57% of the Purchase Decision Process Is Complete Before theCustomer's First Engagement with Sales – NOT!
By Jeffrey L. Josephson

There is a widely quoted study that alleges that, in
B2B, 57% of the decision process is complete before
the customer's first engagement with Sales.

Accompanying this is a slider graph that shows apurchase decision process, with endpoints of when
"Customer Due Diligence Begins" and the"Purchase", and a marker at 57% of the way throughthe process, showing where the "Customer's First
Serious Engagement Begins."

The problem is that statistic is unsubstantiated; it's
what is referred to as a "rogue statistic." At best, it's
an inference drawn from the B2C world into the B2Bworld. But it’s at heart a self-serving vendor fantasy
that misleads business owners and managers into
spending enormous resources on products andservices that will not only not provide a positive returnon investment, but which in many cases generates astrong negative return on investment.

Well, in my view, this is really startling stuff. I mean,
let's set aside that the purchase process doesn't
begin with Due Diligence. And let's pretend that mostB2B decision makers don't even know they have aneed until they talk to a sales person. I would stillreally like to see the data. And I would really like tosee how you can justify drawing inferences from aso-called survey of 22 large businesses, who likely
make 90% of their purchases (by dollar volume)
through Supply Chain Management anyway, to the
15 million SMBs in this country.

BackgroundThe statistic comes from a report by the Marketing
Leadership Council, (part of the CEB, or theExecutive Board) called "The Digital Evolution in B2BMarketing," which was co-sponsored by Google. You
can find it at http://www.executiveboard.com/exbdresources/content/digital-evolution/pdf/DigitalEvolution-in-B2B-Marketing.pdf.

Now, I'm not saying you don't need a Web site. And
I'm not saying you don't need to submit it to thesearch engines, or put some content on it. But if
you're going to ask these 15 million business owners
to spend a lot of money on digital marketing, you’dbetter have more than a skewed sample, and abunch of inferences, to draw it from.

The report itself is about identifying B2B digitalmarketing challenges, like how to structure digitalmarketing capabilities and supporting content-ledmarketing. And it does that very well. The problem isthat it bases the need to identify and meet these
digital marketing challenges this on the statistic. The
statistic itself is not the result of the study. As it turns
out, they base the entire need for a digital strategy onsomething they don't and can't prove.

Hot on the Trail
So I followed the sourcing to see if I could find thestudy, or better, the raw data. I started by Googlingthe "MLC Customer Purchase Research Survey,
2011." This leads you to a presentation that reiterates
the same set of assumptions about how much of thepurchase process is done before engaging withsales. It also, by the way, includes a very telling chart- which somehow is conveniently lost in this process that identifies the sources that customers use for
information:

Anyway, if you look at page 2 of the so-called study,
it says:
CEB’s Marketing Leadership Council (MLC)
surveyed more than 1,500 customer contacts(decision makers and influencers in a recent
major business purchase) for 22 large B2Borganizations (spanning all major NAICS
categories and 10 industries). In a striking
finding, the survey revealed that the averagecustomer had completed more than one-half ofthe purchase decision-making process prior toengaging a supplier sales rep directly (Figure 1).
At the upper limit, that number ran as high as
70% (Figure 2).

Suppliers
Third party consultants
Colleagues/Other Customers
Other Sources

47%
22%
23%
08%

So I'm still wondering: How is 57% of the purchaseprocess is done before engaging with sales,
especially if 47% of the information comes fromsuppliers. It doesn’t add up.	  
-1–© Copyright 2012 by JV/M B2B Telemarketing  1221 N Church Street, Suite 202  Moorestown, NJ 08057
Tel: 856-638-0399  www.jvminc.com  info@jvminc.com

So I kept Googling.
Here, by the way, though, they say some interesting
things about it. For example:

And then I found something that, as a marketing
scientist, is the avatar of unsubstantiated nonsense the anecdote. The third hit down (on Google) for thesource study (which you would hope would be thesource study itself, but wasn't) was a link to "A Sneak
Peek into MLC's 2011 Agenda." This link, if you clickon it, brings you to their blog. And the fourth item
down in their blog says:"This statistic holds across industries, purchasecomplexities, and purchase type (new versus oldproducts and new versus existing supplier)."Wow, that is just Earth shattering. For if it's true that
B2B customers don't engage with Sales until 57% of
the purchase process is done - after Due Diligenceeven - then the entire, historic sales model is junk. No
longer would there be a need for sales training, forexample, as the idea of discovering needs would bepointless. And building value would be useless, aswell, since everything would become commoditized.
The same with relationship-building. And channel
partners, for that matter.

“One of our B2B members recently told us that
70% of a purchase decision has already been
made when their customers contact them as
suppliers. That’s a scary statistic and one all
B2B organizations are facing in one way oranother.
We’re fielding a survey of how
customers research purchases, how social media
andonline
communities
influence
theconsideration set and ultimate purchase, andwhat are key influencers in the early stages.”

And so, given these stakes, I kept looking.
And then I hit a wall. The next hit was to a White
Paper by a company called SilverPop, which had areference to the so-called study in their footnotes.
And the next hit was for an unrelated survey by
Credit Suisse. And the next hit was for a consumer
survey by Google.

Hmmm. It's certain an interesting observation - that
one of their members told them that 70% of thepurchase decision had already been made when theircustomers contact them as suppliers. And, if it wereto generally be the case, it would be a scary statistic as it would put proactive sales out of business. But it
still didn't give me what I was looking for - the survey
results needed to generalize.

So now my spider sense was getting up. Here was astatistic, one that I had seen repeated on LinkedIn
over a hundred times, one that has been used tojustify billions of dollars in expenditures on social
media marketing by hundreds of thousands of B2B
companies, and there was no sign anywhere on
Google of the underlying study.

But she did cite the survey they were doing. So I
went back to Google.
The next hit I got was a presentation from the CEB
called "Marketing Talent in 2011," from October ofthat year. The goal of that study was to make thecase for something called "Foundational Marketing
Skills." And there on the third slide was our slider
chart again, showing that 57% of the purchaseprocess is complete before the customer's firstserious engagement with Sales.

So I called the Marketing Leadership Council.
They can be reached at 866-913-6451, MondayFriday, from 7am-7pm. I spoke to a very nice young
lady named Melanie, who searched her database ofstudies.

Now I'm not saying this is up there with "the big lie"
where, if you repeat something often enough it
becomes true. But the timing is starting to make me
nervous. Because here we have an October 2011
presentation that cites their 2011 Customer Purchase
Research Survey. But no survey.

I told her I was interested in purchasing the study.
And if I had to join the MLC to do so, let me know.
The End Game: A Dry Hole
Clicking away at her computer, she found nothing
under the title "MLC 2011 Customer Purchase
Research Survey." And she found nothing related to
any combination of those terms.

So I went back to Google, and got the next hit - which
was another presentation by the CEB called"Influencing the Empowered Customer." And,
wouldn't you know it, there was the slider, right on
page 5. Again, they cited the study; but I still couldn'tfind it.

She did, however, offer to refer me to one of theirsalespeople, who might be able to help. So I left mycontact information, and I'm still awaiting their call.	  
-2–© Copyright 2012 by JV/M B2B Telemarketing  1221 N Church Street, Suite 202  Moorestown, NJ 08057
Tel: 856-638-0399  www.jvminc.com  info@jvminc.com

Implications

If you have a copy of the study, call me. My contact
information is below.

If you’re in B2B marketing, this is serious stuff. Thatis, one of the most widely cited statistics justifying theuse of Social Media Marketing, content marketing,inbound, SEO and Web 2.0, is entirely
unsubstantiated.

And if you’re a victim of this rogue statistic, call us. If
you’re lucky, it might not be too late to save yourcompany.

The Rogue Statistic	  -3–
© Copyright 2012 by JV/M B2B Telemarketing  1221 N Church Street, Suite 202  Moorestown, NJ 08057
Tel: 856-638-0399  www.jvminc.com  info@jvminc.com