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TrustRadius fielded survey questions to vendors as well as buyers, and used this to point out where there was a lack of alignment. “Only 33 per cent of vendors say they think it is very important for buyers to understand the cons before buying,” the authors noted, compared with 77 per cent of buyers. “This gap is increasing year over year.”

By misjudging the impact of consensus decision-making and over-focusing on the divide and conquer strategy, many vendors are on the wrong track when it comes to developing strategies to manage their brands on peer review sites. And this means wasted investments in attempts to guide buying decisions.

The 2020 B2B Buying Disconnect highlights the findings from the 4th annual report by TrustRadius. Designed to explore the evolving relationship between technology buyers and vendors. This year TrustRadius surveyed a total of 1.5K respondents. 1,036 technology buyers and 449 technology vendors took aligning surveys.

The role of millennials in B2B buying decisions, and their distinctive attitudes and behaviors as business buyers have become major topics of interest for B2B marketing and sales professionals over the past five years. Since 2014, numerous research studies – including studies by the IBM Institute for Business Value, Google/Millward Brown Digital, Merit, and Heinz Marketing/SnapApp – have focused specifically on this subject.

“Share your toys” was a phrase that many of us heard from adults growing up. For DevOps teams around the country, that sentiment never really dies. We spoke with DevOps experts from Austin’s Iodine Software and TrustRadius, who shared the importance of working within key site reliability engineering team principles — like making data-based decisions — and the benefits of incorporating DevOps into departments across the business.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has now found himself answering questions about user privacy as part of a congressional hearing more than once, including this week. Alphabet, Twitter, and Amazon executives have also sat in the same hot seat. In that same vein, consumers are largely on board with the regulatory scrutiny of so-called big tech. A survey performed by Trust Radius earlier this year found that only 29% of the respondents trusted Google. That’s far better than Facebook’s rating of a mere 5%. Apple and Amazon earned the trust of 27% and 25%, respectively.

Omnichannel customer engagement and customer review management are table stakes for B2C brands that want to win and keep customers. Now they’re becoming important for B2B companies, too. That’s because B2B decision-makers are bringing purchasing habits from their consumer lives to work—and they’re changing the way B2B Marketing works in the process.

Customer reviews play a key role in helping people decide what to buy on consumer-focused marketplaces like Amazon or app stores, and the same tendency exists in the B2B world, where nearly half a trillion dollars is spent annually on software and IT purchases. TrustRadius, one of the startups capitalising on the latter trend, with total feedback sessions today standing at close to 190,000 reviews, has now picked up a Series C of $12.5 million led by Next Coast Ventures, with existing investors Mayfield Fund and LiveOak Ventures also participating.

“I founded TrustRadius because I experienced first hand the consequences of making the wrong technology selection, and witnessed how difficult it was for our team to conduct effective due diligence with resources like analyst reports and vendor-driven references and case studies,” Vinay Bhagat, founder and chief executive officer of TrustRadius said in a news release.

Add another eight-figure funding to Austin’s venture capital haul in 2019. TrustRadius plans to double its headcount in the next year or so as it creates a way for businesses to read reviews about software before dropping big sums of money.

TrustRadius, a B2B software and services review site, has raised $12.5 million in Series C funding, bringing its total equity financing to $25 million. The most recent funding round was led by Next Coast Ventures, with participation from returning investors LikeOak Ventures and Mayfield Fund.

TrustRadius takes its core values seriously. The review site for B2B technology stands by the acronym T.R.U.T.H. — transparent, respectful, unstoppable, team player and human — which are the core pillars of the company’s foundation. Because the company stands by these values, employees can rely on frequent communications for leadership and internal policies based on employee feedback.

The 2019 list of Austin’s Best Places to Work is out. The list is a stout source for jobseekers. It’s also a sneak peak at the companies that might be in a position to poach employees in this tight job market. Here is the complete list of 2019 winners, including TrustRadius.

“The stakes are high in B2B,” says Vinay Bhagat, founder and CEO of TrustRadius. “Tech buyers need the whole truth before buying.” Think of the consequences that might accrue if, despite due diligence, you install HR software that produces a critical error, he points out.

Last month, TrustRadius published the findings of its third annual B2B buying disconnect research. The 2019 B2B Buying Disconnect report is based on a survey of 712 individuals who were involved in a significant purchase of business technology during the preceding year, and on a survey of 229 individuals who worked for technology vendors in a marketing or sales capacity.

2018 is shaping up as a major year for TrustRadius, which is now up to nearly 50 employees and has plenty more openings in sales, engineering and other departments. Find out why it doubled the size of its executive team.

There is a widening trust gap in the B2B marketplace that should ring alarm bells for CMOs. In a recent study from TrustRadius, 85% of B2B vendors said they were open and honest about their product during the sales process. Yet only 36% of B2B buyers believe they got the full picture from their vendor. That is a problem because buyers are twice as likely to be influenced by vendors they believe are transparent and trustworthy.

My last debate with TrustRadius on the impact of peer reviews on B2B buyers was certainly interesting. But their data raised a question we need to answer: how can vendors make their sales and marketing more transparent – and relevant to buyers?

The impact of peer review sites on B2B buyers is no longer debatable. But does that influence extend to the large enterprise? And is it fair to compare the role of analysts to the Kardashians? Those were some of the items I debated with the TrustRadius team.

Only 36 per cent of B2B software buyers say vendors live up to the promises they make about their products and services, according to a research study where the vast majority of firms claimed to be open about any limitations their offerings may have.