Why it's so important to understand your buyer journey

Craig (00:41) So, topic for today is to talk through best ways of combining your digital engagement with human-led interactions throughout the sales process. Very much focused on our core area of interest, which is complex B2B sales. At face value, most complex sales are led by a human being, by a salesperson, or even a team of salespeople, depending on how big the opportunity is. But increasingly over the years, your engagement from a digital perspective has become more and more important, up to the latter stages of the sales process. And even now, as part of those latter stages of the sales process, digital can contribute, particularly when there's a combination of human and digital in terms of that interaction, which we'll touch on in more depth.

I think we're going to talk through the problem when companies don't get this right. We're then going to talk about how you can make this work throughout the buyer journey and the steps that you can take to do that. And then before we close and summarize, we're going to talk about the different stages of the buyer journey and give some examples of how digital-human interactions can combine for great effect.

James (02:01) So we'll use some case studies, we'll use some examples of things that we've worked on, things that we've seen work elsewhere.

Craig (02:08) So if we start with the problem of digital only interaction throughout the B2B buyer journey, what is it?

James (02:18) I think the problem stems from a lack of consistency. And if you think about the different stages of the buyer journey, when you talk to people in either sales or marketing, but particularly marketing or even leadership, there's a real concern that it's just too complex to really think about. It's hard to think about all the different stages of the buyer journey, all the different stakeholders that are involved, all their different requirements. And then often marketeers will start to think about the volume of content and the variation of content that's needed throughout those different stages and to support the needs of those different stakeholders in a buying group. But the, I guess the reality is you're already doing a lot of it. It's just done in a very unstructured way.

So you've already got a sales process, you're already creating content, but quite often it's not done in a way that's more strategically aligned to that buying journey. And I think when you are doing these things in isolation and not joined up and you're not thinking about how digital combines with human interactions, that's where the inconsistencies come from. And from a buyer's perspective, if you see any inconsistency, that creates doubt.

If you're a buyer and you build a picture of a particular company online in terms of what it might do, how it might help you, the value it delivers. Then when you have an interaction with a salesperson and that perception is very different, you're kind of thinking, well, who am I dealing with here? This company's got a bit of an identity crisis. You see it all the time, you hear it all the time. Or it's smoke and mirrors. You know, at the end of the day, the marketing team has been creative with how they position the brand and that's not reflected in how a salesperson does. You would assume that what the marketing team are promoting is falsified or fake or overly ambitious, selling the dream sort of thing. And the salesperson is the reality, isn't it?

Craig (04:39) But we hear it all the time because we work on websites and we hear all the time that the main driver to update your website is "it's really falling behind in terms of reflecting what we actually do, no longer does that." Some companies will happily tick along in that kind of state, but that's a real risk because it's not just a risk, it's a missed opportunity. What you're doing is having a website live that is creating doubt in the minds of your buyers.

It doesn't take much to understand the psychology behind that either, does it? If you have a salesperson at the end of the phone trying to sell you service B and on the website that isn't featured, you would naturally assume that either the capability in that area is lesser than the core services represented on the website, or that it's been made up, or that the business doesn't really offer that service. Not as a core capability anyway.

And it's all these inconsistencies that manifest themselves in the buying process and I think it can be scary to think, okay, we need to sit down and really understand our buyer journey and the different touch points they go through, the different information needs at each stage. But if you don't do that, there are obviously going to be lots of gaps and you'll only really see those gaps when you really lay out the journey in full. And you'll only see the opportunities to really engage your buyers at the right points when you really map it out in detail.

James (05:55) But that can be overwhelming though, can't it? And I think that's probably what stops people from doing it. Obviously, if you've got a multi-stage, non-linear buyer journey with a complex sale, high value, high risk, multiple stakeholders, and you have to try and account for all of those different information needs throughout every stage of that journey, those gaps are going to be quite considerable.

It's maybe not as scary as you think, but I think in the absence of having an understanding of the buyer journey, you inevitably are going to have these gaps and there's a real danger that you're going to be turning people off before they've even got to a conversation.

Craig (06:28) But it's not just about the gaps is it? I think you can move forward knowing there's some gaps there as long as what you are producing is coherently produced or is produced with a structure and a connection to the next stage in the process in mind. So if you know you have, and I think the average is six to ten different stakeholders or decision makers within a B2B complex buying journey, most people aren't going to be able to cover all of those spaces. But if you can prioritize two of those stakeholders and identify them by mapping your buying journey, and therefore create content and design processes and design experiences that work within that buyer journey rather than disregarding it altogether. And that's a damn sight better than not mapping the buyer journey at all.

Also I think that if you think about those different buyers, they might come at things from different perspectives and with different levels of knowledge, but they'll still have some common areas that they'll be looking to understand.

James (07:34) So I think we're going to come back to how you can actually formulate your buyer journey and the steps you can go through shortly. But before we do, I think it's important just to frame this problem in a little bit more detail and get back to how we believe that if you've got a very digital-only set of interactions, or primarily digital only at the early stage of the buying process and again at latter stages you've got purely human only set of interactions, then again there's a missed opportunity there and I think there was some Gartner research that was done recently that showed when buyers are going through a digital only buying process, there's a much higher chance of regret at the end of that, buyers regret at the end of that process.

That is significantly reduced if they go through a process and it's a combination of digital and a sales rep involved in that process. In terms of digital obviously providing information in a way that's easy to consume, but every buyer is overwhelmed with information, so when you have an expert that can guide you through that, it brings everything to life and it's a lot more easy to understand. A very simple example of how the two come together would be a product demo online. There's other examples that we're going to give today, but let's start with simple examples. There's two options that some software companies might embark on when they're trying to show their software. They might use canned demos or they can be virtual trials. And it's incumbent then on the buyer to actually try and figure out how that works. It's much stronger when you've got a human being who's an expert using that technology to guide you through it.

The interesting thing in that Gartner research though is that 75% of buyers said they prefer a humanless sales process. So clearly there's a demand there for buyers to self-serve, but that's not translating into satisfaction with the service.

Craig (09:50) You can see why. And I think what we should also point out is that in literally all of the buying journeys that we're talking about here, where they're complex, multi-stakeholder, high value, it's impossible to have a technology-led approach to sales.

So the Gartner research does contradict itself and it's open about that. On the one hand, it's showing that buyers do prefer to go through a self-service process, a digital only process as much as possible. But on the flip side, it also says that when they do that, there's a higher degree of buyer regret.

James (10:26) I'm not sure that really means it contradicts itself. I just think it means that where people are doing it themselves, they're less likely to make the right decision.

Well, I think you've got to put it into context. I imagine that what they're referring to is lower value transactional sales, so probably more SaaS products that you can find the pricing online and it's a few hundred pounds a month, often really quick to go through that process. And so if you can skate through it, then of course more people are going to regret that. You could sign up to an app in two minutes and be a bit impulsive about it. I think when you're in a longer complex buyer journey, multiple stages, etc., you've got more time to consider that purchase, more time to reflect, more time to back out if you don't think it's right. And of course that means that you're going to regret it less.

Craig (11:36) But the key point is that when it's a combination of digital and a human being actually helping you through the sales process, providing expertise, providing guidance, that regret reduces and you're going to end up with a solution that is closer to what you want. And I think that becomes even more paramount and even more important the more complex the sales process is, the higher value the actual procurement process is or the actual thing you're buying is, the higher risk that comes into play in terms of the decision making. And just as those things increase obviously the need to have both increases at the same rate. So I think that's really what the research is saying and that's how I interpret it.

So from a complex sales perspective, it really says that it's not about digital only, it's not about human only. It really, really comes together when you can combine the two. And combine the two in the right way, I think that's the important thing. Because all of the complex sales journeys that we're part of, or buyer journeys that we're part of, have some level of human and some level of digital interaction. Very rarely do we see one or the other. Certainly we don't see any completely digital complex buyer journeys, because I think that's impossible for something that's such a considered purchase.

But we do see different levels of interaction from digital and from the human side. And I think it's more about getting that right balance, but also timing. Because I think we see quite a lot that sometimes there will be maybe, let's just say in this case, a digital asset like a buyer's guide or a business case guide or some form of content or webinar, whatever it may be, which is intended to facilitate the early stages of the sales process or the buyer journey. It's awareness, consideration, decision, purchase. I know it's a bit more complex than that, but the bridged version. And a person engages with that and a salesperson straight away gets on the phone and is trying to sell to someone that's only showing some tentative, speculative interest in what they've got to say. And that's an example of poor timing in terms of that transition between digital and human.

And where tech really helps, I think, in this process is not just the facilitation of providing that information in the earlier stages and guides, content, etc., but also the data that enables you to transition at the right time. So if we look at things like buyer intent data or lead scoring even, and marketing sales handoff workflows, those can all be configured quite cleverly so that the handoff process only happens at a point at which you can be more confident that that person is ready to engage with the salesperson. Because we know that most people want to take it as far as they can before they have to engage with a salesperson. And if you're going before that, before they're ready for it, before they want it, you can do more harm than good.

James (14:41) Yeah, because ultimately people want to self-serve because as soon as they make that move towards the salesperson and the salesperson engages, they've put themselves in a situation where they probably feel they're going to get hounded and they're not going to be left alone then. It's fucking annoying isn't it? We've all had that, you know, when you've maybe downloaded something speculatively, and then you do get emails time and time again for the next three weeks, people phoning you up. Of course you don't want it. And if you're not ready for that. If you're not, if you're at the early stage of the buying process, you're not ready for that. But when you are further, further down the buying process, you want the support of an expert. Then you can even go the other way where you don't feel you're getting enough time and attention and therefore you're going to spend, or you're going to probably end up going with the organization that is giving you the most value, the most time, from an expert perspective.

Craig (15:38) I don't think it's just about the effectiveness of the process, i.e. the ability to get people converting and ultimately buying from you. If you think about the impact that has on sales and marketing teams for example, and we should probably look at both effectiveness and efficiency.

If we look at efficiency within the process, that's what's driving a lot of the push towards automation and heavily digitizing processes, digital transformation in buzzwordy terms, that previously humans did. And there's good reason for it because of course, with heavily manual marketing and sales processes for that matter, sales and marketing teams are going to struggle to scale, things are going to go slowly, things are going to fall through the cracks. So there's a big use case there which improves efficiency from a digital perspective. But on the other hand, in the scenario that I've just talked through in terms of the salesperson reaching out too early and then reaching out again and reaching out again and continually trying to chase a lead which was never there and never ready to engage, that's also really inefficient from the salesperson's time and ineffective for that matter. So finding that balance isn't just about increasing the chances of conversion. It's about spending your team's time wisely on the right deals at the right time.

James (17:14) Yeah, this is a frustration I have that you constantly see on LinkedIn, wherever, that you've got these new approaches to marketing, these new approaches to lead generation. Really, if people actually just fixed what they're doing already and had a more structured strategy and more structured processes, they would be far more effective and they would be more efficient. It's not about completely reinventing the wheel and starting doing something new that no one's ever thought of before. There absolutely are no silver bullets. And it goes back to the earlier point. If you do really understand your buyer journey and you can start to think about how you optimize each stage through digital and human and the combination of both, that's when you will start to iron out all the gaps, make the most of the opportunities that are there, and that's when you'll start to see you are more effective and equally more efficient.

I think there was some research from Simon-Kucher that suggested that B2B sales teams in complex sales, they only actually spend around 30 to 35% of their time on actually selling. There's a gross inefficiency there. The rest of their time is on admin. The rest of their time is maybe updating CRM. The rest of the time is spent on coordinating with delivery or just processing orders. A lot of that can be digitized. A lot of that can be automated. CRM entry can be digitized and automated. So there's lots of opportunities to get the sales guys selling more and increasing the time they've got available to do that.

But like I said earlier, I think that ensuring that the right people are being targeted at the right time is also important because you know, if you've freed up 30% more of the salesperson's time for them to go and bang on closed doors, it's not going to be effective, is it? So it's about using tech to enable that increased efficiency and free up time for sales and marketing teams to do more valuable activity, but also using the data that that tech provides to point them in the right direction.

Craig (19:08) So we jumped around a bit in terms of framing the problem. I think let me give those that are listening to this or watching this just a bit of a framework to start thinking about this in a more structured way. And again, the starting point is to really understand your buyer journey. So that will be step one.

So what are the typical stages in a buyer journey? And probably the starting point, if it's not that clear, is to use the classic Gartner stages. I think there's probably six or seven, starting with status quo where your buyers are inactive, not even buyers at that stage, they're just merely prospects, right their way through from problem identification to solution evaluation and actually supplier evaluation and decision, etc. So we may come back to that, but I think understanding that is the first stage. There's various ways you can do that, starting with the basic framework from Gartner. It could be talking to customers, obviously talking to the sales team, making sure marketing and sales are aligned, they fully understand it. There's customer journey analytics that you can work with, Sankey charts and waterfall charts that you can use through your interactions on your website and other touch points online. So there are ways that you can do it. You can even use tools like Hotjar to look at heat maps and how people are interacting with your site. There are the tools there that can enable you to do that and it doesn't need to be overly complex. Just starting with the Gartner framework is a great start.

Let's be honest, most B2B complex sales are going to be very close to that, if not exactly as Gartner described. I think the important thing is, as Gartner used the phrase, it's not a linear process, it's more like a spaghetti bowl. And it is complex and people are moving in all directions. You can only manage so many elements of that. So that's the first step.

I think the second step is to really think about the touch points that are at each stage of the buyer journey. So whether that's both digital and human touch points you've got. At the very early stages, it might be LinkedIn for example, as a touch point, your website as a touch point. From a human perspective, the discovery call is often the first touch point, or it could be a BDR outreach or whatever it is. I think once you've understood those different touch points from a buyer's perspective, that's when you can start to see where there may be some gaps.

The third stage would be to really then think about the different stakeholders involved and what their information needs are at each stage. So when it's very early on, it's that whole value framing piece where value framing, again, in Gartner's terms, is really where the buyer is trying to understand how the solution can help them solve a particular problem and what value it brings. Later in the process, it's much more about what they call value affirmation, which is how they then assess whether you're the right fit, whether they can trust you to deliver on what you say you can deliver.

So again, if you've got inconsistencies throughout that process, that buying process, then that's where doubt's going to creep in. And that's where you start to lose the opportunity or may not even get in the first place. Because if people are evaluating your website really early on, before they even draw up a shortlist, then you're not going to make that shortlist if what you're saying is inconsistent. Or worse, with companies where the proposition's really strong, it just hasn't been presented on the website in the right way. So you could absolutely deliver for a client that's looking for the problem that you can fix, and probably better at it than anyone else, but they rule you out because of what they've seen on your website, thinking it's not a fit.

So after you've got an understanding of the journey, you've looked at the touch points, you've looked at the content, it's then around thinking about how you can combine digital and humans in the process. So, a great example for me is ThoughtWorks and the tech radar that they've been producing now for probably about 10 years. That covers off various stages of the buying process, more the top end of the funnel. So they really focus to begin with on the status quo where you've got inactive buyers, their main interest is making sure they're on top of industry trends and maybe trying to find ways to solve problems that they think they can do themselves rather than having an external vendor or supplier support them. So it produces the tech radar, which shows the next wave of technology that's coming through, really, really insightful. As you progress through that, there's interactive tools you can use, there's webinars you can attend, there's events you can go to, and then they do sessions with individual experts that can talk you through those different technologies and how they may be able to help you and how they should be on your roadmap. So it's a really great example of using one kind of idea to engage in many different ways, combining humans and digital in the process.

And then the final stage for me is that you should assess all of that, and then in terms of how you start to action it and build it, you start at the end. I think there's too many, certainly, marketers that focus on the top of the funnel. And then what they end up doing is driving organizations or buyers to maybe your website or other areas of the funnel at the latter stages that aren't really built to convert.

James (24:58) Well, you end up with this big void, don't you? A good example of that actually is not having a BDR team in place. And if we look at the digital versus the human interaction, one issue that we see time and time again is that we might see really effective marketing people that garner a lot of attention through top of the funnel content, webinars, guides, events, whatever. And we might see really effective sales teams which are great at closing deals. But both from a content and from a people perspective or from an information perspective, there's sometimes that massive void. So if you start at the end and work backwards, you cover all of those bases, including the middle, which is often the missing bit for me.

The buyer enablement content is often neglected or underdeveloped within a marketing process. Buyer enablement content is often neglected or underdeveloped by marketers who focus on top of the funnel stuff. Salespeople at the other end, the human end of the spectrum or the process want to focus on qualified opportunities rather than prospecting. And so there's two things there which are often missing in the middle bit of the buyer journey, which is buyer enablement content and from a human perspective, BDR support.

Craig (26:19) And then the fifth stage for me is to really start to build all this out, but start at the end of the process, not at the beginning. I think it's a mistake to start thinking about attracting visitors' traffic to a website that doesn't bear any resemblance to what you actually offer. And I know the website interaction is still further up the chain, but ultimately you've got to make sure that what you're actually selling is in an optimal state before you start trying to attract people to it.

Also if you start at the end, it means that you can't neglect those middle stages because you're right in saying that if you focus too heavily on attracting traffic you bring a lot of traffic but not all the right people. But equally it's important to give those people somewhere to go next. So without buyer enablement content, calculators, digital experiences, quoting tools, etc., you give them limited opportunity to move forward in that process themselves, which we know from the research that Gartner people want to do. And if they can do that elsewhere, then they're going to. At the end of the day, there's a good example from the SaaS world, which is not necessarily relevant to this, but it highlights the point in that if a SaaS provider doesn't provide a price, most people just leave the site and go to another one that does. And it's the same concept, you know, ultimately they want to go as far as they can in their understanding of that business, their consideration of it, their analysis of it against their own needs. And if you're starting at the end of that buyer journey and working back, you're going to make sure that you're covering that middle bottom of the funnel content that is so often neglected by marketing teams that want to focus on content which is going to bring more numbers through the door because ultimately that's what they're measured on - more traffic, more webinar attendances, whatever it may be.

If you start at the end, the end is where most of the investment has gone. That's where you've got the sales functions will be, whether it's bid materials or responses to RFPs or major proposals and all the stuff that's going to ultimately close the deal. Most of that's going to be there already. And then working back, maybe considering where it can be enhanced by digital means.

I remember working with a client that had a major opportunity, and it was about 10, 15 million, and it was a bit more of an ABM approach, but it was towards the end of the sales process but they'd gone into that kind of closed period where they're down to the final two making a decision. You can still influence them at that point, even though you can't directly interact with them because they say, "we're not going to talk to you now." But we got most of the buying team on a webinar just because in that particular closed window, which is still using digital means of actually interacting with them and influencing them.

James (29:23) Well, there's other digital means that may be less fancy and less sexy, but still are powerful, I think, in the process. If you think about the digitization of sales tools bottom of the funnel, it's even things like making the signing process really easy, making the quoting process really easy, using digital tools which of course have been around for a long time, but then not everyone uses them and they can still be a differentiator. It's also about making that process as easy as possible through digitalization that means people can sail through it seamlessly without loads of barriers in the way.

Craig (29:57) Yeah. What you find in most organizations is that there's normally a gap in the middle. The bottom of the funnel is pretty well thought through with all the assets in the right place. And then top of the funnel, lots of activity. And it really comes down to how sales and marketing are measured, you know, that's it. And the gap is in the middle and there's always a gap in the middle. And this is where it's so important that marketing and sales align because when they do that, it's all important because if you can really improve conversion in the middle stages of the funnel, it's going to have a huge impact on both content and tech and in people.

I don't want it to come across as if we're saying just because people prefer digital interaction as much as possible in the sales journey, that there isn't a place for humans in that middle stage. I think there absolutely is. And we see really regularly that you might have a high performing marketing team and a high performing sales team, but you're lacking the bridge in the BDR function that connects the two together and brings prospects through from digital interaction at an early stage through to that later stage appointment. And that's so often missing. Because salespeople don't want to prospect. Salespeople are very reluctant often to follow up a list of 100 event leads or something like that. Because 90% of them are not going to be ready to buy. Or 95% if you follow the 95-5 rule and 5% are ready.

That BDR function I think is a really important missing piece for most people as well as buyer enablement content and the kind of digital tech at that stage of the process that makes the whole thing seamless.

James (31:39) Yeah, well again those interventions aren't necessarily restricted to one point in the buyer journey, you know, the BDR ideally would come in at a stage where buyers just become a buyer or they're just embarking on a particular project. But you've had the luxury of influencing them in the sort of non-active status quo stage through thought leadership and making sure they're aware of your brand. That would be the perfect kind of entry point and then that would mainly lead to a discovery call. And then you start to really shape the buyer's thinking through that sales process.

But then it is about, okay, so what digital tools can the salespeople use as they go through problem identification into solution exploration? How can the two combine to really make that stage of the process more effective and increase conversions? So I think there's lots of ways of doing that with diagnostic tools, assessments, but then again, if they're just left to the buyer to do this in isolation on their own without any guidance, that's when they may be less effective. So it's really thinking about how your sales team can interact with that by providing some value, whether it's a business case builder or whether they talk that through through some kind of Zoom call or whatever it may be. You're interacting both digitally and with the human, just to enhance that experience. And the sales experience is ultimately what differentiates you in those complex sales.

Craig (33:00) Let's wrap up. We've talked through a lot. It's quite a complicated subject. We can certainly appear that way at face value. And that's part of the problem, I think, for a lot of people. It can be a bit scary, but I think, you know, what we're really trying to advocate is that you should really start with your buyer, really start understanding the steps they go through in their buying process, and then really think about the value that you can provide at each stage, rather than what many do, which is think about, you know, how can we get engagement with them? How can we sell to them?

That is obviously a really critical component, but if you don't start with the buyer and you don't understand the value that you need to provide them, you don't understand what they're looking for in terms of information, what they need to make assessments to do the value framing piece, to do the value affirmation. If you don't understand any of that, you're going to be ineffective. And likely inefficient.

So it's really about starting there. And then you can start to think about how you use those interactions to leverage your conversion and optimize your efficiency. It's about mapping your activity to buyer stages and the information needs throughout it. It may be that you're already doing a lot of those things and you can map your activity to them at the right time, but it may be that there are some gaps that you then need to fill.

So I think there's two things there. It's understanding your buying journey, mapping your activity to that buyer journey and the information needs surrounding it. I think one of the important summary points for me is ensuring that your technology enables that transition between human and digital at the right time. And there's loads of ways you can do that. So that's an important thing, I think, to get right.

James (34:51) I gave one earlier around the fact that when you understand the buyer journey properly, you understand that in the early stages of the buyer journey, a salesperson's outreach is likely to be ineffective. It's different for every business, but determining when someone is at a different stage of the buyer journey, which would mean that the outreach is more effective, is a really important step to take. Lead scoring, etc., like I said earlier, is a really good way of doing that. Buyer intent data is probably better.

If you can start to spot trends in when your salespeople are more effective with their outreach based upon the level of engagement and only trigger that engagement at that point, then you can be much more effective without wasting your salesperson's time.

Craig (35:36) I think you touched on an important point that I might like - buyer intent, lead scoring, but not in the context of the buyer journey. It's just leveraged. Let's score leads. But that's the starting point. That should never be the starting point. The strategy, the buyer journey should come first and then it's about how you utilize that data point to understand where they're at in the buyer journey. And if you can't say, and it's not an exact science, but if you can't say when someone reaches this stage, we at least predict that they are at the consideration stage or the solution evaluation stage, then you're merely responding to them based upon a quantity of engagement, not necessarily what that tells you about where they are and what the most effective step is to take as a result.

It may not be that a really kind of straight to the jugular salesperson outreach is effective at that stage still. It may be that you enroll them in a nurture sequence at that point, a more intensive nurture sequence to get them even further along.

The point that we're trying to make is that without understanding that buyer journey, you cannot configure and optimize your activity to make that buyer journey work seamlessly for the buyer and make it more effective for your sales and marketing teams. Every particular channel, piece of content, if you were to evaluate it and really assess whether it has any impact on the buyer journey or if it's been configured to support that or been created to support that. Website is another classic example. Most websites in B2B follow the same structure - homepage, services page. Very few actually have a mechanism to guide people down a particular conversion path in line with the buyer journey. That's not even considered.

So it's just another example of where by starting with the buyer journey, you can be far, far more effective.