Customer Empathy and How to Solve Buying Problems with Brent Adamson, VP at Gartner

Customer empathy is not a soft skill. In complex
B2B sales, it is a system-level capability that helps buyers
navigate risk, internal alignment, and decision anxiety.


This post draws from my conversation with Brent Adamson,
Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner and co-author of The
Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer, to explain why most
GTM systems fail buyers—and what empathy-driven teams do
differently.
Quick Answer

Customer empathy in B2B means understanding how buying
feels inside the customer’s organization—not just what they want
to buy. Research from Gartner shows the biggest obstacle
in B2B is not selling solutions, but helping customers make sense
of complexity, reduce risk, and align stakeholders.
Key Takeaways

B2B buying is harder than selling due to risk, consensus, and
internal politics

Empathy requires understanding how customers think and how
buying feels

Mental models reveal how customers frame problems and
decisions

The best sellers act as guides, not closers

Solving buying problems creates more value than pushing
solutions

Why Most GTM Systems Fail Buyers

Most B2B GTM systems are built on a dangerous assumption:


Engagement = intent


Form fills, webinar attendance, and content downloads signal
curiosity—not readiness to buy. When systems treat early
engagement like intent, pressure increases:


Sales pushes too early

Buyers feel rushed

Conversations stall or go dark



This isn’t a people problem. It’s a GTM system
design problem.
What Customer Empathy Really Means in B2B

Definition: Customer empathy in B2B is the
ability to understand how customers experience risk, credibility,
and internal resistance during the buying process—not just their
stated needs.


According to Brent Adamson, empathy has two components:


Understanding how customers think about
their business

Understanding how buying feels inside their
organization



Most teams focus on the first. The second is where deals slow—or
die.
How B2B Customers Think About Their Business

To change how a customer thinks, you must first understand how
they already see the world.


Gartner’s research emphasizes mental models: simple maps that
show how customers define goals, obstacles, and tradeoffs.


Instead of starting with financials or org charts, effective
teams ask:


What do they believe is broken?

What feels risky to change?

Who needs to agree internally?



Once documented, these models can be validated directly with
customers:


Did we get this right?

What’s missing?

What matters most?

Why Buying Is Harder Than Selling

Buying a complex B2B solution often requires:


Building internal consensus

Justifying risk to leadership

Protecting personal credibility



In large buying groups, stakeholders don’t just fear a bad
decision. They fear being blamed for it.


This is why buyers hesitate—even when they like the solution.
The Buyer Sherpa Model

In complex B2B buying:


The buyer is the climber

The change is the mountain

Your GTM team is the Sherpa



A Sherpa doesn’t push. They don’t promise an easy summit.


They help buyers:


Understand where they are

See what lies ahead

Avoid unnecessary risk

Decide whether the climb is worth it



This framing shifts sales from persuasion to guidance.
Why Empathy Improves Revenue Outcomes

When teams design GTM systems around buying—not selling—pressure
drops and performance improves.


Empathy-driven systems lead to:


Higher decision-maker engagement

Stronger internal alignment

Fewer stalled deals

More durable revenue



Empathy isn’t about being nice. It’s about reducing friction
where buyers feel stuck.
What Leaders Can Do Monday Morning Audit recent deals to
identify where buyers felt risk or confusion Listen to sales calls
for clarity, not pitch quality Redefine “sales-ready” around buyer
readiness, not engagement score Align marketing and sales around
helping buyers decide Reward progress toward clarity, not speed to
meeting Frequently Asked Questions What is customer empathy in B2B
sales?

Customer empathy in B2B sales is the ability to understand how
buyers experience internal risk, decision anxiety, and
organizational friction—not just their functional needs.
Why is buying harder than selling in B2B?

Buying is harder because decisions require consensus,
justification, and personal credibility. Buyers must convince
others and protect themselves from blame.
How does empathy improve conversion rates?

Empathy reduces pressure, builds trust, and helps buyers navigate
complexity—leading to better conversations, stronger alignment,
and higher-quality pipeline.
What is the Buyer Sherpa model?

The Buyer Sherpa model positions sales and marketing as guides
who help buyers navigate decisions safely rather than pushing
them toward a purchase.
The Real Lesson

Empathy is not a value statement.


It is an operating discipline.


When empathy is built into messaging, qualification, and
handoffs, pressure drops—and performance follows.


Your buyers are already looking for help.


The only question is whether your GTM system is designed to give
it.
You May Also Like

What Is Empathy-Based Marketing?

How Lead Management Improves Conversion

How Empathy Will Grow Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline



You can read the full transcript with source material below:


Here’s the transcript:


Are you applying empathy as part of your sales and marketing
approach?


Why? Because according to Brent Adamson, “empathy” is the one
word that matters most to sales [and marketing] success.


It’s tough to buy. B2B customers are overwhelmed with too much
information and too many choices, trying to get their colleagues
to agree, not to mention second-guessing.


This is part two of my interview with Brent Adamson
(@brentadamson), Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner, and
the co-author of The Challenger Sale and The
Challenger Customer.


You’ll learn ways to apply empathy and how to solve buying
problems.


Writers note: You can view part of our interview here: New
research: Boost organic growth from current customers.
Does empathy capture everything your
book, The Challenger Customer, is about?

Brent: The idea that empathy is the core principle of the entire
book The Challenger Customer, I admit, is more of a personal
opinion based on all of our research.


You’ll notice the word doesn’t appear anywhere in the proper
book. It’s only in the acknowledgments where I made just a little
blurb at the very back (a short note to my daughters). And I used
the word empathy there.


But in many ways, for me personally, one word captures everything
that the book is about.


I know this is a topic not only near and dear to your heart. But
your expertise here is far deeper than mine.


But when I think of empathy, I think of two components to it, but
it’s almost a right-brain, left-brain, or the rational versus the
emotional.


I don’t know what the right way to think about it is.


But from my perspective, empathy is, at a fundamental level, your
ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes and see the
world from their perspective.


And that might be logical (how they view the world from their
perspective), or it might be emotionally (what the world feels
like from their perspective).


I find both of those attributes of empathy to be potentially
hugely powerful for anyone in sales or marketing.
How customers think

For example, whenever we’re talking about Customer Improvement or
even the broader work in Challenger, is this idea of mental
modeling.


The whole idea being, if you’re going to change the way a
customer thinks about their business, what’s the first thing you
must understand more than anything else?


How would you answer that, Brian?


Brian: If I were to do that, I’d need to understand their
experience and how they see things.


Brent: You got it. This is where I have fun talking to you
because you get this stuff. And I say this with great, hopefully,
empathy and respect for anyone out there.


What I find when I ask most leaders, sales, and commercial
marketing leaders that question is: “If you’re going to change
the way a customer thinks about their business, what’s the first
thing you have to understand?”


Virtually everyone will say, “Their business.” So, then they
start reading 10K’s and the annual reports and the financials and
all that kind of stuff.


We saw in our research closer to where you are, which is, if
you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their
business, the first thing you must understand is how they think
about their business.


That’s the thing you’ve got to change.
Map customer thinking  

We find it can be very productive to draw a “map” on a piece of
paper. A map of their thinking. We call this a mental model.
Mental mapping is another term for this idea.


You can simply draw a couple of boxes and some connecting lines.


What are their goals? What are their objectives as an
organization?  What do they believe to be the primary
challenges or the primary drivers of achieving that goal?


What are the secondary challenges or the secondary drivers for
each of those? And then you can map it.
Mental map example

We do this in all our research here. We build mental models for
heads of sales and mental models for heads of marketing all the
time.


It’s how we do our research, but there’s nothing to say that
heads of marketing or marketing teams, sales teams couldn’t do
the same thing for their customers, which is to put on paper a
straightforward diagram.


Don’t over-complicate it, a few boxes, a couple of lines of our
core objectives as an organization.


What they’re trying to achieve?


How do they think they’re going to get there?


Challenges they believe they’re going to get in the way of the
lever they need to pull to make that happen, whichever
perspective you want.


And then once you’ve got that mental model, you can put it in
front of a customer and say:


Did I get it right?


What would you add?


What would you take away?


If I gave you 100 pennies to distribute across these ten boxes
according to priority, how would you distribute them?”


When you’re all done, what you have on the piece of paper is a
picture of how the customer thinks about their business.
Change the way customers think.

If you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their
business, the first thing you need to understand is how they
think about their business: now you’ve got it on a piece of
paper.


Now what you can do is step back and look at it and say, what did
they miss?


Which box should be bigger?  Which one should be smaller?
Which one’s not here at all but needs to be?


Which connective arrow needs to go from this box to that one
instead of this one to only that one?


And you can begin to look for opportunities to challenge their
thinking to help them improve their thinking.


To make them smart about what they’re doing. But that only works
by having that mental model to begin with, which I would argue,
at least from a logical perspective, is at least a form of
empathy.


Because that’s what that model is: it’s a picture of the world
from their perspective; it’s about seeing the world from your
customer’s perspective.


That doesn’t have the emotional component that some aspects of
empathy have, which we should be talking about.


Brian, does that count as empathy in your perspective, or is that
outside the bounds of how you define the term?


Brian: Oh, it does. I think it’s the two levels you just touched
on. It’s the perspective-taking, so understanding how they see
their business, and then the second thing is the emotional side.


Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio said, “We aren’t thinking machines
that feel. We’re feeling machines that think.”


And so, what he argued is, we make emotional decisions
rationally, so we need to take both perspectives to understand.
Help customers buy

Brent: Now, imagine a world where you are talking to one of those
stakeholders, and this individual must get a consensus across the
other four or five to make that deal happen, and you know this is
all implicit. It’s not explicit.


In their mind, they kind of have that mental model in their map,
right?


Well, I care about this box. He cares about that box. They may
not be thinking about boxes per se, but it’s all sort of there.


And one of the things we know from our research, what we also
know to be true as just individual professionals, is going down
the hall and convincing your colleagues to do anything
differently is kind of a pain.


Sometimes it’s kind of scary. Sometimes it’s a little
intimidating.


We find that the larger the buying group, the more individual
stakeholders feel, not only their credibility.


But in fact, their actual job could be on the line in advocating
for a supplier, which gets into the emotional side of empathy.


The Thursday morning test


So, you think about it from a supplier’s perspective. “Well, why
can’t they all just get on board? It’s like herding cats. I can’t
get these people to align.”


Think about what it feels like. Think about that person sitting
at their desk, and I call this the Thursday Morning 9:00 Test.


It’s Thursday morning, 9:00, and you’ve got to do what? What are
you going to do, how are you going to do it, and how will that
feel?


Now I’m thinking about buying your CRM solution.  And it’s
Thursday morning, 9:00. I’m thinking about how to get my company
to buy that solution, which I really want:


I’ve got to talk to someone in IT.


I’ve got to talk to someone in procurement.


I’ve got to talk to my CEO.


You know what, I feel kind of sick to my stomach. I don’t want to
do that. That’s a pain in my neck.


And suddenly what seems to be a slam dunk because [I’m in sales]
this person I talked to loves it is in danger because that person
doesn’t feel like going to talk to his other people.


So that becomes a hugely important part of empathy too:


What am I asking this senior decision-maker, my contact person,
to go inside their own company?


What does that feel like?


And chances are pretty good. It doesn’t feel very good. It’s hard
work. It’s credibility. It’s business case-building.


They’re going to ask me questions.


All those questions your sales reps have all the time, what if
they ask me questions I can’t answer?


What if they ask for data that I don’t know how to provide? You
know what?


Your stakeholders you’re selling to have the same questions when
they think about their own colleagues. What if my head of IT
wants to have a business case? I don’t know where I’m going to
get that.


Then he’s going to ask me a bunch of questions I don’t know the
answer to. Look, I just want this bleeping bleep CRM system, but
this is too hard – never mind.


Be able to place yourself in the shoes of that stakeholder and
understand what it feels like for them not to.


We always think about what it feels like to sell our solutions
but think about what it feels like to buy one of your solutions,
and it rarely feels good.
The new sales imperative

Brian: I really appreciate you sharing your perspective because
this is tough work, even for us as sellers to look at because we
spend so much time focused on, “How are we going to get the deal
done?”


Instead of understanding from our customers how do we help them
get the deal done and navigate all the things they need to do to
mobilize the support to make it happen.


Brent: We have an article in the March/April 2017 issue of the
Harvard Business Review, and it’s called the New Sales
Imperative.  As a supplier, we find that the single hardest
thing about solutions is not selling them. It is, in fact, buying
them.
The pain of buying  

I talked with 1,200 people at our Vegas conference last year. I
simply asked them to take their selling hat off and put their
buying hat on and think about their own organization.


Think about a recent big, complex solution that you purchased
with your colleagues at your company in the last 18 months,
whether it’s a CRM system or some sort of lead management system
or IT system or consulting engagement, whatever it is.


Think of all the people involved, all the decisions you had to
make, all the hoops you had to jump through.


Now, if you had to pick one word, one adjective, to describe that
entire buying journey, what would that be?


As I said, I’ve done this with thousands of people worldwide, and
inevitably, what do you think the words are, Brian? Take a guess.


Brian: I’m just thinking about what the words would be. I’m not
even sure.


Brent: It’d be things like long, hard, awful, frustrating. It’s
interesting. When you ask people to place themselves in their own
purchase journey and just ask them to share one word, they get
kind of angry.


It’s interesting. You can see their tension. The cuss words start
coming out in ways that are not really appropriate for meetings
that I was conducting.


Someone in Chicago, the head of marketing, said, “I never want to
do that again.” like it was one word because I asked for one
word.


Someone in DC said “landmine.” And I said that’s not an
adjective. And he said, “Landmine-ish,” which became my word for
the year.


But the point of all this being, if you put yourself in the shoes
of your customers and ask them what it feels like to buy a
solution, I literally have heard three positive words out of
thousands and thousands of people I’ve talked to.


It’s all negative.


And then you ask them a second question, which is interesting.
You ask them: “Alright, so how much is that paying? How much of
that time, how much of that frustration was the result of the
supplier selling to you? And how much was just a result of your
own company getting in its own way? “


And nine times out of 10, 10 times out of 10, people will say,
“It had nothing to do with the supplier’s selling to me. It’s
just my own company.”


Because we’re already convinced our one company is the worst
company in the world, we either get in our own way. We’re too
complicated, we have too many meetings, on and on.
It’s not a selling problem (it’s a buying
problem)

What we have here is not a selling problem at all. What we have
is a buying problem.


And buying is really bleeping hard with all the committees and
all the information and all the options, and it all just becomes
completely overwhelming. Again, back to the point about empathy.


If you can understand this as a seller, as a marketer, and you
can appreciate just how hard it is to buy not just your solution
but any solution.


To filter through all the information and pick out which
information matters most, to sift through all the options and
determine which choices matter most.


To wrangle all the different people and figure out all the
different questions they’re going to have, and you can
anticipate, this is empathy.


If you know what that feels like and then logically, you can
anticipate what those problems will be and which information will
matter most, you can effectively become the coach to your
customer. Not on what to buy but on how to buy.


You can take them by the hand, and you can guide them through
that buying journey and become that buying sherpa, and not solve
for selling but solve for buying.
Be a buying Sherpa 

That’s what a lot of our more recent work has been about:
adopting what we’ve come to call a Prescriptive Approach to sell.
We’ve seen marketing organizations do this really well through
content that is self-serving; that the customer can self-serve
on.


My Google search will take me to a white paper that a company has
written, which can take me to step by step:


“Looking to buy a CRM? Here’s the 10 Step process. First, do
this, talk to these people. Here’s the information that matters.
This question doesn’t matter.”


And from a customer’s perspective, the reaction is not, “I see
you’re trying to trick me into buying your stuff,” but rather the
reaction is, “Wow, this was really helpful. You just made it so
much easier.”


And you can only do that effectively as a supplier if you come at
this whole idea with empathy, understand what it feels like to
buy because it doesn’t feel very good.


Brian: We’re going to talk a bit about your marketing research in
a moment but, a lot of us treat the journey as this beautiful
looking linear model that moves from left to right, and it’s a
nice flow, but it’s really like climbing a mountain to our
customer.


Brent: Yeah.


Brian: I love the word picture of being a Sherpa. Because sherpas
are there to help people climb, help them along the journey. And
the whole idea of empathy. It’s applied empathy because our goal
is really to help people on their journey.


Brent: I totally agree. Now let’s not forget that we’re all in
the business of doing one thing at the end of the day, which is
selling more stuff.


Brian: Yes


Brent: So, empathy is all well and good, and it’s so powerful
that the cynic in someone listening today might say:


“Well, this is just empathy for the sake of selling more stuff.”
And to some degree, that’s true because that’s what we’re solving
for in the world of sales and marketing.


But that doesn’t mean it’s less powerful, any less honorable.
It’s helping customers find ways to generate greater value for
their business they haven’t appreciated independently. And then
navigating them to a place or helping them navigate themselves to
a place where they can realize that value.


I think in many ways it’s not only an honorable thing to do for
your customer, but it’s also a very profitable thing for you to
do as a supplier as well.


Brian: I 100% agree. I mean, at the base level, practicing this
way, marketing and sales can and should be a force for good. And
so, as you’re talking about this, I wanted to shift to marketing
research.
The B2B digital buying journey

What surprised you about the b2b buyer survey findings on the
customer buying journey and the most the most-important channels
customers are using?


Brent: One of the things we are studying this year in our
marketing practice is simply digital. We get a little more
specific than that, but you can imagine.


Particularly B2B marketing. Now, B2C marketing digital had been a
huge part, if not the primary part, of buying for a long time
now. It has become equally important in B2B very rapidly over the
last several years.


Not surprisingly, we’re getting questions around the world from
the CMOs that we work with around: “How do we move to become a
more digitally proficient marketing organization? What does that
even mean? What would be the characteristics or hallmarks?”


So, we’ve set out to understand at least some of this world of
digital buying in the B2B space with more detail this year so we
can provide our members with greater, more actionable advice.


We are really trying to understand what the buying journey looks
like in B2B, and then effectively along that buying journey,
which parts are most likely to be digital?


And along the way, we found something that was actually really
interesting.


What you find with most marketers (and I mean this with deep
respect, this is just the result of the way we all came up and
the way marketing’s always operated) is that we tend to think of
digital in marketing as a tool for demand generation.


That is largely upper funnel to maybe mid-funnel capability. And
the idea is that we use digital (whether it be websites, whether
it be online conferences or discussion boards, or advertising or
SEO, you name it) as mostly a way to create and/or identify
opportunities/customers that we then vet through maybe digitally
based lead nurturing campaigns.


And at some point, we give them that marketing-qualified stamp of
approval on them, and we pass them over to sales, and we say,
“All right, go get ’em guys.”


And at that point forward, it becomes mostly a sales rep
(calling, in-person) trying to close that deal. From our
perspective in marketing, it’s like, okay, we got them that far,
it’s all, you guys. Get ’em.


We’ve come to understand from our research this year that just
because a customer’s in-person/over-the-phone buying journey has
begun doesn’t mean that their digital buying journey has come to
an end.


It’s not like digital in the up-funnel and in-person on the
down-funnel. Rather, the two coexist.  The thing that I
think is especially interesting and new for us this year because
buying behavior is still in digital channels, even late in a
purchase.


Often, long after we in the marketing organization have handed it
off and said, “Go get ’em, sales,” our customers are still online
learning.


There is still late-stage digital buying activity, and that’s got
some fascinating implications from our perspective.


Are we even thinking about that? So, from a marketing
perspective, is it largely demand gen, and then digital is done?
Well, if it’s late-stage, what’s actually happening?


And as we dug into our research, what we find is, for example,
one of the things that your customers are really looking for
through digital channels in a late-stage, later in the purchase
process, is reassurance.


So, I’m talking to Brent, the sales rep, and Brent’s making all
sorts of promises, and he’s convinced me to buy this
multi-million-dollar solution, which is great. I trust him. He’s
not a crook, right?


Nonetheless, one way or another, this thing’s big, it’s
disruptive, it’s expensive, I’d kind of like to get some
reassurance. I’d like to see maybe what other customers have
experienced in buying this solution.


And so, irrespective of my ongoing in-person conversations with
that sales rep, I’m going to go out and corroborate what I’m
learning there and maybe add to it through digital channels.
Provide digital reassurance for the late
buying stage 

One of the things we found in surveying customers this year is,
the most likely place for them to go to get that late-stage
digital reassurance is the supplier’s own website.


Which I found kind of ironic, like, “I’m not sure if I completely
trust the sales rep, so I’ll go to the company’s website to get
reassurance.”


Nonetheless, that’s what happens, which begs a fascinating
question, which is, when they go to your website to get
reassurance on what they hear from your rep, are they even going
to find that reassurance?  And is that reassurance going to
be consistent with what the rep has said in person?


Because if they’re not aligned, you will raise all sorts of red
flags for that customer. The implications here are fascinating,
but I would imagine that rings true so far.


Brian: It does. As I listened to you and something you touched on
in marketing, we’ve always had this traditional handoff from a
marketing qualified lead to sales. So what you’re saying is we
need to go beyond handoff and think about the whole journey.


So, what can marketers do differently based on your research?
Because there is this gap right now and buyers are going back to
the website to get this reassurance, marketers have this gap that
they aren’t filling right now from what your research shows.


Brent: It’s funny. I tell people, the cool thing about doing
research is every time you do a large-scale research project, you
always inevitably find two things.


You find answers, which is great, but you always get more
questions. This is actually good because it keeps you in
business, but there are all sorts of questions here.


If digital doesn’t work as a handoff but rather as an ongoing
effort, to your point, Brian, that raises all sorts of questions.
B2B buying is omnichannel.

What should not just marketing do but sales do and commercial
leaders? Because what you have here now, at least what we can
really see clearly in our data for the first time, is sort of
what we’ve watched happen, and certainly in the
business-to-consumer world for five, ten years.


Effectively what you have here is an obvious picture of
omnichannel buying.


Your customers are gathering information. They’re engaging the
purchase process through multiple channels simultaneously,
whether it’s digital, whether it’s a website, whether it’s SEO,
whether in person through sales reps.


And all that’s simultaneously happening, so it’s isn’t just early
on: digital, later on: person, but rather all the time always-on
digital, person, and lots of other different channels. What it
means is we’ve got to coordinate across these channels in a much
more effective manner than we have in the past.


Omni-channel in B2C is interesting enough.  How do I get all
of my digital teams in marketing to collaborate more effectively?


So, I’ve got social, I’ve got search, I’ve got TV advertising,
that would be the consumer world. I’ve got to get my TV team and
my agency partner, my online people, my social, my Facebook team,
they’ve all got to coordinate.


What’s interesting is once you move omnichannel buying from the
B2C world to the B2B world, it gets 1,000 times more complicated.
Because now omnichannel means that we don’t just have to span
teams within the marketing function. We have to span functions
altogether.


So, the alignment isn’t just this team and this team in
marketing. Still, it’s the entire marketing function has to be
aligned with the sales function in some way that frankly we’ve
just never really fully appreciated before because we were always
solving for marketing or selling as opposed to solving for
buying.


And so, some of the questions this raises for us would be things
like, how does one just do this? How do you overcome decades of
institutional inertia?  I’ve been doing this for 15 years
and one of the first things I heard on my first day of work when
I joined CEB many years ago was, “Why can’t sales and marketing
just figure out how to collaborate?”


And now when you solve for buying you find the urgency has gone
up dramatically.


Because again, if I hear one thing from my sales rep. And I’m
finding a different thing on your website that’s going to, at the
very least, raise questions in a world where you’re trying to get
me to change behavior, which, as you remember, is risky.


And if I see anything that makes me a little bit more nervous, at
the very least, it’s going to slow me down if not shut me down.


So now you’ve got to get all of these different pieces of a
marketing and sales organization aligned so that you’ve got one
message to the customer, and it’s always consistent.


So, your customer can go on whatever buying journey they want,
whether it’s digital and different kinds of digital, whether it’s
in person. No matter which path I choose, I’m going to get a
consistent message.


Because if they’re not, it’s going to slow things down, and that
to me is really fascinating.


So, we’re trying to figure out what, practically, tactically,
what does that mean? What has to be aligned? How do I do that? I
think the answer here, I think for us, is TBD. That’s what we’re
on right now, and we need to figure this kind of stuff out.


Brent: Would it be better if sales and marketing were reported to
a single person? And I think what we’re finding already, even
very anecdotally, is that those organizations where sales and
marketing report to a single person are just more likely to
succeed in this environment for all the reasons I’ve just
mentioned.


Brian: I’d like to try something out on you. I’m actually writing
a post about this. I’ve thought about this idea of empathy and
how do we support the journey.
Go from campaigns to digital conversations.

I think it’s really moving from this campaign mindset to
conversations. Since we’re thinking about this, how can we have a
more congruent conversation with our customers as they go through
their journey? So, in effect, we’re helping them.


I think the best marketing and selling feels like helping
(because it really is).


I like this idea, and you talked about one message. It’s a
conversation that’s bi-directional. The principle of what I’m
saying is when we’re more congruent, and it changes the
conversation to be more reciprocal with our potential customer.


Brent: More reciprocal and also more efficient, right. Because
one of the things we find about sales cycle times is, of course,
they’ve gone up dramatically.


It just takes longer to sell, partly because it takes longer for
customers to buy. And again, to your point, if they’re finding
incongruent signals across the different channels from which they
are gathering information, that’s going to slow things down that
much more.


The challenge here is, again, we’re still trying to figure this
out, but the word you use I like, Brian, is the word
conversation. But in this context, you have to look at it not
literally but metaphorically.


Because a conversation is a human interaction, it’s people
talking to people and conversing with one another.


That takes us back to 10 years ago when I’ve got to have a sales
rep involved. I’ve got to train my sales reps to have better
conversations.


And that is absolutely true, but this is more conversation in a
metaphorical sense, which is not only an actual real conversation
between these two human beings. But it’s also a “conversation”
between our company’s website and that customer, or through these
third-party influencers and our customer. And so that broader
view of the overall conversation and managing that becomes the
bogey we’ve got to focus on.


Brian: Yeah, and as I was thinking and listening to you, our
customers see our websites personified.


They put a human context to the brand, to the company, even the
language that’s being used, and, so I think, the metaphor, that’s
really what I’m talking about.


I’m glad you articulated it that way. This metaphor of a
conversation instead of the traditional campaign, which is
looking at being more mono, and what I’m saying is more
bi-directional.


Brent: I think that’s right. By the way, going back to our
empathy point, now you can start asking fascinating questions
with the metaphor of the conversation.
Imagine you’re at a party.

Imagine you go to a party: So, what makes for a good
conversation? What makes for a bad conversation?
How does it feel to be involved in a bad conversation?


You just feel awkward, and you just want to go crawl under a
rock, or you want to go away.


Honestly, you just want it to end. That’s what it feels like from
a customer’s perspective when they’re engaged in a conversation
with your company that isn’t going according to expectations or
is sending mixed messages.


Ask yourself: are we doing that to our customers? How do we make
our customers feel like a conversation partner? It would be an
exciting thing to explore.


Brian: Research on how to improve is a good
conversationalist.  Instead of trying to be interesting, be
interested in the person you’re talking with.


And that in and of itself is so much of what we do as marketers
and sellers. It’s all about us, and it’s really all about them.


Brent: The best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten about the
conversation was, “Keep the other person talking about
themselves.”


Brian: Totally.


Brent: That’s way too simplistic, but it is in the ballpark of
what you’re talking about, which is so much better articulated.


How Empathy Will Grow Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline


This stuff is so interesting when you start solving buying
problems as opposed to selling or marketing problems. And again,
I think that’s where this idea of empathy comes in at a very high
level.


Take your selling hat off, take your marketing hat off, and just
ask yourself:


What does it feel like to buy?
How hard is it? What’s hard about it?
Why would I not do it?
Why would I choose to opt-out of it?
What would have to happen for me to think it was easier?
What would have to happen for me to feel more urgency or more
excitement around it?


Solve for buying instead of solving for selling or marketing, and
I think you’re going to be significantly better off relative to
your competition.