You know who the decision-makers are for your buyers, and you know how to answer their unique concerns. You can't do that if you're not in the room, but your marketing can speak on your behalf. (Image: Shutterstock)

Gone are the days when the salesperson was in control; now, the buyer reigns supreme. Buyers no longer have to wait for a salesperson to educate them on potential solutions; they are going online and researching themselves.

Unfortunately, that means we are seeing their buying process grow significantly longer. And with increasing frequency, they are abandoning their search altogether and not making any purchase decision.

Related: 10 tips to improve your online and social media presence

The reason? An overwhelming amount of information and no clear path or timeline to their decision.

For the salesperson, the most obvious implication is that it is now harder to get in front of a prospect. Sales teams need to find a way to intervene earlier, both for their benefit and that of the buyer.

The key lies with your marketing strategy. The marketing department must make sure prospects see your organization as an educational resource from the very beginning of their search. When you're marketing strategy creates a presence with ideas and content that speak to those problems, you will be able to guide that buyer down a path that leads to a conversation with your sales team.

A complex problem

While the research buyers are conducting is typically spearheaded by one individual or department, they are doing so on behalf of a broader group of interests, which gets to the reason for the longer buying process and the increased abandonment rates. In complex buying decisions, there are multiple decision-makers. The average has increased over the years, and we're seeing reports of as many as 6.8 people involved in complex purchases.

Each influencer has a different role within the organization, and different parts of the organization they are charged with protecting. They all come into a buying process with different concerns.

You can start to see how difficult it is to gather all of the information necessary to satisfy everyone's individual interests.

Marketing is your difference-maker

You know who the decision-makers are for your buyers, and you know how to answer their unique concerns. You can't do that if you're not in the room, but your marketing can speak on your behalf.

You'll likely need to shift the intent of your marketing message initially, because most of these messages are designed to solve a selling problem by connecting the potential buyer with the seller's value proposition.

The real struggle for the buyer isn't connecting to the seller's value proposition; it's connecting internally to find agreement around their problem.

You can anticipate the concerns, questions and likely issues. You know the areas where they will potentially disagree with one another. Anticipate these, provide the answers, and build the bridges into your early-stage marketing content.

Make it easy for them to find their respective answers, connect with one another, become comfortable moving for ward, and rally around a sense of urgency to make that final buying decision.

Marketing is not just some optional activity. Instead, it is a critical daily function of running any successful sales organization.

Use educational marketing content to help your prospects coalesce around a challenge, and you will be the obvious choice as they coalesce around an answer.

Read more: 

• 5 marketing tips to keep the client pipeline full
• Podcasts: An untapped marketing opportunity
• The 10 commandments of prospecting: 2020 edition