value<br \/>\non a vendor\u2019s website than a colleague\u2019s suggestion \u2013 clearly, there is a need for technical buyers to get the information directly from the \u2018horse\u2019s mouth.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The whitepaper goes on to indicate that 95% of technical buyers would use online methods in the Awareness phase and that \u201c86.5% of technical buyers first interaction with a vendor is online \u2013 this is where vendors are found.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So based on these two pieces of research, there are extreme differences in the way that professional services buyers and technical buyers find suppliers.<\/p>\n<p>Or is there?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like to use this blog post as a discussion of this topic. Is the research right? Or is one wrong? Or both wrong? What do you buy and where do you find your suppliers?<\/p>\n<p>Click on the comment link below to share your experience.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re interested in getting your own copies of the whitepapers, you can download \u201cResearch Excerpt: How Clients Buy: 2009 Benchmark Report\u201d here and \u201cMarketing To A B2B Technical Buyer\u201d here. Registration is required for both. And here\u2019s a couple of caveats: the \u201cHow Clients Buy\u201d whitepaper is a free excerpt from the full benchmark report for which RainToday charges $345 and the \u201cTechnical Buyer\u201d whitepaper is a whopping 63 pages long!<\/p>\n<p>Once again, please use the comment link below to share your experience.<\/p>\n<p>To Your Career,<br \/>\nNext Level Purchasing, Inc.<br \/>\n<em>Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?<br \/>\nEarn Your SPSM<sup>\u00ae<\/sup> Certification Online At<br \/>\n<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/\">https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome back to another weekly installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v19.4 (Yoast SEO v19.13) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Whitepaper Wednesday - What Influences Buyers? 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