Understanding and leveraging the real buyer's journey
The typical buyer's journey
When asked to describe the typical buyer's journey, most people would describe some variation of something that looks like this:
Rather simple, easy to understand, but doesn’t appropriately paint a picture of how buyers behave through a process.
What I want to propose is a different way to look at the buyer’s journey. One that better visualizes what the journey of a buyer looks like and how it can be leveraged.
The 'new' buyer's journey
The new stages:
Unaware
Aware and not interested
Aware and interested
Interested and Evaluating
Interested not evaluating
Purchasing
*Post-purchase
From unaware to aware
Not all prospects are the same. The most common effort at this stage of the buyer’s journey is a request from sales or marketing to a prospective buyer who we assume will be ready to buy once we get them in the funnel. This is a mistake; often reinforced by either constant citing or selective memory of those one-and-done deals.
It benefits all parties involved to assume any one prospect begins either unaware of or undervalues the problem and/or your ability to solve it.
When we approach prospects at the beginning stage of the journey like this, our aim should be to educate and facilitate. Rather than try to shove anyone into consideration, it best serves us to first help them see our point of view.
We are looking at what the problem is, the implications of that problem, and whether or not we agree on the magnitude of the problem.
At that point, it is up to the prospect to decide whether or not this is something they want to go deeper on with you. We are in the business of demand creation at this stage of the funnel. From here there are two different paths prospects will take on their buyer’s journey:
Aware and Interested
'I agree this is a problem.
So what are we going to do about it?'
This is where we talk about why you, and why your solution. Your prospect has agreed they want to spend more time with you, and depending on your buyer, there are two different ways they’ll want to go about that:
1. reading/watching more stuff
2. talking directly to a person
We all hope for the latter—sometimes force it, but we are still very much so aiming to educate and facilitate at this stage. This is our opportunity to introduce our differentiation and it’s up to your buyer to decide whether or not that requires another human. Depending on the product, this can be a video tutorial, a trial term, a whitepaper, or even a customer interview. Either way, the goal of this stage is to get this prospect bought in on you being able to effectively tackle the problem. That’s it.
Aware and Uninterested
'You’re blowing this out of proportion.'
They don’t get it.
They hear you, they see what you’re saying, but they’ve got bigger fish to fry—they think.
Depending on what we’re trying to do, we have two options for what to do with these prospects:
1. Dump them
2. Nurture them
For those looking to build big things, here are a few examples of how one might nurture their uninterested prospects:
Trends
Whitepapers (yours or someone else’s)
Thought leadership (yours or someone else's)
Anything that serves to further elevate the impact of the problem you’re solving. Our job here, as facilitators, is organizing and contributing to the conversation happening around the problem. If there are other people looking at the same problem as you, great—let them help you spread the word. If you’re the lone person shouting in the megaphone, either begin articulating your POV, or take off the tin hat.
Interested and Evaluating
'You look good.
I agree on the problem, your solution makes sense, let’s see if we can marry.'
Again, depending on what your product is, whether or not your buyer needs another human to evaluate it, is up to them. We still want to facilitate. Make it as easy as possible for them to judge whether this is right for them. This could overlap with the interested stage if your product warrants nothing more than a trial experience to draw a prospect in, but for the more complex products, the ones that require customization of the solution and likely call for higher prices because they solve bigger problems, we’ll likely need to add in a human element to capture this demand.
Interested but not yet Evaluating
'You look good, but…
I agree on the problem, your solution makes sense, but:'
I don’t have budget for this
I’ll struggle to get approval for this
You’re timing is off
Tough.
The common response to these situations is for whoever is driving this sales conversation to try and “manufacture urgency” or a personal favorite, “add value” in an attempt to move these prospects into purchase. We believe too much in our own prowess that we can overturn how another organization does business, and we risk turning interest to disinterest if we begin to sour the buyer’s experience. This is your customer’s first interaction with your product and you should treat it as such. Whether it be through conversation with a salesperson, or a hands-on feel of your product.
These prospects aren’t in your funnel, but they are funnel adjacent.
The appropriate approach for prospects in this stage of the journey is, yes, to value-add but what does that actually look like and who’s job is it?
This is where most funnels go awry.
Passed down the chain of command, it often falls on the frontline salesperson to add value, without much direction as to what that could possibly look like. Sometimes it’s sharing marketing material to educate them on the problem—but these people have already agreed there’s a problem. Not much of any value-add in that.
Occasionally, it could look like an invite to a webinar. Better, and in the right direction, but still missing the mark. More often than not, action at this stage of the process is reactive and at the will of whatever is happening rather than proactive leveraging what we already know about these prospects and making plans about how to nurture them.
Attacking this correctly is practice in creative thinking and is where the riches are found.
Designing how you nurture your prospects who are interested but not yet evaluating isn't something that happens over ten minutes on a Monday, deciding what you want to send in an email campaign before your weekly sales meeting.
We want to into invite these prospects into the conversation that only you can have with them.
At this stage of the journey, both you and the prospect have done equal information share. You’ve provided them with information on the problem you’re solving, the impact of that problem, and why you’re a choice option for them to try and rid of that problem.
They’ve shared with you, intimate details of when they buy, how they buy, and what else they buy. Not using this to our advantage would be an oversight.
We want to focus our energy on converting these customers in that short window of time they’ve shared with us they typically entertain evaluating new vendors. Since they’ve already agreed with us on so much, how we interact with these customers is different than how we interact with customers who are unaware, or even aware and not interested.
Before these prospects ever spend a dime with us, they can help us by sharing our point of view and supporting its adoption. It’s one thing to speak yourself on the impact of the problem you’re solving or your differentiated fix, but it’s another for the people in your market to hear it from their peers.
There are a lot of different ways you can bring your interested but not yet evaluating prospects onto your side of the conversation to expand your reach and authority.
It can be as simple as invite-only events like new product launches, or discussions centered around your category with attendees across disciplines. Let those prospects take some responsibility in shaping what that conversation looks like. Give them invites they can share or let them give suggestions on who should be involved. We’re enlisting them as a part of our army and they will tell you how to win the battle for the minds of the customers you want.
This will build your relationships with these prospects and frame the conversation you have with them when they’re ready to evaluate.
Purchase and Post Purchase
Deliver good products and services.
Word of mouth can give exponential returns in either a positive or negative direction. Emphasis on great customer experience is how you manage the conversations about you when you aren't in the room.
Take on however many customers you can enable to speak positively of you and no more. Aim to build an ark that can hold its patrons and be wary of overselling what you have the capacity to serve well. If done correctly, your funnel becomes a loop. One working motion that fills and scales itself—predictably.
If any of this resonated with you and you’d like to have a discussion about how to set yourself up to win with your category in the Future of Work, please find some time to chat with me here.
If you want to keep up to date with some of my thinking, consider subscribing.
Much love,
Neil
#FutureofWork #GTM #DemandGen