A buyer enablement platform supports the success of both buyers and sellers in the B2B purchasing environment. Learn more about how buyer enablement can help you.
Thriving businesses rely on the steady success of two major players at the root of business to business (B2B) operations; buyers and sellers. Their symbiotic relationship is paramount to economic prosperity, as both are indispensable providers who allow for the mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services.
However, matching appropriate buyers with appropriate sellers isn’t always a straight-forward process, especially when those buyers aren’t looking for a concrete product but rather a service, process, or collection of information. That’s where Buyer Enablement comes into play.
In short, Buyer Enablement is data-driven purchasing power that grants organizational buyers access to desired services more quickly and efficiently than the sometimes endless hours of consulting, browsing, and googling that currently precede it.
“Buyer Enablement is the provisioning of information that supports the completion of critical activities necessary to make a purchase.” - Gartner
Until recently, buyers had to allocate significant portions of human hours to harvesting large amounts of information before even being able to determine which specific services they needed to research. This process is as lengthy as it is costly, frustrating buyers and negatively affecting sellers’ ability to streamline operations, let alone scale up.
To help bridge this transactional gap and encourage economic growth on both ends of the exchange, companies like Enable Us are revolutionizing the virtual sales space by personalizing digital sales rooms in order to connect buyers of products and services directly to pertinent suppliers.
The goal is to enable the convenient sharing of proven expertise to make the exchange delightfully efficient by quickly and painlessly guiding buyers through their problem identification and solution options. This step of due diligence is fundamental and should be carried out thoroughly before any purchasing orders are filled.
As buyers clear the ‘identify the need’ stage, they can begin receiving assistance through a Buyer Enablement platform in developing the best strategies to source the most relevant and effective solutions. Once solution options are selected, they are then easily shared with internal subject matter experts and decision makers. This can significantly improve the approval process for purchasing, deployment and user adoption.
It is through this collaborative online process that buyers are expeditiously connected to top tier suppliers whose services are guaranteed to suit their individual needs, all without the hassle and cost prohibitive hurdles of traditional supplier inquest.
Most of us are familiar with individual buying, as we all purchase goods with great regularity in our everyday lives. Some of these are tangible goods like groceries, furnishings, clothes, household items, etc. An ever-increasing number of these purchases are made online.
These are common items placed in the digital cart of an individual buyer, one who already knows their issue and its solution, as well as how to conveniently acquire those goods and services. There is little to no negotiation, a limited availability for customization, and user reviews are typically included on the purchasing platform itself.
These individuals are unlikely to directly engage with the seller in these transactions unless there’s a problem.
With businesses however, there are countless goods that are not necessarily tangible products, but services or even processes that require deeper knowledge in order to be sourced, purchased, and utilized effectively. While some of these types of products do get sourced by individuals (internet providers, energy suppliers, package delivery), it’s the demand of these services by businesses that is driving the market for Buyer Enablement platforms.
Think of the services a business or government agency might rely on to run smoothly and properly; resource management software, internal communications platforms, web design, tax services, payroll management, SaaS project management tools, data analysis solutions, analytics platforms…the list goes on forever.
A Buyer Enablement Platform is a digital sales and buyer service engineered to grow with an enterprise as its needs evolve. The goal is to provide a single source of easily accessed information, competitive analysis, user case studies, technical details, and more.
This is where the difference between the current Individual Buying and Organization Buying experience becomes clear - the lack of a smooth, convenient platform for B2B purchasing. As a Seller AND Buyer Enablement philosophy gains traction worldwide, Buyer Enablement will become a primary tool for successful B2B transactions.
Just as the farm-to-table movement elevated the restaurant experience for diners, Buyer Enablement seeks to enhance the purchasing experience for businesses by linking client demand directly to a high quality supplier while providing the same easy, yet individualized experience we feel when we shop online.
Jinal Jhaveri, co-founder and CEO of Enable Us, explains it thus:
"By 2025 - Most Business to Business (B2B) transactions like Buying, Selling, and Customer Onboarding will feel the same as B2C transactions today - asynchronous, delightful, and quick. We are helping companies to get ready for that using our Buyer Enablement Platform!"
There’s no denying the global economy is continuing its shift to online sales, not just for goods but for many of the irreplaceable services we all benefit from, regardless of our industry or line of work. In this unique way, we are all connected, and by maximizing our digital capabilities we can better prepare for the future of business to business transactions by moving away from a traditional sales model and transitioning our sales efforts into more of an advisory role that focuses on educating rather than up-selling.
So how are B2B companies engaging buyers? By asking the buyers themselves about their journey and how it could be improved. More often than not, when buyers browse online, they go to great lengths to avoid falling for sales pitches. They want to feel like they are the ones actively searching for the services they seek, not that they are being sold something they don’t necessarily want or need.
Today, many online sales spaces get this completely wrong, opting for advertisement-heavy websites that end up having the opposite effect than they intend; by failing to ‘present information’ to the buyer rather than ‘pitching’ to the buyer, they end up scaring buyers off.
One way this phenomenon manifests itself is in an identified human browsing behavior known as banner blindness. This is the tendency of individuals to ignore page elements they perceive as selling rather than informing them about a product or service they’re seeking.
Buyer Enablement is designed specifically to address problems like banner blindness and ensure that the buying experience is pleasant, convenient, and customer-driven.
If we can reimagine sales and marketing as a resource platform willing to share information that benefits both sides of the buyer-seller transaction, then we will be well on our way to generating the kind of growth that benefits everyone. Growth is founded not just on individual best practices and favorable profit margins, but by building a community where trust and transparency reign supreme.
The Enable Us Seller and Buyer Enablement Platform was developed with sellers, buyers, and customers top of mind. This includes everything from functionality to the user-friendly interface and the overall experience. While maintaining open communications with our customers, we use their feedback and comments to continuously improve the Platform to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers and the global market.
Take a few minutes at your convenience for a self-guided tour to see the Enable Us Platform in action with our free demo.
