In times of turbulence, “don’t panic” is usually the first piece of advice. But then what? According to Matthew Selheimer, Forrester’s VP, Research Director and co-writer of the Forrester report “B2B Leaders: How to Thrive Through Volatility,” the next steps are to focus, master change leadership and continuously evaluate risk.
Selheimer shares that amid the ongoing economic and political uncertainty, one of his clients declared that “everyone is in lizard brain mode”—reacting emotionally and myopically. “People are in fight-or-flight mode, they’re not thinking about long-term commitments,” he says, and that’s a mistake. “There’s the risk that company values could get compromised as you try to chase any revenue you can get.”
In lieu of reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to each perceived threat, Forrester suggests the following advice for B2B marketers:
- Develop contingency plans across all areas of the company. This is the antidote to rash, in-the-moment reactions. Explore responses to a range of hypothetical scenarios, establishing who will be in charge of leading these plans and what criteria would signal when to implement them. Be sure to specify the employees, processes, tech and audiences likely to be affected and in what way, and include communication tactics within your action plans.
- Prioritize your target segments. “It’s a good exercise right now to stack rank your segments from most stable to least stable,” Selheimer says. You can then siphon some resources from the more-precarious market sectors or audiences to your more secure ones. That doesn’t mean abandoning current customers in at-risk sectors, however. “Maybe you can pull back on acquisition in those segments, but keep your investment in customer retention marketing and community,” he says.And if most of your major audiences are experiencing turmoil, search out niches that are apt to be less affected than the others. Selheimer points to the education market; while there’s a great deal of uncertainty overall, the K-12 sector might be less volatile than the higher-education market and therefore worthy of more resources. Some businesses may have to drill down even deeper to a more macro level to find the most stable niches.
- Adapt to changing buying behaviors. Even prior to the current turbulence, B2B purchase journeys were becoming longer and more complex. Three-quarters of B2B marketing decision-makers surveyed by Forrester in 2024 said buyers were taking longer to commit than they had the previous year, with more parties from inside and outside the client companies (such as consultants) weighing in on decisions. As businesses respond to the ongoing volatility with budget alterations and internal restructurings, decision times will likely get even longer. In some cases, sales teams might want to shift from hard sales tactics to a more educational approach and focus on nurturing long-term relationships as much as on closing sales. This enables you to keep in touch with prospects and customers even if they don’t appear ready to purchase in the near future. “If you wait for someone to show they’re in market, they might have already made a shortlist,” Selheimer cautions.
- Focus even more heavily on satisfying customer needs and wants. Clients are already feeling the stress; think of how to make it easier than ever for them to buy from you rather than from your competitors. And don’t guess what they want or need; reach out and ask. “If you assume you understand what’s going through customers’ minds right now, you have the likelihood of being wrong,” Selheimer says.
- Delegate more to frontline leaders. “If every decision has to go back to corporate, that inherently makes you less adaptive in the market,” Selheimer explains. Instead, you might consider empowering sales leaders to offer discounts up to specific thresholds, for instance, or taking other steps to facilitate agility.
- As a change leader, consider people as well as processes. “Process is obviously important, and there may be certain processes that have to adapt. But it’s also important to think about the human aspect of change,” Selheimer says. Check that employees aren’t getting crushed under the burden of continual pivots; encourage those who have been putting in extra hours to take time off to decompress. Model the behavior you want to see; for example, if you’re worried about staff burnout, make a point of not sending emails after hours or on weekends.
- Mitigate risk, because buyers will be much more risk averse. “Nobody wants to make a bet on a perceived risky company,” Selheimer says, so be certain you can present your business as one that’s financially stable and trustworthy. That includes remaining true to your organization’s core values and principles—“Trust is hard won and easily lost with employees, customers and partners”—and taking pains to communicate the company’s stability.
- Don’t pull back on brand advertising and reputational marketing. This is a lesson many businesses learned the hard way during Covid. Having slashed brand marketing during that time, “they realized after coming out of the pandemic they needed to invest more to make up for it,” Selheimer notes. Brand advertising is “like investing for retirement: If you stop for a year or two, you have to invest even more when you come back.”
- Seek outside advice. Selheimer admits that this may sound self-serving, but “you are going to have only a limited amount of perspective in the market. This isn’t the kind of scenario where ‘let’s just get our smartest people in the conference room’ is going to be sufficient.”
Above all, Selheimer says, “Look at this as an opportunity rather than just something to survive.” He cites a quote from former Intel CEO Andy Grove: “Bad companies are destroyed by crises; good companies survive them; great companies are improved by them.”
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