B2B deal cycles are moving quickly, as 87% of B2B technology buyers indicated their purchase was completed within six months, according to the “2024 B2B Buying Disconnect: The Year Of The Brand Crisis.” The survey report — published by buyer intelligence platform TrustRadius in collaboration with Pavilion, a community for go-to-market leaders — explored how the self-service buying journey and the economy have dramatically shifted buyers’ focus to brands they’re already familiar with.
The research uncovered that companies who have built brand preference and trust are at the top of short lists and, from there, buyers’ research is focused on proving their technology choice to the rest of the buying group and stakeholders. Specifically:
- The average short list contains two or three products, and 71% of buyers ultimately purchased their No. 1 choice;
- 86% of enterprise buyers short-listed a product they’d already heard of before starting the research process;
- 96% of buying groups have five or fewer members, and 53% have at least one member of the C-suite; and
- Discretionary marketing spending favors demand generation (53%) over brand awareness (38%).
“Companies focus heavily on demand generation in 2023,” said Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius, in a statement. “Demand generation is necessary, but we now see how hyper focusing on that and not intermixing brand awareness throughout the buying journey hurts vendors, especially those in niche markets or who are up-and-coming. Vendors who want to succeed and grow in 2024 and beyond will want to address the findings and insights we lay out in this report.”