What Is B2B Buyers Journey?
A path followed in purchasing a product or service by the buyers is known as the buyers’ journey. In other words, it is a complete process that a buyer attends initiated from the brand awareness leading to the product and service evaluation and finally reaching the purchase decision stage. Various components are involved in a customer journey considering stuff such as delivery, and customer service. To ensure growth in B2B buyers’ journey it seeks out potentially interested parties to get them onboard for purchasing journey completion.
Difference between B2B buyer journey and B2C buyer journey
- B2B journey involves more authoritative people
The complexity of B2B is much more than B2C because there are numerous people involved in the decision-making process such as IT in charge, business executives, business technology, managers, etc holding effective positions in a business.
- B2B journey is the longer and more complex sales cycle
Because of the nature of the B2B solutions, the B2B buyers’ journey takes a long time and is more complex than the B2C journey. B2B buying costs more than B2C which is why B2B buyers take a long time in decision making as compared to B2C buyers to reach down to the sales funnel. B2B buyers make quick or impulsive decisions rarely.
- B2C marketing can be done in one go
In B2C marketing the prospects can reach the finish line by accessing the one-time transactions. The buying process in B2C can be done in a short period of time and totally an individual buyer is involved in the whole process meanwhile in B2B it may take weeks, months, or even years to close each sale as it involves no. of decision-makers on the same page.
6 Stages of the B2B Sales Process Alignment To The Buyers’ Journey
- Awareness
The very first stage of a buyer’s journey is the customers realizing their problems that can be resolved by some other business product or service.
- Marketing
Now it’s the sole duty of a brand to create awareness of its service, product, or company to make it understandable for the buyers what that particular company does and how it can be the solution to the problem they are facing.
This can be done by publishing content focused on buyers’ pain points and not just a direct sales pitch about the brand. Connecting to the customer problem is important to gain their trust.
- Sales
The sales team must track the activities of those publishing content and how viewers are reacting and then reach them out with more business offerings.
- Investigate Options
Once the buyers recognize their issue they would start looking for alternative solutions that can aid their problems. The very first thing they would do is research generally via broad terms where they would look for the educational material, customer reviews, and testimonials.
While studying they would get to know more about their issue and set parameters that are meeting their needs. During this process, they are more likely to eliminate the vendors that are not suitable for their requirements narrowing the focus onto competing enterprises.
At this stage, they have this clarity of what outcomes they are expecting clarifying the stakeholders that would be involved in using all this information to draft RFP and budget calculation.
- Marketing
Whitepapers, analyst reports. Industry surveys would be crucial at this stage of the journey that can help companies to be in the competition of buyers’ research. For this, marketing automation tools use would help in building lead nurturing campaigns that will gradually deliver content to the prospects.
- Sales
At this point, it is important for the company that Sales representatives get connected with the B2B prospects as stakeholders would decide if they can develop a solution in-house. It is important to get an accurate read on customers’ needs and demonstrate how the offering company can extend the internal solutions.
- Committing to change
Now buyers are aware of their goals and are ready to address them. Now again they would start researching the process but this time only deeper study of each company they have chosen for their solutions and see how they can act to the particular problems. Now buyers would look to get personalized product demos or could reach out to sales representatives of those chosen companies to drill out the features that matter to their teams. More stakeholders could enter the decision-making process and have more diverging opinions that might change the priorities based on which decision criteria and most important now ROI is considered.
- Marketing
Now the companies can update their lead score in the automation tool qualifying them and track their growing interest.
- Sales
Now sales team needs to assist buyers to learn what is important and its benefits. Sales reps should act like trusted advisors.
- Solution selection
Buyers are required to secure buy-in from upper management. At this stage, the main players are content ROI, pricing, and bottom line justifying their expenses in the content.
- Marketing
Marketers now need to be formal and need to speak in the C-suite language. Marketing phases mentioned in the pitch such as” creative new approach”, “cutting edge technology”, “increased revenue”, and “ROI”.
- Sales
Now sales reps would need to act like trusted consultants that can convince internal stakeholders by proving the solution’s value and its criticality and how only this company is the best solution for them.
- Choice validation
At this stage now buyers are ready with a solution category. They need upper management support to select the vendor to make a purchase. This stage expects preparation, implementation, quick start costs, and customer support as well as the budget they need to raise rationally. Every penny of the investment is the main concern of the customer and they need assurances of the fast implementation.
- Marketing
Now pitch needs to be brand-specific. Now no. of case studies customer advocations, testimonials on hand is needed to show the positive experience of the companies services.
- Sales
The sales reps are required to frame an alignment to drive customer momentum by articulating the costs opportunity associated with the status quo.
- Purchase
The final stage is nowhere and it requires all the paperwork, setup, and implementation. Price and terms would be the discussion center. In the negotiation, risks would be used. The comparison of all the implicit and explicit costs of solutions would be the highlighted concern of the procurement, finance, and stakeholders. Buyers dig more into the research, guides, etc.
- Marketing
The helpful content having details of the more advanced features of the product can nurture customers more. This will increase the value of the product making it more credible for the customers to use.
- Sales
Sales reps would experience customer objections and the ultimate goal is to resolve these objections rather than overcome them. Doing so would make more value of the services.
