If you’re like most companies, you’re probably always on the lookout for new ways to increase your B2B lead generation. Fortunately, the solution to this dilemma is easier than you might think. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes and give them what they’re really looking for when they visit your site and you’re much more likely to convert them into paying clients. 

And what exactly is it that prospects are looking for? According to research, the number one thing that B2B prospects desire, but can’t find when they visit a vendor’s website, is budgetary pricing information. Although you may be reluctant to divulge this information, the simple fact is that if potential prospects can’t find the information they need, they’re likely to immediately click the back button and go on to the next site on their list. 

The Prospect’s Point of View

I recently attended a Marketing Sherpa conference where I listened to some compelling research that supports the theory that prospects want to find pricing information when they visit B2B vendor websites. Not only do they want to find pricing information – they need to find budgetary pricing early in the process as part of the research and discovery phase. Yet, it’s interesting to note that budgetary pricing is one vital piece of information that is generally not available on a vendor’s website.

If budgetary pricing is so important to prospects, why are marketers reluctant to provide it? Opponents of the practice often cite objections ranging from worry about competitors sneaking a peak at their prices to gain an advantage, to complex deals that make it difficult to quote a price, to the feeling that pricing is a sales function. Whatever the objection, the effect is the same: prospects look elsewhere to find the information they need - and you lose a quality lead. 

Turnaround Time – Manual vs. Automated

In spite of the objections by marketers, it’s still possible to offer budgetary pricing to prospects so that it doesn't undermine your sales and pricing efforts. The question becomes how fast can the process satisfy the prospect? Many vendors use manual web forms to provide the capability for a prospect to select items to be quoted.

In a manual scenario, once the request has been submitted, the prospect usually gets an auto-respond message happily telling the prospect his request is “Very important to us and we are working on it.” This does little for the prospect; he wants results. The request is then examined by marketing and passed to sales. After sales receives it, they must stop what they are doing; look at the request, validate the requestor, possibly attempt to contact the requestor (good luck, he wants to remain anonymous) to get more information and then finally create the quote and send it. This process takes hours if not days to complete and by the time the prospect receives their budgetary pricing they may have forgotten about the original request. If sales then follows up they may be surprised that the prospect is quite cold and may even be hostile because of the time lag. It is no wonder that the sales team blames marketing for generating “bad leads” when in fact there is no one to blame except the sheer volume of requests being handled by a manual process. 

We Don’t Want to Offer Pricing on Our Website.

There is built in resistance from sales teams to adopt this concept. In talking with colleagues as well as enterprise B2B marketers there seem to be some common concerns. It is a new concept so let’s take a quick look at how an approval-based, self-service pricing tool could help B2B marketers overcome some of the perceived “obstacles.”

Obstacle #1 - The vendor can’t identify the visitor (“they may be a competitor and we don’t want them to get our pricing”)

Depending on the organization this may be a moot point. First, what many don’t realize is that their pricing may already be available somewhere on the Internet. From aggregation sites to Federal and State contracts, a vendor’s pricing is usually found somewhere. If old or invalid pricing is available, it could actually hurt the vendor if a prospect uses it as a basis for future budgeting. As Stefan Tournquist of MarketingSherpa said, “They will find pricing somewhere. Why not make sure you’re the one giving it to them?”

Second, if a requester uses their corporate email address then it is quite easy to check out their company before approving the quote (the sales team may also change the price type if the requestor is a major account). For requests from personal email accounts (i.e. “gmail”), a quick Google of the person is usually all that is needed to identify friend or foe. If all else fails and the sales person is still not comfortable, simply deny the request until it can be looked at later.

Obstacle #2 - Displaying pricing allows the prospect to avoid the sales team

This is absolutely true if a vendor simply publishes their pricing on the website with no way of engaging the prospect. Even though a prospect knows she can probably get better pricing during the negotiation phase, she may be quite satisfied with published pricing and remain anonymous. This would leave the sales team out of the equation and would seriously affect their ability to deliver the value proposition early in the sales cycle.

An automated, self-service pricing method does not publish pricing; instead, it uses the promise of pricing as the incentive to engage prospects. To receive the quote the prospect must provide, at a minimum, a valid email address. The email address will be used immediately by sales to deliver the quote but can also be used by marketing in the future for email campaigns. Since the sales team is instantly connected to the prospect, they have the best chance of delivering the vendor’s value proposition before the competition. Another interesting note is that most prospects that go through the process of requesting a quote are much more qualified and sales ready than the casual visitor and deserve the sales team’s attention.

Obstacle #3 - Complex product sets are difficult to configure

Many vendors do sell complex products that require consultation with the prospect to get a “final configuration.” However, it should be possible to present reasonable packages and advice that will allow even a novice prospect to request a self-service budgetary quote. Remember, our goal here is not to necessarily provide a final solution, but rather engage the prospect early so that our sales team can help them. Ask yourself what is better; having a qualified prospect select a basic configuration and engage with the sales team or leave the site altogether? We can’t sell to them if we don’t know who they are.

Obstacle #4 - Different customers get different pricing levels

This is a legitimate concern, especially with a vendor that sells its products through many different sales channels. A single SKU (item) may have many different “prices” depending on the organization that is pricing it. For example, most commercial businesses that are new customers may receive List price while existing customers that are major accounts may have negotiated discounts based on larger volume purchases. The Federal Government may require a discounted GSA Price. An organization may have special pricing for many other channels like Education, Non-profit or even VARs and Integrators. All these pricing levels for the same item!

A self-service pricing tool quashes this obstacle by putting the control into the hands of the sales team. When a request is received, the sales team should have the power to change the pricing level on-the-fly depending on the requestor. For example, if a Government prospect with a .gov email address requests pricing, the sales approver can make sure they get GSA (Federal Government) pricing.

Does it work?

Offering budgetary pricing might be a hard concept to swallow, but consider the alternative – lost prospects, weak lead conversion, losing out to the competition. To increase the percentage of web visitors who enter into the marketing and sales process, test an online price-quote application and see if it makes a difference.

Summary

If your company has been struggling with quality lead conversion or website abandonment, then I highly recommend that you consider putting yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Visit your own site as a potential customer and ask “What do I need to plan this project.” If you can find rich product information but no way to easily get budgetary pricing, consider exploring ways to provide it. Manual processes may work if you can guarantee an efficient, quick turnaround within the best practices goal of a completed response of five minutes or less (auto responders that simply say “we have your request” do not count). In most cases an automated system can strip out the inefficiencies, tie in the sales team (critical) and give the prospect what they need much quicker with less chance of error.