What’s in a Customer Buying Journey?
The Customer Buying Journey is the sequence of activities that anyone undergoes when acquiring and utilizing something they purchase. Sometimes this journey takes minutes, months, or even years, and can often slow, stop, and loop back on itself. A journey not only considers the surrounding influences of this process, such as the key players and the agendas they bring, but the entire lifecycle, including the adoption and use of the purchase.
Organizations with a deep, meaningful understanding of their buying journey are able to accelerate revenue, boost sales productivity, and enhance marketing effectiveness by:
- Engaging with buyers earlier before their competition.
- Addressing what is stopping their customers from buying, before they become objections or lost sales.
- Spending more time with the best opportunities.
- Anticipating when stakeholders are most likely to involve themselves and managing the dynamic decision network.
- Applying a deeper level of insight into what is driving or stopping market adoption of their products and services.
The Customer Buying Journey DNA
While buyers often have a hard time describing exactly what their journey entailed, we can say with certainty that buyers within a specific market, when buying a particular offering, will buy in remarkably similar ways. These similarities can then be decoded and mapped resulting in what we call the Buying Journey DNA. These six defining elements shared amongst a market can then be used to predictably and proactively manage that market’s buying journey. The DNA strands are as follows.
Triggers
The event or activity that would give rise to a buying journey, as opposed to simply gaining the interest of someone in a particular offering.
Steps, Activities, and Touchpoints
The discrete steps that comprise an overall Buying Journey. It should be noted that these steps may be completed in very different elapse times by different customers, and some of these steps may be started and then stopped. Also, a buyer may jump backwards and forwards through the process, but ultimately it will be found that the Buying Journey will comprise the sequential steps of an optimal buying process.
Each of the steps of the end-to-end Customer Buying Journey comprises a number of Activities in which they would engage. Some of these Activities are concerned with them requiring, requesting, or needing information from, or consultation with, a prospective supplier. Such Activities are then referred to as Touch Points.
Key Players
The days of a decision being made by a single decision-maker are now in the past. Buying decisions are now made by a dynamic network of decision influencers. The Key Players are all those roles and positions that are likely to play a part and influence the overall Buying Journey.
Buying Style
When individuals approach a buying decision, they do so with a series of pre-conceived notions of what they want, who they may buy from, and how they will approach their buying decision. Market-Partners Inc. has developed a proprietary model for mapping these dynamics to effectively align sales and marketing to the buying style known as the 4Q, or Four Quadrant Buying Style.
Value Drivers
The value drivers are the tangible – or intangible – benefits, experiences, or rewards that the individuals engaged in the Buying Journey perceive that they, or their organization, will gain because of the potential acquisition.
Buying Concerns
As the various players navigate the Buying Journey, they may develop a number of concerns, anxieties, questions, and fears. These can be very real, or they may be of an emotional nature. These Buying Concerns all serve to slow down, or even stop, the Buying Journey. They are not always expressed and shared with others and they could be the concerns of only a few, or even a single individual. It is these Buying Concerns, however, that cause the friction that occurs in the overall Buying Journey. Market-Partners Inc. research has discerned nine specific categories of concerns.
The Foundation of Outside-In™
Gone are the days when sales people could just turn up with their highly polished presentations and ROI logic or when marketing could simply blast out its messages to the world. Organizations must embrace the practical management of their market’s buying journey through an Outside-In™ approach. All customer-facing roles must be aligned and coordinating to engage in, stay engaged in, and positively impact the buying journey lifecycle. However, this can only be done once an organization has decoded their target market’s Buying Journey DNA and developed their Market Engagement Strategy.