An Empathetic Approach.
How to create truly empathetic B2B buying experiences that drive growth.
Roundtable Event
Thursday 25th May 2023
Agenda Time Session 09:00 – 09:15 Arrivals, tea & coffee 09:15 – 09:20 Welcome and Housekeeping from Adobe Isabella Hargreaves 09:20 – 09:40 The science behind empathy Patrick Fagan 09:40 – 10:10 Breakfast 10:10 – 10:25 Adobe POV 10:25 – 10:45 Roundtable discussions 10:45 – 10:50 Sharing round table results 10:50 – 11:00 Closing remarks
Meet the speakers
BUSINESS OF EMPATHY
Hello…
Average Rating on Each Trait (1-6)
Given name (e.g., Patrick) Nickname (e.g., Pat)
Successful Moral Popular Cheerful
Mehrabian & Piercy, 1993 1 2 3 4 5 6
We adapt according to who we’re talking to youtube.com/watch?v=ZgVZLuJ6Skk
This can make us more persuasive
Compliance from a ‘hippy’ being asked, "Excuse me, could I borrow a dime for a long distance phone call. It’s kind of important."
x
Emswiller, Deaux & Willits, 1971 33% 75%
Person in a suit asking Hippy asking
It’s all about emotional intelligence
RECOGNISE EMOTIONS
MANAGE EMOTIONS
IN SELF IN OTHERS
What do you think?
A. Comforting
B. Playful
C. Irritated
B. Upset
C. Arrogant
B. Worried
C. Sarcastic
D. Bored
D. Annoyed
D. Friendly
Emswiller, Deaux & Willits, 1971
Empathy is important!
Study 1 showed that individuals who can best suppress their emotional reaction to an acoustic startle are happiest with their lives. Study 2 showed that individuals who can best amplify their emotional reaction to a disgust-eliciting movie are happiest with their lives and have the highest disposable income and socioeconomic status.
x
Marquez et al., 2006; Côté, Gyurak & Levenson, 2010
“Collective Intelligence had a significant and positive correlation with the number of women in the teams (r = .18, p = .005), and social perceptiveness as measured by the group members’ average score on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (r = .14, p = .03).”
Kim et al., 2017
Empathy makes better salespeople
More sales when…
Smiling
Using humour
Using their name
Repeating their words
Positive weather forecast
Several studies have shown that emotional intelligence predicts salesperson performance.
Boles, Johnson & Barksdale Jr., 2000
Soon, empathy will be more prized than ever
SO… HOW TO NURTURE EMPATHY?
capuchin.cc
GO OFF-SCREEN
GET FACE-TO-FACE
MAKE THEM IDENTIFIABLE
IMMERSE YOURSELF INTO THEIR PERSPECTIVE
SELF-DISCLOSE (IT’S A TWO-WAY STREET)
TIN MAN HEART
capuchin.cc
What do you think…?
What type of person lives in this bedroom…?
Gosling et al., 2002
Some data to back it up
Correlation with Liberalism -Conservatism
Sports-related décor (posters, paintings, photos)
Event calendar Postage stamps Presence of string/thread Iron and/or ironing board … Many (vs. few) items of stationery
World music CDs Art supplies Variety of music Varied (vs. homogenous) books
x
Carney et al., 2008 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
Predicting personality from data
Annalyn et al., 2018; Gladstone, Matz & Lemaire, 2019
Nudge susceptibilities differ by person
Change in Likelihood of Visiting a Restaurant if it has Many Reviews (vs. No Reviews)
54%
12%
Disagreeable Agreeable
x
Private academic work (ask me for more info)
Aesthetic preferences also differ
x
Private commercial work (ask me for more info) Neuroticism (r=.184, r=.173) Extraversion (r=.285, r=.261) Openness (r=.354, r=.301) Conscientiousness (r=.242, r=.157) Disagreeableness (r=.261, r=.210)
You can build selling profiles
Private commercial work (ask me for more info)
info@kubikintelligence.com +44 (0)7464 756 598
Building an Empathetic B2B Buying Experience
Isabella Hargreaves | PMM, EMEA
How B2B prospects and customers engagement
© 2023 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. of B2B businesses are seeing greater interaction through digital channels Providing engaging, empathetic and relevant experiences at different stages of the customer journey requires the right alchemy of know-how, culture, processes and capabilities across the business. Source: B2B Customer Journey Maturity’ 2022 London Research report https://business.adobe.com/uk/resources/reports/b2b-customer-journey-maturity-report-download.html?timeStamp=7687687876876
has evolved
The consumerization of B2B customer expectations is forcing sales and marketing to rethink their digital acquisition strategy
Trust Control Speed
They’d rather communicate digitally (The Direct Message (DM) Culture)
Buying Group by Age
They are self-serving option seekers (The Amazon Effect)
Top 4 Influencing Decisions Before Accepting a B2B Sales Meeting
They are extremely protective of their precious time
Attention span of human beings
12s 8s 1.3s
2000 2013 2022
Source: eMarketer
Source: Forbes
Source: Forbes, DeveriX
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
© 2023 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Automation
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. Source: Adobe State of Marketing Automation Report https://business.adobe.com/uk/resources/reports/state-of-marketing-automation.html
97% of
Leaders in
Marketing Automation stated that providing great buyer/ customer experiences is a top-rated Marketing objective.
- Adobe State of Marketing
Report
Lack of understanding around customer behaviour
The
Lack of real-time data for more timely and relevant interactions
Lack of digital capabilities within the organisation
Difficulty creating and managing content for personalised experience
Disconnected and/ or sub standard software platforms
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. Understanding your customer and their intent is critical to create an empathetic B2B customer journey
most common challenges faced by B2B businesses Source: B2B Customer Journey Maturity’ 2022 London Research report https://business.adobe.com/uk/resources/reports/b2b-customer-journey-maturity-report-download.html?timeStamp=7687687876876
Surface relevant content to engage and identify prospects
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
How to achieve personalised, relevant and highquality online content? Leverage real time data! Real-time Profiles Accounts & Opportunities Enterprise Scale Precise targeting for more consistent, personalised experiences
Personalise communications
Creation and marketing of content relevant to specific buying stages
Creation and marketing of content relevant to specific personas
Creation and marketing of content relevant to specific industries
Real-time targeting of information based on on-site behaviour
Building of profiles based on interactions
Focus on permission based first-party data
Use of machine-learning to serve next best offer; content or experience
Propensity scoring based on interactions
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Engage your customers on their preferred channels
Engage your customers on the channels they prefer.
Engage your customers on the channels they prefer
Incorporate a full mix of marketing, sales, and paid media channels beyond email.
Cross-channels engagement
Identify known and anonymous buyers to maximize top-of-funnel demand generation.
Connect offline, online, inbound, and outbound channels for a seamless, empathetic experience.
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Audit and invest in digital capabilities
Intelligent and configurable propensity-to-buy scoring
Predictive Lead and Account Scoring
Leverage AI and machine learning to predict the likelihood of a person or account becoming a sales opportunity, or a new customer to drive higher quality pipeline more efficiently.
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Personalized
There
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
to self-serve
Allow customers
conversations
that engage website visitors and drive sales meetings
Invest in nontraditional channel like on-site chat, mobile messaging…
The State of B2B Customer Journey Maturity
is now much greater use of digital selfservice and increased digital interactions. London Research Report Source:
https://business.adobe.com/uk/resources/reports/b2b-customer-journey-maturity-report-download.html
Draw on a wider range of data for insights and metrics
Employ wide range of metrics, beyond revenue generated and self-serve insights, reporting, multi-touch attribution to measure how well your entire customer experience is working
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. Complete B2B attribution fueled by Real-Time CDP’s
customer
data
centralized
activity
©2022 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. Marketing Attribution for B2B
Focus on integration of technology
Integration within the business martech stack is key to deliver a personalised empathetic B2B customer journey.
CRM integration empower Sales and Marketing teams focusing on higher-quality leads that result in faster revenue growth.
Key Takeaways
1
B2B Customer Journey has evolved in the past years but most of B2B businesses still needs to adjust
2 3
Seamless customer journeys are the main challenge of B2B marketers
Personalisation, digital capabilities and marketing analytics are the key area to invest in
©2023 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Discussion Points
When you do you feel that you have shown empathy towards customers and what was the effect?
How well do you feel understand your customer's needs?
When have you seen/experienced empathy in your relationships with clients/suppliers and what was the effect?