COVID's impact on social proof

Thanks for the question! This is a good and important one. Yes, totally agreed that social proof’s ALWAYS been important. Even pre-COVID. That said, the state of buying under COVID has changed quickly. And has heightened the need for social proof to reinforce those buying decisions. Especially for high consideration purchases like software. Our own AIPAC GM Chris Perrine, shared an anecdote from his own personal experiences in selling through the 2008 crisis that — where he and his company found that buyers were doing 3-5x more research prior to selecting at the time. And we fully expect that to be the case here. More so, Accenture’s latest study predicts that COVID will permanently change consumer behavior. 64% of consumers are worried about the impact on their personal job security. That’ll certainly have a major impact on the buying decisions they make for their orgs when their reputation’s on the line. When you combine that with the fact that only 18% of the salespeople buyers met over the past year would be classified as trusted advisers whom they respect — all signs point to social proof as being the ONLY way for us sellers/marketers to break through the trust barrier. And successfully engage and sell into our buyers going forward. Sources: - Accenture: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/consumer-goods-services/coronavirus-consumer-behavior-research - Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2020/03/20/trust-and-value-the-final-frontier-of-software-product-marketing