Adobe: An Empathic Approach

An Empathetic Approach.

How to create truly empathetic B2B buying experiences that drive growth.

Roundtable Event

Thursday 25th May 2023

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

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."

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

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.

“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).”

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.

Soon, empathy will be more prized than ever

SO… HOW TO NURTURE EMPATHY?

GO OFF-SCREEN

MAKE THEM IDENTIFIABLE

IMMERSE YOURSELF INTO THEIR PERSPECTIVE

SELF-DISCLOSE (IT’S A TWO-WAY STREET)

TIN MAN HEART

What do you think…?

What type of person lives in this bedroom…?

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

Predicting personality from data

Nudge susceptibilities differ by person

Change in Likelihood of Visiting a Restaurant if it has Many Reviews (vs. No Reviews)

54%

12%

Disagreeable Agreeable

Aesthetic preferences also differ

You can build selling profiles

Building an Empathetic B2B Buying Experience

Isabella Hargreaves | PMM, EMEA

How B2B prospects and customers engagement

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

97% of

Marketing Automation stated that providing great buyer/ customer experiences is a top-rated Marketing objective.

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

Surface relevant content to engage and identify prospects

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

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.

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.

Personalized

There

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

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

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?