Two things are crucial to understand about how B2B customers make decisions. The first is that the buying journey starts long before the customer has a need – and therefore long before you as a supplier are aware of it. The second is that the decision usually is made long before the formal evaluation is completed (or even started) – and is therefore also driven by attributes that are not included in the RFP documents.
Almost everyone today agrees that the old AIDA (Attention – Interest – Decision – Action) model formulated by Elias St. Elmo Lewis over 100 years ago, is not the best reference for understanding the customer’s buying journey. Instead, most models today have a structure that begins with some kind of needs phase, which marks the start of the buying journey. A modern buying journey model also takes into account that the journey is not linear, but often goes back and forth between different phases and different touchpoints.
The first thing to remember is that the customer journey starts long before a need arises. Think for example when the customer journey for a Ferrari starts. Probably when you are 5 and get a beautiful red toy car. In the B2B world, this is called mental availability which can be translated as “awareness and consideration”, i.e. that the brand is sufficiently familiar and relevant for the customer to even consider buying it. To be considered when a need arises, we must have worked extensively with the positioning of our brand long before that to establish ourselves as a possible supplier positioned in the right way.
It is also easy to think that the decision is made in the bottom of the decision flow or funnel. Sometimes that’s right but in reality most decisions are made much earlier. According to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey in 2024, 41% of buyers have a single vendor in mind when they first begin the purchase process, and as many as 92% has a shortlist. This means that when B2B buyers decide to buy, two out of five already have a favorite in the race, and nine out of 10 have formed their list of preferred options. As a result, the buyer’s journey becomes much more a process of confirmation rather than selection.
The reason for this is that a B2B decision represents a complex process, where many attributes has to be evaluated and compared. But when we compare different suppliers, there is every reason to assume we are influenced by what behavioral economists call “confirmation bias”. In other words, which attributes we compare, and how we evaluate different suppliers, are influenced by the perceptions we already have of the suppliers. If you like a supplier, you look for facts that favor them; if you are skeptical, you tend to focus on areas where that company scores lower. The formal evaluation thus becomes more of a process for creating an alibi for the choice that was already made earlier in the buying journey.
If you want to discuss how to drive decisions and business, just reach out to ulf@sfinxconsulting.se
