Whether you’re a hard-hitting sales professional or a strategic account director, closing new business is what helps your organization thrive. Generating new leads is an important part of this process, but also qualifying your existing leads – and mapping the best opportunities – is essential when it comes to closing deals.
This is where customer journey mapping comes in. And no, it’s not just for sales reps. Customer journey mapping can benefit any account professional who wants to tailor their communications and strategy to suit the needs of the customer.
Not only does mapping result in happier customers, but it leads to higher close rates. In this guide, we’re covering the ins and outs of customer journey mapping and how it can benefit your B2B organization.
What is Customer Journey Mapping?
Customer journey mapping is the practice of identifying the touch points that a customer goes through before deciding to purchase a service or product. Typically, this involves “mapping” the customer to a particular stage in the buying process, from initial awareness to consideration to purchase.
This mapping may take the format of a visual representation (like a chart) or may exist in an organization’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. In any case, it allows sales representatives and account executives to understand where prospects are at in terms of their path to purchase.
Customer Journey Mapping by Stages
There are many stages of the customer journey that are traditionally recognized by sales teams. These stages may vary slightly depending on the industry and your business’s particular buying process.
Awareness
At this stage, the potential buyer first becomes aware of a need, challenge, or opportunity. They might start researching potential solutions or whether other people/businesses are struggling with the same challenges.
Research
After becoming ”problem aware”, the buyer starts to gather information about possible solutions and/or service providers. They might start exploring different options, reading content, attending webinars or events, and seeking recommendations from people in their network.
Consideration
In this stage, the buyer starts to narrow down their options when it comes to brands or products. They gather more details about the options they are considering. They may compare features, pricing, and capabilities, as well as assess the reputation and credibility of potential providers.
Decision
After evaluating different options, the buyer makes a decision to move forward (or not). This stage often involves negotiations with your sales team and finalizing the contract terms.
Note: There are some additional stages some organizations choose to include in their customer journey mapping process. These can include Onboarding, Usage/Adoption, Ongoing Service, Offboarding, Expansion, and/or Referral stages. You can tailor these stages to suit the needs and process of your organization.
How Customer Journey Mapping Works
The goal of creating a customer journey map is to gain a deeper understanding of your target customer and what touchpoints they are likely to encounter along their buying journey. This allows you to tailor your selling strategy to their needs and interests, which ultimately enhances customer satisfaction and improves close rates!
Here’s how it works:
- The seller or sales team defines the organization’s customer personas, including the different segments to be targeted. This usually includes research into customers’ demographics, behaviors, goals, and pain points.
- The sales team lists all the possible interactions (or “touchpoints”) that a customer might encounter throughout the buying journey. These touchpoints could include website visits, social media interactions, email communications, phone calls, in-store visits, etc.
- Using this information, the sales team maps out the stages that reflect the phases a customer goes through before making a purchase, such as Awareness, Research, Consideration, and Decision.
- Using a visual representation or a CRM, the sales team “assigns” a stage that best represents the customer’s current level of engagement with the brand.
- The organization collects data to analyze the customer journey map over time. This may include identifying bottlenecks during the selling process or opportunities to enhance the customer experience.
- Over time, the organization tailors its selling approach based on engagement data and what strategies appear to work best for its customer segments at different stages. Any issues are identified and addressed, and the process is further refined.
Keep in mind that customer journey mapping is an ongoing process. As a customer’s needs evolve, organizations should continue to update and refine the journey map to match. This ensures that the customer journey map (and associated strategies) remains relevant and effective.
How to Create a Customer Journey Map for Your B2B Organization
Chances are your B2B organization already has a sales system in place, whether an intake process or CRM. But are you effectively mapping prospective customers and tailoring your strategies to close more deals? If not, customer journey mapping may be a worthwhile activity to help you gain new business.
Here’s how to get started with customer journey mapping for your B2B business.
Step 1: Research Your Target Audience
The most important step in creating a customer journey map is to research (and understand) your ideal target customers. This allows you to identify the most relevant stages to your customers and tailor your selling to appeal to their particular needs and interests.
One way to start this research is to brainstorm the types of stakeholders you wish to target, such as decision-makers, influencers, or end-users. Consider what factors they might be interested in, where they go to find new products or services, and what challenges they face in their role(s).
With this information, you can then develop detailed buyer personas for each group. Not only does this allow you to better tailor/segment your campaigns, but also fine-tune your sales script to speak to their pain points and goals.
Step 2: Map Out the B2B Buying Stages
Many CRM tools have pre-set labels to “map” where prospects are in the buying journey (e.g. “Awareness”, “Call Booked”, “Proposal Sent”, etc.). Depending on the terms used by your organization, you can tailor these to best match where your target prospects may be in their buyer’s journey.
Alternatively (or in addition to this), you can create a visual representation of the customer journey map. This is where you essentially design a funnel that defines the stages that a typical buyer goes through, from initial awareness to the final decision.
Google Images is a great source of customer journey map examples to inspire your process.
Step 3: List Critical Touchpoints and Interactions
Next, it’s important to identify – and clearly state – the various touchpoints that potential buyers are likely to encounter along the buying process. This will vary depending on your particular sales funnel. For example, the primary entry point for a new lead could be clicks on an aware-ness building blog post, moving to a form fill on the website, leading to a sales call, and so forth.
You might want to discuss with your team the various interactions that can take place across your chosen marketing channels. For example, common touchpoints might include website clicks, form fills, email inquiries, social media comments, phone calls, meetings booked, demos scheduled, etc.
Pay attention to both digital and offline touchpoints, and consider at what stage they might occur along the buyer’s journey. For example, at the “Awareness” stage in your CRM you might list common interactions such as “blog post click”, “social media follow”, “ad click”, etc.
Step 4: Address Customer Actions and Objections
Over time, your organization will get a sense of what actions customers typically take and what objections often arise during the sales process. This data positions you to address these interactions early on, and even mitigate pushback before it occurs.
Take note of any helpful information collected by your sales representatives. This could include reports of customer frustration during stages of the buying process, excitement over a particular feature or offer, or anxieties during contract negotiations.
With this feedback, you can begin to brainstorm effective responses, objection-handling techniques, updated sales scripts, and a range of strategies to better streamline sales.
Step 5: Assess the Best Opportunities
An effective sales engine can provide insight into what is working well and what needs to be improved. Look at your numbers! This is where you will identify the best opportunities.
Is a certain sales script resulting in more closed deals than others? Are prospects more engaged on a particular channel versus others? Is a particular offer landing better than other offers? Follow what works, nix (or refine) what isn’t.
Customer journey mapping isn’t just about closing deals, though. It also allows you to improve the customer experience overall. Use sales data to find opportunities to enhance the B2B buying experience, provide better solutions to customers, and show prospects that you care about their goals and interests.
Step 6: Measure and Manage
There are various data points that sales reps can use to assess the effectiveness of their sales strategies and offers. This data is readily available in most CRM tools.
Here are some key data metrics to consider:
- Conversion Rate: the percentage of leads that become customers.Track the conversion rates at each stage of the sales funnel to understand how many leads progress to the next stage and ultimately convert into customers.
- Win Rate: the percentage of opportunities that result in closed deals. By tracking win rates, sales reps can evaluate the success of their sales efforts and identify which strategies are most effective in closing deals.
- Sales Cycle Length: the time taken to convert leads into customers. Shorter sales cycles often indicate greater efficiency and effectiveness in sales strategies, while longer cycles may suggest areas for improvement or potential obstacles in the process.
- Deal Size and Value: the average revenue generated per closed deal. Analyze the average deal size and total revenue generated from different sales strategies or offers.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): the cost to acquire each new customer. Through CAC, sales reps can assess the profitability of different sales strategies and optimize their resource allocation.
- Customer Retention and Churn Rate: This tracks the percentage of customers retained over time and the rate at which customers churn or discontinue their subscriptions. Understanding retention and churn rates can help sales reps identify areas for improvement in customer satisfaction, product quality, and support
- Lead Sources: the channels or campaigns that are driving leads.By focusing on high-performing lead sources, sales reps can allocate resources more effectively and maximize their sales efforts.
- Activity Metrics: various quantitative measures of outreach and engagement. Monitor sales activities such as calls, emails, meetings, and demos to assess the level of engagement with prospects and customers.
Step 7: Close More Deals!
Use the data you’ve collected over the course of the sales process to continually optimize your customer journey map and make improvements to your selling strategies. This will allow you to improve customer satisfaction and close more deals!
It can be helpful to solicit feedback from customers and your sales team to further refine your sales process. This qualitative feedback can be even more descriptive (and valuable) than quantitative data in addressing the real concerns your customers are facing.
By following these steps, your B2B organization can create a comprehensive customer journey map that’s tailored to the unique needs of your customers and results in more business won!
DFY Customer Journey Mapping and Lead Generation
Crafting an effective customer journey map is crucial for B2B selling success. Not only does this practice empower your organization to better understand and meet the unique needs of your clients, but it results in more selling success! By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can create comprehensive maps that foster stronger (and more lucrative) relationships with your customers.
At Superhuman Prospecting, we specialize in helping businesses like yours excel in lead generation and appointment setting. This includes customer journey mapping to ensure we are reaching the right people with the right message. Ready to take your B2B sales to the next level? Contact us today for a free quote!
