Complexity creates friction, which if you are lucky, only drags out the sales cycle.

More often than not, it kills sales.

In B2B technology marketing, many solutions are complex and loaded with customer risk. The more complex the solution, the more friction is built into the sales process. Marketing’s primary job is to reduce friction, which means reducing complexity. Simplifying – distilling complex topics into focused value propositions and content – is the first order of business.

Just don’t over simplify, especially for the wrong person.

B2B technology sales typically involve several buyer personae (genotypes) that have different friction-generating concerns. Simplifying all content and applying it to every audience creates more friction, not less, because every genotype is left uninformed. Creating one piece of content for the CIO, CTO, server administrator, developer and third shift operator will educate none of them

Likewise, even if content targets only one genotype, over-simplifying gives the buyer a disincentive to investigate your products further. We live in a real-time world, and people scrape high-level information first and avoid digging for content if their basic information needs are not met.

Which is why many B2B web sites stink … on ice. Some marketers don’t study who lands on their site, nor provide paths for different genotypes to dive into. Get a CIO and techie to the same page and not provide an executive planning guide as well as a technical FAQ, and you will at least add a month to the sales cycle, if not an eternity.

Over-simplifying content is the greater sin. When you simplify to the point of removing meaningful information, then it is the same as delivering no information while wasting the buyer’s time. Nothing slows sales as eloquently as draining enthusiasm out of prospects by squandering their patience on the first meeting.

Distill, but not to the point where your tonic becomes toxic, and don’t make everyone drink from the same cup.