Buyer Experience Innovation: 5 Management Principles 

What are the buyer experience management principles used in marketing automation that modern businesses swear by? Keep on reading to find out more. 

This is a refrain that is often heard for all critical initiatives. In the case of buyer experience, a CEO is wise to choose a senior executive with that particular attribute and capability of unifying sales, marketing, and service into alignment with buyer experience. It is important to note that while much has been made of the need for sales and marketing alignment, service is often the forgotten third spoke in the wheel of buyer experience. While service is a significant component of the overall customer experience in retaining existing customers, many procedural efforts in acquiring new buyers pass through service. It can make as well as cause a break in a buyer experience. 

One company taking buyer experience seriously is Zendesk, which in addition to its product, has created a customer success platform. The idea behind this is that it's not enough to have an effect that works; you must ensure customers successfully use it. Equally important, this appointment makes a statement respective to the priority of Buyer Experience Innovation within the organization.

The predominant driving force can describe many organizations exhibited culturally. To name three examples here, organizations have been defined as sales-driven, marketing-driven, or product-driven. While buyer experience strides have been made in B2C to become experience-driven and consumer-friendly organizations, B2B has lagged significantly in embracing a cultural shift to becoming experience-driven and buyer-friendly. 

The reason for this is that culture eats strategy for breakfast. It will take more than re-writing the vision and mission statements to effect a lasting change in organizational culture. What is needed is an infusion of new values permeating the fabric of how business gets done daily. These new buyer experience values must be led from the top and cascade down through the ranks to take hold. The adage, "actions speak louder than words," has never been more apropos than it is in organizational culture change.

Qualitative buyer experience insight is essential to a deeper understanding of existing buyer experiences, buying processes, and the how and why of decision-making. Many decisions on sales, marketing, and service strategies have been made in a vacuum over the years without a critical understanding of genuine buyers and their processes. As a result, there has been much waste of time, effort, and resources expended. Too often, we have fallen victim to our assumptions based upon past experiences that no longer serve as a guide for the future. It is incumbent upon us to challenge those buyer experience assumptions through rigorous qualitative research with buyers. Only then can we hope to make buyer experience decisions that are founded, as well as an understanding of unmet needs and expectations.

Presumed buyer experience understanding has led to the constant recycling of approaches meant to spur growth. CEOs today, especially in B2B, will need to embrace attaining qualitative buyer insight as a competitive edge in designing innovative buyer experiences. Buyer Personas and Buyer Journey Mapping are two critical tools for buyer insight gathering.

Knowledge and buyer experiences are shared widely and integrated into the organization’s DNA to become experience-driven. It is not siloed in just the sales, marketing, management principle, or service organization. Instead, buyer experience is a pervasive way of thinking and acting that crosses all organizational boundaries. If we align to a buyer's expectations, it will take all of us working together in lockstep. No longer is it acceptable for the sales organization to work off different buyer expectations than marketing or service. We must align and work on the same page to meet and exceed buyer expectations. In other words, it takes a village to serve the buyer. Buyer experience knowledge also becomes a key component of how organizations make informed decisions on overall customer strategy. Employee engagement in the buyer experience is significantly enhanced when understanding how they contribute to the overall buyer experience.

The advent of the digital and social age has made design thinking a much sought-after competency for many B2C and B2B organizations. To meet the needs and expectations of the ever-changing buyer, a company must be in a constant state of designing innovative buyer experiences and management principles. This is no easy task. Today's forward-thinking organizations are turning to creative thinking to solve complex business problems to meet the buyer experience challenge. Design thinking brings a new way of thinking to organizational problem-solving by placing the buyer at the center of the experience.

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. Design thinking begins with a focus on understanding the people you're designing the experience with deep empathy for their needs. It then combines that insight with creativity and possibility thinking to arrive at innovative solutions that are technologically feasible and economically viable.

A company that designs innovative buyer experiences thinks differently. They don't accept the status quo. They are constantly looking for new and better ways to serve their buyers. And they are not afraid to challenge the buyer experience assumptions that have led to the status quo. Design thinking is a mindset and approach to problem-solving that can help your company meet the needs of the ever-changing buyer.

Buyer Experience Innovation is a modern-day business design imperative that CEOs must adopt to gain a competitive edge and customer and buyer loyalty. Many existing customers become "repeat" buyers, and an inconsistent stream of buyer experiences can be detrimental to allegiance. Buyer Experience Design improves an organization's competency to deliver consistent experiences that build loyalty.