Leveraging Customer Journey Mapping for Better B2B Sales

Business-to-business (B2B) sales entail a more complicated customer journey than business-to-consumer scenarios. As a sales or bid manager, you must navigate a web of stakeholder interests and influencers. Recent research by Østerlund, West, Stoll and Kowalkowski indicates that traditional customer journey mapping techniques need adaptation to uncover insights in convoluted B2B environments.

Profiling Organisations and Actors

Start by creating a simple profile of the customer's organisation, covering details like industry, size, location and culture. This builds a shared understanding across your sales team. Next, identify all the stakeholders involved in the buying process - not just crucial contacts but also influencers like procurement managers, executives, recommenders and end users. Look beyond the customer company to actors in third-party organisations, too.

Crafting Impactful Personas

With the stakeholders mapped, build detailed personas for pivotal contacts like economic buyers and users. Include bio info, responsibilities, motivations and pain points to foster empathy. Secondary personas can be more essential. These profiles expose how each contact fits into the complex decision-making process.

Capturing the Complete Journey

Outline the customer's visible buying interactions and invisible backstage activities like internal stakeholder alignment. Look beyond the initial sales journey to after-sales processes like implementation, training, and support. Mapping the entire cycle clarifies how each stage impacts the next.

Iterating for Deeper Insights

Use sales team workshops to iterate on the map. Anecdotes from the frontlines will uncover hidden actors and steps you may have missed. Pinpoint sales triggers based on equipment upgrade cycles and service timelines to reveal recurring opportunities. Journey mapping crystallises patterns across fragmented experiences into an invaluable big-picture perspective.

With the proper adaptations, mapping B2B customer journeys exposes crucial insights into decision influencers, dynamics and pain points. Your sales team can then pitch to each contact's needs for a smoother path to satisfied clients.

Are you looking for B2B opportunities?

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