B2B BUYING BEHAVIOR

The B2B marketplace has seen a lot of change in the past three years. The COVID-19
Pandemic altered the business landscape, forcing companies to adopt virtual sales and
safe contact production methods while cutting spending. During the same period, the
workforce shifted. The Millennial generation is now the up-and-coming management.
For manufacturers, it’s been a roller coaster ride of rethinking traditional methods of
doing things and shifting focus to predict and understand the shifts in B2B buying
behavior.

SHIFTS IN B2B BUYING BEHAVIOR

The Pandemic has made companies sharpen their pencils and tighten budgets,
purchasing and buying decision-making has become a lengthy, extended process
involving more people, more research, and more personalized performance. According
to a recent Forrester Research report, current B2B buying behavior involves:
Informed Buyers. The millennial generation grew up with technology and is now
becoming the most significant part of the workforce. Millennials are becoming part of the
new purchasing decision-makers. They are tech-savvy enough to do a lot of research
through credible and authoritative sources before ever reaching out to a sales rep.
Group Buying. Traditionally B2B sales involved one or two significant decision-makers.
Now 63% of purchases have more than four people involved from different department
providing multiple perspectives and collectively making the buying decision.
E-Commerce competition. The B2B market has traditionally been built on long-term
trust between buyers and sellers. Many of today’s companies have complex needs that
require innovative approaches and personalized solutions. 79% of B2B buyers say it is
critical to deal with a sales representative who is a trusted authoritative source that adds
value to their business.

In the current business climate, the only way for a manufacturer to grow sales
and your customer base is----manufacturer’s representatives.

Manufacturer’s Representatives provide unique value because they are:

 Dedicated sales networking professionals who know the players in their
territory well. The average manufacturer’s rep has been building relationships in
their industry and territory for 15 to 20 years.

 Excellent communicators that maintain close contact with the customer base
you want to sell to

 Product line experts with deep product knowledge in their respective fields

 Consultative selling experts who can present the technical nuances and added
value of your products to engineers, purchasing agents, and influencers who
decide to buy your product

 Trusted sources of product and industry knowledge

Manufacturers’ representatives improve your company’s efficiency as they can:
a) Free up your time. Outsourced manufacturer’s reps need less management and
direction from you, which frees you to focus on managing your business. 
b) Save you money. As an independent sales rep, manufacturer’s reps don’t draw
a salary or benefits.
c) Provide faster market penetration. Manufacturer’s representatives can quickly
bring your product or service to market because they already have a relationship
with target accounts in your industry in their geographic territory.
When you seek the right manufacturer’s representatives to boost your company’s
opportunities for growth, where do you turn?
ARDENT has decades of experience building sales networks of manufacturer’s
reps for manufacturers in North America.

 Ardent shortens the time it takes to build your sales network because we
maintain strong relationships with the best manufacturer’s representatives.
We have the largest database of manufacturer’s representatives in industrial and
commercial industries in North America and continuously add new
representatives.

 Ardent thoroughly trains the manufacturer’s reps on your products’ features and
benefits, so they know your capabilities to correctly position them in the market.
 We provide our reps with all the right tools they need to focus on identifying sales
opportunities and closing the sale.

 We utilize our extensive sales management expertise to communicate with and
monitor our sales reps to ensure they are getting sales results and assist in
closing the sales for our clients.

If you are not getting sales results, you should be working with Ardent. 
Ardent knows what it takes to build productive relationships with manufacturer’s reps.
We’ve been building them for over a decade.

Ardent prides itself on working with the best and brightest sales representation talent in
the market to boost our clients’ opportunities for growth.
Are you a manufacturer in need of sales representation?  Contact Us