The 2 types of trust in a b2b buying process
The SVB collapse stirred up discussion on the nature of trust in banking. How does this relate to b2b purchases?
In all the discussion following SVB, I see 2 important threads around the question 'do you trust your bank?'
One is 'do you trust your bank not to collapse and lose all your money'. The second is 'do you trust your bank to have your best interests / care about you as a customer?'
Many US banking customers like smaller banks, because of the personal service, the local-region connection, and the innovative products. But when smaller banks are under threat, customers have moved their deposits to large banks.
The same 2 types of trust apply in B2B buying journeys. While we don't worry too much about financial collapse, we worry that the software or product simply won't work, and our business will be affected. The risk isn't losing the $10k or $100k that you spent, it's losing the much larger ROI that was expected - which can include your core revenue. If an ecommerce store's webhost goes down, there are zero sales.
The second type of trust is 'does this company care about me as a customer' and often drives the decision between a larger safer vendor and a challenger vendor.
A challenger vendor can't promise the safety and stability of a Salesforce or Adobe, or IBM, but they can promise care, and personal support, and innovation. The job of marketing and sales is to demonstrate to the buyer why these attributes are worth the additional risk.
In many cases, the purchasing decision maker is taking a personal, career risk when they go with a challenger brand.
I have been involved in purchase decisions where the buyer took the Garner magic quadrant and said they will only speak to companies in the Leaders quadrant. It didn't matter what anyone else presented, the buyer had zero personal risk appetite. Other times it's the reverse - they didn't want to meet any leaders, assuming they are too big to care.