Showrooms in Sales-oriented B2B Marketing – the ‚ATTACK model‘

The B2B customer journey often is long and complex. Of course the goal of all marketing and sales activities is to invite customers into one’s company and to gain their full and undivided attention. The importance of live touchpoints – i.e., the live encounter of prospective clients with your own company – cannot be overestimated. In the B2B customer journey, the visit to your showroom therefore constitutes the proverbial ,moment of truth’. It is one of the crucial moments in the purchasing decision process in which clients decide for – or against – a provider.

The ATTACK Model in the Showroom

For the show to work perfectly, it should be meticulously planned and choreographed in advance. In your own showroom, you can address customers with all their senses and reach and convince them on both a cognitive and emotional level. The ATTACK model offers a practical and hands-on concept for this important touchpoint. Originally developed for the use in online marketing by the Munich advertising agency eminded, it consists of 6 phases. Its name ATTACK is an acronym of these 6 phases: Attract, Think, Trust, Act, Close, and Keep. Garamantis apply the model to the showroom as a touchpoint in the B2B customer journey to explain its fundamental mechanisms.

6 Phases of a Showroom Visit (B2B)

1. Attract: The first step is to attract the customer’s attention. If he/she only expects an ordinary conference room and a Power Point presentation, but you come up with a state-of-the-art interactive showroom instead, his/her journey already starts off with a pleasant surprise. The appearance and attractiveness of the showroom create a good first impression that helps and supports the process in all subsequent phases. Tip: Surprise your visitors and create positive excitement. In no way should the showroom resemble a conference room, and the form of presentation should encourage active participation and involvement by visitors. The interior design of the room, digital exhibits, extraordinary lighting effects, and interesting perspectives all contribute to this. Modern showrooms deliberately do without stationary tables and seating and instead invite guests to actively explore them together.
2. Think: In this phase of the customer journey, you encourage your visitors to think. Make sure not to underchallenge them, emotionally and intellectually, with a full-frontal presentation. Feel free to sprinkle in facts on your company’s history at a later point of the show, whenever appropriate, but please don’t do so right at its beginning. Good starting points for the prelude are: industry trends relevant to the client, innovative digital solutions that address typical issues of the client, current projects and technologies of your company, etc. Tip: Offer added value by sharing your expertise and show that you take your client’s perspective. If you present trends and innovations that actually affect your client instead of merely going through your product portfolio it will become a lot easier to start a meaningful conversation. Swap the role of „salesperson“ for that of a „partner“. If you deliver this presentation on, e.g., a futuristic multi-touch table with a connected monitor wall, its form and content will match your innovative image.
3. Trust: Now it’s a matter of gaining the trust of your customers. To do this, it is important to build a bridge between the trends and challenges mentioned above and your own solutions. In addition to a convincing presentation of these solutions, an overview of the company’s history, global locations and projects, as well as convincing reference projects from the customer’s own industry, will help. Tip: Established and proven showroom stations include 3D globes for navigating company locations and projects with drill-down information and interactive timelines for exploring your company’s history and technical milestones. The type of information that inspires the most confidence varies from person to person. Therefore, your showroom should be equipped with a flexible CMS that allows you to individually activate the appropriate content for each client beforehand.
4. Act: By now you have probably fed your clients with enough input and have proven your interest in them. Now it is time for your customers to become active and tell you about their challenges or ask informed questions. The key to success lies in creating an encouraging and dynamic atmosphere making it easy for them to become involved, ask questions, or even intervene in the presentation. Tip: interactive demonstrators, configurators, or simulators are best suited for this phase. Give your visitors the opportunity to engage with the solutions you offer, to playfully explore and to test them. An interactive showroom addresses basic human traits like curiosity and the urge to play, in order to pull them out of their passive role and encourage them to act.
5. Close: In a well-designed showroom the act-phase merges seamlessly into the next one: close. By now, your customer should have come to the basic conclusion that the solutions you have presented are a perfect fit for their needs and challenges, and that your company is the best possible partner to implement them. However, in order not to leave things at a vague level, you should concretise and define the solution approaches as far as possible. If you are a good salesperson, you will already have suitable configurations and a rough cost estimate at your fingertips. Tip: A showroom with an intimate atmosphere and an inviting and comfortable interior will help you in this phase. Ideally, you will have collected all the information and data (e.g. from the configurator, digital shopping basket, etc.) during the previous phases, which will now serve as a useful basis for the follow-up meeting with the customer.
6. Keep: Customer loyalty and the generation of repeat purchases can also be achieved through an interactive showroom – through repeat visits to the showroom. If the same customer comes back six months after the initial project, he or she can return to the same space, but with different digital content. For example, they may notice additional or different industry trends, or there may be product innovations or updates and more recent reference projects on display. A showroom with a flexible CMS thus can provide new eye-opening moments and added informational value with every visit. This phase therefore makes an important contribution to a sustained positive brand experience.

Conclusion on Sales-Oriented B2B Marketing In and Through a Showroom:

The ATTACK model optimizes the customer experience in 6 phases. Key elements are a surprising and interactive B2B-Showroom experience, the sharing of industry-specific relevant trends and solutions, and the creation of trust. Customers become actively involved by playfully exploring the solutions themselves. In the end, solutions are concretized, and a comfortable atmosphere is a valuable aid in the conclusion of the contract. Sustained customer loyalty is achieved through regular updates and different content with every visit. When applied to a showroom, this approach supports customer loyalty on a deeper emotional level during the B2B decision process.