Understanding the thought leadership buyer

Selling thought leadership is hard. Your ideas are, by nature, intangible and subjective. One person’s good idea is another person’s terrible one. There are no standards to certify quality and there are few widely accepted professional bodies to opine on best practice.

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A guide to building win-win relationships with customers from Exhibit B Partners

Understanding the thought leadership buyer is an e-book from Exhibit B Partners that provides a guide to building win-win relationships with customers looking to purchase thought leadership services.

What’s inside

The 20-page guide is built around six practical lessons for anyone selling thought leadership services, whether an agency, a consultancy or a media owner:

1. Understand buyer concerns, and surface them. The unspoken worries a buyer brings to the table, and why you need good answers to them before they are raised.
2. Know the buyer group and tailor your message. How buying groups grow with every extra stakeholder, and how to keep them aligned.
3. Understand the priorities of each individual. What the CEO, the CFO, procurement and others each want from a thought leadership investment, and the objections each is likely to raise.
4. Don’t ignore the client’s client. Why a pitch built around the audience is more persuasive than one built around the client’s own messages.
5. Get ahead of the RFP. How to engage before a brief turns into a formal request for proposals.
6. Understand what buyers really value. The different types of value thought leadership delivers, from near-term results to long-term pipeline, and how to discuss them with prospects.

It closes with a look at how the buyer is changing: larger committees, squeezed budgets, more scrutiny of results and the rise of AI tools.

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Written by Rob Mitchell and James Watson, the co-founders of Exhibit B, this e-book helps sellers understand the concerns, considerations, and priorities of these B2B buyers during the sales process.