Gartner Says the Marketing-to-Sales Handoff Should No Longer Exist

Experts Discuss How Sales and Marketing Leaders Succeed in Today’s
New World of B2B Buying at the Gartner Sales & Marketing Conference,
Taking Place October 9-11 in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#B2Bbuying–In today’s digitally driven world, the marketing to sales handoff should
no longer exist, according to Gartner, Inc. The findings were announced
here today during the opening keynote at the Gartner
Sales & Marketing Conference where Gartner experts explained
that effective B2B selling today is no longer about progressing a
customer through a linear buying journey.

“Over the years we’ve seen B2B sales and marketing struggle mightily to
progress customers through the purchase process. The problem is, for the
customer, buying is not really about progression, it’s about
completion,” said Brent Adamson, distinguished vice president at
Gartner. “Customers today are trying to accomplish what are often
nonsequential steps to complete a purchase and that has completely
undermined the traditional model of linear deal progression. We are
living in a post-handoff world.”

B2B Buying “Jobs”

Gartner research reveals that B2B buyers must complete six distinct
activities — or “jobs” — to successfully complete
a purchase today:

• Problem Identification
• Solution Exploration
• Requirements Building
• Supplier Selection
• Validation
• Consensus Creation

While nearly every successful B2B purchase progresses through the first
four jobs, customers simultaneously address “validation” and “consensus
creation” throughout the entire process. In effect, these two jobs are
always on, even while customers are working to complete the other four
jobs in the process.

Gartner research shows that most B2B buyers will revisit nearly every
“buying job” at least once before they make a purchase. The result: a
customer buying journey that resembles more of a maze than a linear path
(see Figure 1).

To complicate things further, B2B buyers utilize both sales reps and the
supplier website — equally — for discovery and validation throughout
their buying journey. In effect, this means it isn’t a sales problem or
a digital problem that organizations should be trying to solve for.
Rather, it’s a supplier problem that sales
and marketing must jointly address with high-quality, consistent,
cross-channel information to help customers complete the purchase jobs
they need to accomplish.

“Unfortunately, the current commercial process today is not built to
support this new world of B2B buying,” added Mr. Adamson. “The
organizations that will succeed going forward will be those that
materially
simplify the purchase process for customers. It’s on marketing and
sales teams to take the customer by the hand and guide them through the
purchase, from start to end.

“The best suppliers assume the role of ‘buying Sherpa’ guiding customers
step-by-step through the complexities of a B2B buying journey that they
themselves will struggle to overcome or even possibly anticipate on
their own.”

For more information on what organizations can do to succeed in this new
world of B2B buying, tune in tomorrow for Brent Adamson’s day two
keynote at the Gartner
Sales & Marketing Conference October 10 in Las Vegas.

Additional details are available to Gartner for Sales Leaders and
Gartner for Marketers clients in the reports ”Elevating
the Value of Sales Interactions” and ”Rethinking
Digital Customer Engagement,” respectively.

About the Gartner Sales & Marketing Conference

Sales and marketing leaders face unprecedented changes in customer
expectations, technology and the talent needed to drive results. At the Gartner
Sales & Marketing Conference 2018, taking place October 9-11 in
Las Vegas, sales and marketing leaders will learn from the latest
research, Gartner experts and esteemed peers, to guide them through this
time of change. Follow news and updates from the event on Twitter at #GartnerSMC.

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT), is the world’s leading research and advisory
company and a member of the S&P 500. We equip business leaders with
indispensable insights, advice and tools to achieve their
mission-critical priorities today and build the successful organizations
of tomorrow.

Our unmatched combination of expert-led, practitioner-sourced and
data-driven research steers clients toward the right decisions on the
issues that matter most. We are a trusted advisor and objective resource
for more than 15,000 organizations in more than 100 countries — across
all major functions, in every industry and enterprise size.

To learn more about how we help decision makers fuel the future of
business, visit gartner.com.

Contacts

Kelly Blum
571-303-5745
kelly.blum@gartner.com