At the bottom of the sales funnel, French SMEs are not as influenced by customer reviews as US and German ones. Only 34% of French SMEs — compared to 43% (US) and 38% (Germany) — rank online searches in software directories among the three most important factors in their selection.
So if you have consumers from Germany or the USA as your target group, you should definitely place your customer reviews on as many websites and directories as possible and direct your interested parties to them – as a targeted lead nurturing measure.
Other important aspects to complete the purchase
The bottom of the sales funnel can be a lonely and hostile place. At this stage, few players remain, and the more competitive the sales field, the more tense the atmosphere.
Nearly 40% of companies start to look at “softer” aspects at this point to complete their selection process. These include trustworthiness, responsiveness and how well the sales team knows the product.
One way to increase your trustworthiness is to sprinkle a few negative customer reviews among the good ones. Proven Expert has evaluated several studies and found that 95% of prospective customers suspect manipulation and lose trust if a website only has positive reviews.
Other soft skills that lead from the bottom of the sales funnel directly to client nurturing are your onboarding process and a targeted post-sales strategy. If the process is not smooth and you do not nurture the relationship with your new customers, the worst case scenario is that you will get too many negative customer reviews - and these could ruin your future sales efforts at every stage of iran telegram data the sales funnel.
Your prospects' buying behavior changes at any given point in the sales funnel. Their goal of finding a solution to the problem their company is facing remains the same. But how they approach this process and what is important to them along the way is constantly changing.
There are certain trends when it comes to decision-making tools — from review forums and directories to budget — but ultimately, the bottom line is that you carefully and visibly address every concern your leads have.
The results listed are based on a study conducted by Gartner with the aim of understanding the purchasing behavior of small and medium-sized companies over the past 12 months. The main study was conducted online from July to August 2018 among 420 participants from the USA, France and Germany.
Companies were filtered by number of employees and their operating revenue in the 2017 fiscal year to represent small and medium-sized businesses. Another condition was that the companies had purchased at least one piece of software valued at $5,000 (or more) in the previous 12 months. The employees surveyed had to hold at least the position of office manager and have influence over the decision on which software the company invests in.
The study was developed in collaboration between Gartner Analysts and the Primary Research Team, which are part of the Digital Markets family of companies.
Disclaimer: The results do not represent "global" research results or the market as a whole, but reflect the opinions of the individuals and companies surveyed.