The good news for B2B software vendors is that buyers are buying again. But there’s more to the story.
As the economy has moved from booming to rapid shutdown to gradual re-opening, business marketers and technology buyers have gone through phases, much like the classic stages of grief.
Denial
Late March represented the first phase, denial. At this stage, according to research from B2B Marketing Zone and Webbiquity, roughly two-thirds of marketers expected only a relatively short-term impact from the coronavirus-caused shutdown. Most thought live events such as trade shows and customer conferences would return by mid-summer.
That’s not going to happen.
Panic
In the second phase, panic, buyers put the brakes on purchasing and marketers put the brakes on spending. More than 40% of buyers said they had “stopped making large purchases.”