TLDR: Customer behaviors are changing in both the B2B and B2C world. Customers now spend longer researching before making purchasing decisions, and want to see third-party validation before buying something. The good news is that companies can extend their sales funnel upwards and capture more of these people during the research phase, and meet them where they're at with nurturing efforts and content that helps them learn more.

Buying patterns are changing in ways that we're just now beginning to realize. When consumers or businesses are looking to make purchases, they now spend an extended period of time researching products and services before they finally decide to buy. 

For a brief glimpse into how people are buying, look at this research done by Google and Shopper Sciences about where people are using search engines in relation to when they buy cars:

The number of people doing online research on cars is huge in the 1-6 month range. How can a marketer adjust their materials to work with this extended research phase that people are engaging in?

Marketers need to meet their customers where they're at. So if a customer begins their research several months before they're ready to purchase, there needs to be a way to engage and nurture prospects at this point in the process. Designing your inbound marketing plan to be an extension of the sales funnel is what's required to make sure you're reaching people when they're looking. Finding ways to pull people into the process early and share customer testimonials are great ways to do this.

In many ways, this is how people are shopping for everything now. In 2011, consumers user more than 10.4 sources of information before buying. B2B sales take even more. Gone are the days of impulse buys or non-competitive bids. Now, there's more than likely a multi-month process of learning about products, researching features, discussing implementations, and much more - all before they want to talk to someone in person. What can a company do to meet the needs of these prospects?

Extending the funnel

The answer is in beginning to lengthen your sales funnel upwards. Waiting until a salesperson gets around to putting someone in the CRM is too late. You need to know who someone is as soon as they do download a whitepaper, favorite a tweet, or click on an email. There need to be paths for nurturing these prospects further down the funnel, and tracking them as they make progress. Delivering the right content at the right time and pulling in third-party validation will be critical to winning sales going forward. 

To support an extended sales funnel and to track consumers at that point in the process, it will require companies to produce content that appeals to people at those various stages. Whether that's something entertaining to pull someone into the funnel, or something informative to guide them down it, content is going to become a larger part of the sales process moving forward. 

The good news is that content scales. It's testable. It can be optimized. It can even be adapted based on the customer. An upfront investment in creating marketing materials that people love can yield dividends down the road. Finding a way to extend your sales funnel up doesn't have to be extra work, it can be a lead generation activity for your sales team.  

The future sales process doesn't have to be difficult. In fact it can be more efficient than before.