Anthony Rocha

A famous parable tells us about six men in a dark room, each of whom has never seen an elephant before, touching one in the shadows. The first man feels its tusks and believes the animal is like a spear. The second, its trunk, believing it is like a snake. The third, its leg, believing it is like a tree. Once every man has felt the elephant, each of them leave with their own partially true, yet uniquely wrong belief about what the creature “was.”

Like the men in the story, we are all guilty of using limited information to make bold claims about the world around us – but nowhere in business does this have larger consequences than with customers and their buying journeys. As sales and marketing departments begin to feel out different parts of their customers’ buying process, they often feel more confident guessing about other aspects of buyer behavior.

However, similar to the elephant, there are almost always differences between the “buying journey” we can see, and the buying journey we can’t. Even the smallest assumption can lead to a disconnect between sales strategies and a market’s buying process. Wasted resources, lost deals, and missed forecasts have left many wondering what is happening in the hidden parts of the buying journey. Luckily, taking an Outside-In™ approach can help us turn the lights on and see the bigger picture.

The Elephant in the Room

If we want to know what we don’t know, a good place to start would be understanding how much of the “elephant” we are even touching. Our research shows that customers tend to contact sellers when they are 50% or more of the way through their buying journey. Additionally, sellers are typically involved in less than 10% of their customers’ buying activities across the end-to-end customer journey lifecycle.

These two statistics explain why so many organizations have such a skewed perception of how their customers buy and why they don’t; when taken together, it becomes apparent most businesses can only see a fraction of a fraction of the buying journey.

But how much does this matter? “Hidden” or not, an extraordinarily perceptive and experienced businessperson might be able to fill in the rest of an elephant based off only few details. Yet such minds are exceedingly rare. Studies show it is far more difficult than most imagine to “put themselves in their customers’ shoes” and make the necessary inferences. This is for three key reasons:

1. If we were our customers, our Buying Journey DNA would not be an accurate reflection of our actual offering’s market.

2. We are far more biased towards our own offering, and towards purchasing a solution in general, than the average buyer.

3. Even if we could separate ourselves from our experiences with our offerings, we would still be influenced by our own expectations about customer behavior. This includes oversimplifications surrounding the demands and priorities a prospect has to balance.

In short, attempting to understand the buying journey from an opaque, internal perspective will almost always result in inconsistencies between selling and buying. It’s only a matter of how big.

A sales team might deliver some genuinely great presentations, based on many value propositions they believe a rational prospect like themselves would care about. Then, after knocking it out of the park with their offering’s astounding ROI, be left stunned that the would-be-buyer has decided to do… nothing. Not purchase from you. Not purchase from a competitor. Do absolutely nothing.

Situations like these happen all the time: a salesperson has found their champion who seems very excited about an offering, and everything is going smoothly until a few internal meetings turn it all to dust. And while it may be tempting to re-explain the amazing features and cost saving benefits, there’s likely more happening with the “elephant,” or within the hidden buying journey, than a simple misunderstanding of value.

Turning on the Lights

At the aforementioned firm, there is friction the salesperson can’t completely make out. For example, adopting the offering may require digitizing part of a process that has been industry standard for decades to do by hand. Perhaps there is some ongoing politicking surrounding this issue, as a respected higher up believes going digital could create a security risk for clients. There also may be hesitance to acquire something so “innovative” for fear of low adoption at a company that likes doing things “the old fashion way.”

This is only a sliver of the real-world problems we’ve found when analyzing buying journeys.

The aforementioned champion may not know how to navigate the hurdles placed in front of them – how to calculate the time to convert the existing library of documents, how to do the necessary risk assessment to appease the higher up, how to create engaging end user training to make sure employees use the offering optimally. Before anyone knows it, the deal has run out of gas. To get everyone aligned, smooth over every objection, consider every alternative, implication, detail that may change… sometimes things turn out to be fine the way they are.

This is why taking an Outside-In™ approach and mapping the buying journey is so important. In the minds of too many salespeople, when the proposal is in, the deal is done – if they were the customer, there is no way things could go wrong! But in the prospect’s eyes, the real buying effort has just begun. That said, once the buying journey has been mapped, it becomes apparent that customers within a specific market buy in remarkably similar ways. When you truly understand the customer, you not only know every obstacle they will face along the way but can better help your prospects buy and adopt your offering.

Certainly easier than trying to feel your way around in the dark – wouldn’t you agree?

If I were to contend that during the COVID-19 pandemic, your customers started buying differently, you would probably laugh and say, “Tell me something I don’t know.” But it’s true. While there have been ongoing changes in the buying process for decades now, the pandemic has certainly accelerated some and disrupted others. Since the beginning of 2020, we have been consulted more times for longer sales cycles, decreasing forecast accuracy, and difficulties in forming customer relationships than ever before – all of which are byproducts of not adapting fast enough.

But where we’d start disagreeing is if I asked how we need to start selling differently. Suddenly, a million voices cry out at once with a different suggestion citing conflicting evidence and a contrasting priority. Yes, it seems everyone can recognize that customers are buying differently in the virtual world, but what’s fallen by the wayside is, “How do we know and what do we do about it?”

Why Their Voices Matter

At some level, we are all aware of these changes anecdotally. Just like many of us are guilty of checking a text or an email during a video conference, almost all of us have caught a prospect doing the same thing. However, while this might be indicative of a broader trend, can you say for sure? could you tell me why this is happening? and more importantly, could you tell me what do about it?

The answer is simple: you can’t, but your customers could.

Listening closely to your customers always paints a better, more accurate picture of their reasoning, experiences and needs than behind-the-desk guesswork. Yet given the sheer amount of training courses and publications being released about these pandemic-driven changes, it is alarming how little focus there has been on actually talking to buyers – learning what they are challenged by and hearing what they now expect from salespeople. Worst of all, those that do bring research to the table are often using the limited scope of surveys or focus groups as a replacement for in-depth, one-on-one interviews.

Take for example the difference between, “From the survey, your customers slightly to strongly agree your presentations are too long. We suggest cutting the deck in half.” versus, “During our interviews, your buyers complimented the quality and depth of your content but said your presentation style hasn’t translated well to the virtual space. In their words, here’s how you can make your deck feel shorter by making it more engaging.”

Letting your customers speak candidly and as individuals can drastically change your understanding of their wants and the best course of action.

The Outside-In™ Recommendation

For the past 20 years, our Outside-In™ approaches and programs have always started by speaking with customers to decode how they buy. Our unwavering belief is that when you listen to your buyers, there are always surprises and valuable insights to be gained. That’s why we have sat down with well over a hundred customers across various industries about how the pandemic impacted their buying process and shared some of those findings earlier this year.

As always, we are here to recommend taking the initiative and speaking to your own customers about how they buy and why they don’t. Making assumptions about their buying process might be easier, but it won’t help you sell better. Those improvements can only be discovered when we are open minded, actively listening, and asking thoughtful follow ups. That way when someone asks us, “How do you know?” or “What can we do?” we can begin where we always should, with, “Our customers told us…”

Last month, our book, How Customer’s Buy…& Why They Don’t, made UXPressia’s user suggested must-read list for 2021. For the unfamiliar, UXPressia is a software company specializing in Customer Experience and Buying Journey mapping tools, and coincidentally, we began using their program for ideation and collaboration during our own shift to virtual. After some email introductions, we were fortunate enough to “sit down” and get some of their thoughts on the importance of the Customer Buying Journey. Here’s what their team had to say.

MARKET-PARTNERS INC.: The UXPressia Team has been providing Buying Journey Mapping software and resources since 2015. What originally drew you to the concept of mapping and managing the Buying Journey? 

UXPRESSIA: It was a desire to build a better world where all services are human-centric. Bad products and services (and poor customer experiences, of course) had always been our pain, something that triggered us to take action. One day we thought that we could help others build better products and services by providing them with appropriate tools.

Since we were UX and CX professionals by ourselves, we knew such tools well. And among other tools, there was one that stood out for us: Customer Journey Mapping. We intuitively knew (and soon realized that it was true) that Customer Journey Mapping is just a generic term for journey maps that share the same features but might be a little bit different in applications: Buying Journeys, user journeys, employee journeys, etc. 

MARKET-PARTNERS INC.: From your perspective, why do you believe that it is important for businesses to map their Buying Journeys? What results have you seen when clients change their approach?

UXPRESSIA: It may sound like a cliche, but we all have seen businesses that don’t map their Buying Journeys. Remember the times when you felt that business didn’t care about you as a customer, didn’t take into account your needs and communication channels you prefer, didn’t speak your language (literally and metaphorically). You would never have any deals with such services unless you are in a situation when you are forced to.

On the contrary, when your journey (as a buyer) is smooth and triggers positive emotions, you are more likely to stick with the service, become a loyal customer and brand advocate in the future. We’ve got a case study about that: Michelin Case Study.

One more reason for leveraging Customer Journey Mapping:  setting up a powerful marketing funnel is great, but it doesn’t answer the question “Why?”. CJM combined with the funnel helps you understand that, find flaws and fix them. Buying Journeys focuses on people who are using them, people that buy from them, on their needs, contexts, pains, etc. And all that helps to build better journeys, delivering a better buying experience, attracting the right buyers, bringing more value to both your clients and your business.

We were also able to speak with Yuri Vedenin, founder of UXPressia, who shared a story about buying flowers for his mom’s birthday in an online store: “Everything was perfect – the images, price, and delivery time. I used this service before. But it turned out that I completely forgot what I did last time. So I took all the necessary steps on the site, I put the item in the basket, I was on the last step of my Buying Journey and… I bought flowers from another service. Just because the first site didn’t accept my card. And my second card. And didn’t tell me the reason. Nor did it have any online chat to speak to anyone from support.”

MARKET-PARTNERS INC.: What are some mistakes or misconceptions about Buying Journeys or Buying Journey mapping that you would like to clear up?  

UXPRESSIA: There’re a lot of misconceptions about the differences and similarities between buyer and customer journeys. We wrote a blog post on a similar topic a couple of years ago. 

Another problem is that many use demographic data to segment the audience, and it’s not always the right way to go (as well as build maps around such personas). We believe that it’s also essential to consider behaviors, goals, and motives that drive people’s decision-making.

One should remember that there is no one-size-fits-all Buying Journey structure. The structure can be different in each specific case. It all depends on the goals (business outcomes) you are trying to achieve. You can use a template to jump-start your initiative but be ready to adapt it to your business context.

MARKET-PARTNERS INC.: A cornerstone of your program is displaying the Buying Journey graphically, releasing new visual templates and updates monthly. What benefits have you found from good presentation, UI, and UX in terms of adopting this more customer-centric philosophy? 

UXPRESSIA: As our customers say, aesthetically pleasing and straightforward design helps people grasp map ideas easily. Besides, a good presentation frequently simplifies getting buy-in from stakeholders. It helps the team “believe” in the journey they are being shown.

Templates are a great starting point for both journey mapping first-timers and experienced ones. They inspire, suggest some basic structure, contain useful domain-specific information (and images in many cases in the storyboard section), and can be customized to a specific business case. 

We believe that UXPressia’s ease of use and learnability do users a good turn: having a tool that is approachable and can be played with helps them to start experimenting with methodology.

MARKET-PARTNERS INC.: As we all know, the shift to virtual work has caused a change in the way customers are buying. With many companies still without a plan to return to office, what do you believe are the secrets to success in the online world? 

UXPRESSIA: There is no silver bullet to succeed in the online world. Success is in doing and trying your best. It’s time to rethink the way you work and your Buying Journey. With switching to online, your Buying Journey certainly changed, and you need to understand how. 

Start with an online journey mapping workshop to co-create a Buying Journey map, generate journey improvement ideas based on it, and then put them into effect. Embrace the challenge to win!

MARKET-PARTNERS INC.: Recently, our book, How Customers Buy… & Why They Don’t, made your user recommended must-read list. If you’ve had a chance to read it, was there a section or idea you found particularly insightful?

UXPRESSIA: This book is very insightful, with lots of useful examples and case studies that help understand the concepts you describe. They all are so detailed and relatable! And so many of them are from your personal experience, which is inspiring. A personal story of how you came to the concept of the Buying Journey is just great. 

There were many ideas that resonated with us on many levels, yet we’d like to highlight the following one, and let us quote: “No one buys anything because of a sales process. Customers only buy because of their own Buying Journey.” Moreover, reading about modes of the Customer Buying Journey made us think about how to visualize such journeys in our tool. The same was with recursive Buying Journeys and buying styles, and especially with a macro Buying Journey.

This book is a must-read for businesses who want to understand their customers (from their, not business perspective) and their Buying Journeys and improve or rethink their approach to creating customers. We believe the book will be super helpful for B2B, but those from the B2C domain will also find lots of valuable information, thought-provoking ideas (we highlighted and bookmarked half of the book!), tools, and frameworks.

Thank you again to the UXPressia team for answering our questions! If you are interested in learning more about UXPressia and their philosophy, you can visit their website at uxpressia.com.