Understanding the Buyer’s Journey: A Comprehensive Guide

A buyer journey is a sales process from the perspective of the customer. It refers to the buyer’s mindset when identifying their problem, comparing possible solutions, and making a purchasing decision. By understanding the flow through this purchasing process, sellers can engage appropriately and with the important information buyers want and need to make a purchase.

What is the buyer’s journey?

The buyer’s journey is the process of a potential customer going from identifying a need to completing a purchase. Distinct buyer journey stages represent the customer’s mindset and decision-making process.

An effective way to utilize sales software like a CRM system is to map out this process to create personalized and intentional content and triggers. Buyer journey mapping is a marketing and sales strategy that allows businesses to maintain a unified flow of information for sales reps that instructs them on how to engage with buyers depending on where they are in their journey.

What are the 3 stages of the buyer’s journey?

Regardless of your industry, both B2B and B2C selling strategies have three main stages in any buyer’s journey. The three stages of the buyer’s journey are awareness, consideration, and decision. These stages follow the buyer realizing their need, comparing potential options, and then choosing a solution.

It’s important to have a clear understanding of the mindset of a buyer at each stage. This way, you can push content and nurture the lead appropriately to get them closer to the sale.

Stage 1: Awareness

The first stage of the customer buying journey is awareness. Awareness refers to when a buyer realizes they have a problem or a need. This is when a buyer begins to think about how this problem or need affects their life and how a solution could fix it. These phases might include basic research into other people’s experiences with this problem and potential solutions.

To capture a buyer’s attention at this stage, I suggest avoiding coming off as too salesy. This isn’t the time to pitch your product directly. Instead, create resources and share information about the problem your solution solves.

Examples of these resources include:

• Customer use cases: Highlighting real-world use cases on your website or social media can provide an unbiased look at the benefits and demonstrate the solution in action.
• Expert seminars: Hosting webinars with industry experts can position your company as a leader in the field and create opportunities for buyers to improve their skills.
• Knowledge bases: A public-facing knowledge base is a valuable resource that can assist buyers during the research portion of this first stage.

Stage 2: Consideration

The second stage of the buyer journey is consideration. Buyers in this stage are researching and comparing potential solutions more actively. A buyer is directly comparing your solution to your competitors at this point. They’re online looking at reviews, available pricing information, support packages, and more.

At this point, buyers are more committed to remedying their problem. As a seller, I recommend expanding on their interest in your solution by providing newsletters, pricing transparency, and personalized touchpoints.

Stage 3: Decision

The third and final stage of the buyer journey is consideration. This is when a buyer is ready to make a purchasing decision. Buyers have considered price, real customer reviews, benefits, features, onboarding, and more. They know exactly what they want, and are ready to look ahead to implementation.

This is when sellers need to close the deal. I suggest that you provide sales reps with documentation and training so they can practice handling objections and rebuttals. This preparation assures you are engaging the actual decision maker for the purchase and are prepared to answer any last-minute questions confidently.

Buyer vs customer journey

While you might see the terms buyer journey and customer journey together, there is a difference between the two. A buyer journey focuses on the path a customer follows to complete a purchase, with the end goal being the sale. A customer journey can follow that same path but extends beyond the purchase and includes onboarding, support, and even customer retention. A buyer journey is meant to identify and obtain a customer, and a customer journey’s purpose is to retain and support those customers.

Some key differences to help identify a buyer vs customer journey:

• Focus: A buyer journey requires a focus on the customer’s motivations and decision-making, while the customer journey focuses on their experience with the brand itself.
• Journey length: Since the buyer’s journey ends with a purchase, that timeline is much shorter. The customer journey is longer, including the customer’s lifetime journey with your brand.

Buyer’s journey example

To help demonstrate the different stages, I’ve compiled a B2B example of a buyer’s journey in the recruitment industry. The buyer is a potential staffing client who is looking for an employment agency to help fill a role.

Awareness: The client realizes they need to hire a new employee to lead a big initiative for the company. The client will be the hiring manager and has been given an approved budget for the acquisition.

Consideration: The client pitches this open position to various local staffing agencies. The client realizes they want someone immediately, and their timeline is pushed up. So they prioritize efficiency, skillset, and budget when selecting the best candidate.

Decision: The client has interviewed four different agencies and is ready to select one. They will go with the candidate that they deem the best fit for the position while also considering how easy it is to work with the staffing agency that represents the candidate. Did the agency seem to understand the client’s need, was there transparent pricing, does the agency’s typical contract work for their need, and was the solution provided promptly to meet the client’s need?

How to incorporate a buyer’s journey into the sales process

A buyer journey and a sales process are similar operations, approached from different perspectives—a sales process is developed from the seller’s perspective, and the buyer journey is from the customer’s perspective. Because of this, it’s important to incorporate the buyer’s journey into the sales process. Doing so means your business implements intentional selling strategies that reflect what the buyer needs to feel confident in a purchase.

Step 1: Identify your ideal customer profile

Clearly define who your ideal customer profile (ICP) is and what characteristics your buyer persona has. This includes generalized demographics and firmographics. These insights will help identify their potential pain points and understand their buying behavior.

Step 2: Create a map of the buyer’s journey

By establishing a map of the buyer’s journey, the entire team can reference a visual representation of their customer’s decision-making process. The map should have each stage clearly defined along with anticipated time spent in each stage and common objections a salesperson can anticipate facing. The stages can be customized to fit the exact needs of the business. By using an existing CRM cycle, businesses can leverage data analysis and performance monitoring to measure the effectiveness of their journey mapping.

Step 3: Develop a nurturing strategy for each stage

The best CRM software offers a variety of lead nurturing tools for this exact step. Depending on the journey stage a buyer is in, consider creating a landing page, email drip campaigns, setting up demo sales calls with email reminders, or just sharing infographics online. A CRM will also help salespeople build automations that generate and can send these touchpoints automatically.

SEE: Check out our guide on how to choose a CRM provider.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

How do you build a buyer’s journey?

I recommend using your CRM software to build a buyer’s journey. This way, your sales and marketing teams can save, view, and manage it for transparency. Using a CRM tool also allows for built-in automation plus a 360-degree view of the selling process.

• Create unique content for each stage: Consider each stage of the buyer’s journey and what kind of information is most valuable to them at that given point.
• Set up triggers and automations: Use automation to ensure potential customers receive personalized and engaging content and touchpoints sent at exactly the right time.
• Test and edit as needed: With CRM analytics, users can view where buyer engagement has spiked or decreased and immediately and accurately address any faults in the buyer journey.

What is a buyer journey map?

A buyer journey map is a visual representation of the stages a buyer goes through to complete a purchase. Buyer journey mapping can include as many or as few stages as your unique business strategy offers. It can have the three main stages I’ve listed above and also phases you’d find in a customer journey, such as support and retention. The benefit here is they are customizable. A popular CRM feature is the ability to create a buyer journey map within the tool for team members to access and reference.