Buyers spend only 17% of total time in their buying process interacting with sellers. 27% of the time is spent by buyers researching the problem and solution online. This is a huge challenge for sellers in the effort to influence buyers' decisions. 

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One of the solutions for this problem is inbound marketing, attracting buyers to your content through various online channels. But this approach is not predictable as you anticipate and wait for your buyers to come to your online channels. While inbound channels are very important and critical, are there any better ways to make a more predictable process to influence and engage buyers in a positive way? 

Key questions to answer:

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• How can you, as a seller, get into the buying process early?
• What value can you provide the buyer while they allow you in, early in the process? 
  

To answer these questions, let's look at the challenges faced by buyers:

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• ‍Information overload and inaccuracies: Buyers are overwhelmed by the amount of information available through various channels and they are burdened by the effort required to discern this information. 
• ‍Complexity of solutions (and problems): With technology and business landscapes moving (changing) at the very high pace, the problems and solutions too are becoming complex. The scale and complexity has exponentially grown in the past decade. Buyers aren't always well equipped to tackle this due to lack of time they have to research and learn. 
• ‍Buying decisions are often made by a group of people: It requires sellers to address different perspectives and build consensus. This burden also falls on the champion buyer.

What can you do, as a seller:

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• Understand domain
• Address different perspectives, including your competitors'
• You should be able to play the role of a knowledge partner, educating and brainstorming with the buyer. 
  

This is where a platform like Optel for sales and account teams can help.

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• Connect internal information with external world
• Bring multi-modal information together
• Keep you up to date on latest happenings in your domain
• Recommend relevant information within the context
• Easily shareable with tracking
• Signals to alert you of important business events
• Q&A and Search to find answers or explore to discover hidden insights

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We welcome you to take a look at the Optel app

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Ref. https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey