What Is The Customer Journey… (RECOMMENDED)

First of all… What is the customer’s journey?

Buyers don’t want to be prospected, or demoed, or closed. These steps add zero value to the buyer. Buyers are looking for additional information about your product that can’t be found online.

As a salesperson, you can personalize your sales process to the buyer’s context by understanding the customer’s journey.

The customers’s journey is the process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate, and purchase a new product or service. The journey is a three-step process:

1. Awareness Stage: The buyer realizes they have a problem.
2. Consideration Stage: The buyer defines their problem and researches options to solve it.
3. Decision Stage: The buyer chooses a solution.

The graphic below illustrates a sample customer’s journey for the simple purchasing decision of a doctor visit during an illness.

How do you define your company’s customer’s journey?

During the Awareness stage, buyers identify their challenge or an opportunity they want to pursue. They also decide whether or not the goal or challenge should be a priority. In order to fully understand the Awareness stage for your buyer, ask yourself:

1. How do buyers describe their goals or challenges?
2. How do buyers educate themselves on these goals or challenges?
3. What are the consequences of inaction by the buyer?
4. Are there common misconceptions buyers have about addressing the goal or challenge?
5. How do buyers decide whether the goal or challenge should be prioritized?

During the Consideration stage, buyers have clearly defined the goal or challenge and have committed to addressing it. They evaluate the different approaches or methods available to pursue the goal or solve their challenge. Ask yourself:

1. What categories of solutions do buyers investigate?
2. How do buyers educate themselves on the various categories?
3. How do buyers perceive the pros and cons of each category?
4. How do buyers decide which category is right for them?

In the Decision stage, buyers have already decided on a solution category. For example, they could write a pro/con list of specific offerings and then decide on the one that best meets their needs. Questions you should ask yourself to define the Decision stage are:

1. What criteria do buyers use to evaluate the available offerings?
2. When buyers investigate your company’s offering, what do they like about it compared to alternatives? What concerns do they have with your offering?
3. Who needs to be involved in the decision? For each person involved, how does their perspective on the decision differ?
4. Do buyers have expectations around trying the offering before they purchase it?
5. Outside of purchasing, do buyers need to make additional preparations, such as implementation plans or training strategies?

As always, a little scary but pretty straight forward, right?!!

If you are still not clear how to utilize this information to drive more traffic, create more selling opportunities to generate more revenue, what’s holding you back?

Our M2 team has helped hundreds of business owners, entrepreneurs and decision makers just like you to design, develop & deploy highly effective digital growth strategies for over 11 years.

We are here to help you grow!!

Contact us today to receive your FREE Digital Footprint Analysis Report – 800-234-1522 orsupport@m2dmg.com