Clients can’t test-drive judgement – so what are they actually buying?

It is tempting to tell ourselves, in this technical B2B world, that if you deliver exceptional advice, maintain strong client relationships, recruit intelligent people and produce consistently good work, the market will reward you with commercial success as a natural by product.

This belief is attractive because it implies that growth is foundationally meritocratic. Winners win because they deserve to. Yet, what we see across the board is that technically capable companies can, and frequently do, lose out to competitors who are not necessarily more experienced, or skilled, but who are better understood by the market. 

Experience isn’t the differentiator that you think it is

That begs the question then, what are customers actually buying from you if not technical capability or skill? Something Stu, Mark and I ruminated on in No Blue Suits a few weeks ago. Capability and price are not differentiators any more. Experience and competence are very often assumed as a given by clients. This is one of the reasons that I personally advise clients against using the word “experienced” in their external communications. Another reason is that everyone has this word somewhere in their About Us section and if everyone is saying it, it’s not a differentiator. So not experience, unless you are one of one and no one else can say that they have your specific skillset or expertise, if so, that should be front and centre in all your communications.

The next lever that most people instinctively reach for is price. However, consistently undercutting your competitors is not a strategy most organisations can sustain for a prolonged period of time. Especially when delivering quality products and services.

Doubling down on price locks you into a race to the bottom and doubling down on competence puts you in the position of competing on credentials the client has likely already assumed everyone has.

B2B purchases are career bets, not rational choices

It is also worth bearing in mind that your clients, all B2B clients, make purchases based on emotion. We may like to think of ourselves in this B2B framing as more rational than B2C consumers but there is research to suggest that B2B purchases are actually even more emotionally driven than B2C. One study found “personal value” (confidence, career advancement, reduced anxiety, status among peers) had roughly twice the impact on purchase decisions as “business value” alone, and separately found that 86% of B2B buyers don’t see enough differentiation between suppliers to justify choosing on rational/functional grounds.

Is it any wonder? Your partner is unlikely to leave you high and dry if you buy the wrong kind of dog food. But every time your clients purchase your services or products, they are making a career bet where their job, reputation, and credibility with colleagues are on the line. The stakes are infinitely higher.

This is particularly pertinent because often companies in our industry, do not sell products that can be easily tested before purchase. A car dealership can offer a test drive. Not so with foundation design or cable depth advice. Often service firms sell something infinitely more abstract than a physical product: judgement, clarity, expertise, strategic safety. Clients cannot evaluate the quality of these easily. Often they can’t even articulate the value accurately after a project is finished.

What then, are they actually buying from you? They are buying a desired emotional state, a feeling, and you are selling trust. Because they are buying a feeling, and they can’t always test drive the car so to speak, they rely on proxies to tell them that working with you is a worthwhile bet.

To sell them trust, you need to be able to show them that you have authority in the market. Authority is not shallow or performative, it’s a deeply embedded market level reputation. A broadly held belief that you understand the future of the industry better than others do. You need your prospective clients to hold the belief that in the moments that matter, you are commercially safe and strategically important to have on their side. 

Strategic comms is a lever you need to pull

Due to the flattening of the distinction of competence, strategic external communications has become an increasingly important lever to ensure that authority is built around your company. In years gone by marketing and communications could be treated as supportive, rather than strategic, useful potentially for profile but secondary to the “real” work of business. It is sometimes vaguely associated with vanity and ego. Perhaps even self importance. Now though, it increasingly determines how the general market feels about the work itself. Procurement may compare technical capability, but reputation frequently determines who enters the room in the first place.

Clients are not simply asking which companies are technically strongest but which are safest to trust. Companies that consistently and repeatedly appear in influential environments begin to feel more credible. This can look like being quoted in industry media, speaking at industry events, producing visible and valuable insight. These serve as deposits that compound in clients’ minds. I talk a bit more about the effects of compounding in this Random Acts of Marketing post. This repeated exposure, in the right kind of environments, means that these types of companies begin to feel strategically sharper than competitors whose expertise remains hidden inside pitch documents, capability statements and client meetings.

Perception is commercial reality

This can have a transformative commercial impact. Clients are less sensitive to cost when the perceived risk is lower. You attract referrals because it’s easy to recommend companies that are clearly and confidently defined. Talent is attracted to organisations that are seen as influential in the market. Trusted partners attract inbound leads and the path to consideration is much shorter. This is always the goal I am working towards when I work with clients.  

The market can only reward what it can see. Customers buy not just the most technically capable or cheapest options available to them. Trusted interpretation is rare, valuable and hard to come by and perception increasingly shapes commercial reality. The most successful organisations in our industry understand that well and they work hard to be the ones that the market instinctively trusts.