10 Mind-Blowing Stats About High-Tech B2B

The competition to get noticed in the extremely crowded high-tech B2B market has never been greater. Technology is changing faster than most people can keep up, and the need to keep innovating is at the top of the industry’s strategic to-do list.

To add to this complexity, technology buyers are changing. Both B2B buyers and B2C consumers are demonstrating greater levels of expectations for their experiences, making everyone’s day-to-day jobs that much more involved. We found the following statistics below quite interesting, as they capture these changes and also display how high-tech marketers are working to keeping up.

1. Surveys show that millennials have taken the lead in decision-making and have the most research power when choosing technology solutions in the workplace. To compare, only 23% of Baby Boomers and 27% of Gen X reported the same authority.

The Takeaway: Millennials rule. Keep that in mind when deciding on the strategy and verbiage in order to appeal to this age group. They’re the decision-makers now.

2. According to Adobe, using data to inform marketing, planning, and decision making was named the TOP digital capability and did the most to drive investment strategies for high-tech B2B’s this year.

The Takeaway: Consider your collected data one of your business’s most prized possessions and USE it!

3. In cases where high-tech B2B companies have undertaken broad transformations of their customer-experience processes, the impact has been higher client-satisfaction scores, reductions of 10% to 20% in cost-to-serve, revenue growth of 10% to 15%, and an increase in employee satisfaction, according to McKinsey.

The Takeaway: B2B sellers and marketers must remember that customer journeys are much more complex than that of a retail customer, so they must cater to this fact. B2B companies often offer numerous services and offerings, that must be tailored according to individual customer needs.

4. B2B digital leaders drive five times more revenue growth than their peers.

The Takeaway: Someone who truly grasps the concept of digital leadership understands the strategic use of a company’s’ digital assets in order to achieve business goals. Good digital leaders ask questions, search for insights, and are open to all possibilities that solve problems through digital.

5. B2B high-tech allocates about 15% of overall budget to marketing each year, on average, according to Deloitte.

The Takeaway: Allocating the proper budget for your marketing team is important, as marketing’s more strategic, customer-driven focus can help ensure that sales activities do not become too short-term. When the sales function sits within marketing, sales can be driven to focus on the acquisition and retention of the most valuable customers for the long run.

6. Research that looked at skills for B2B tech marketers found that soft skills, such as good communication and people management are the most important skill sets.

The Takeaway: The importance of empathy and social-emotional skills cannot be overstated. Hard skills can be taught, but adaptability and understanding efficient communication systems cannot.

7. When high-tech marketers are asked to rate the intensity of competition on a scale of 1 to 10, most respond with an eight or higher.

The Takeaway: High-tech companies and B2B firms must take a customer-centric approach to combating these competitive threats and meet the ever-rising expectations of customers.

8. A majority of high-tech companies say that customer experiences and becoming experience-led has become their number one priority.

The Takeaway: Tech workers are well aware of heightened competition and that customer experience is the only way to overcome it. Understanding the customer journey and improving touch points whenever possible is key.

9. 62% of B2B tech marketers said that producing engaging content is their greatest marketing challenge.

The Takeaway: Find content creators who understand what’s unique about your company, know how to rise above the mediocre, and amaze your audience with their writing, researching, video, or audio skills.

10. On average, 6.8 people are involved in purchasing decisions in B2B high-tech.

The Takeaway: Your salespeople must understand potential buyers’ businesses, and take it up a level from using vague openers such as, “Can I ask you a few questions?” Leading sellers open with “I noticed that you’ve been thinking about…” by having followed social media threads to prepare for the face-to-face meeting LONG before it happened.

Now that’s high-tech.

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