Every B2B Customer Journey Must Cover These Key Phases!!

There are tons of the way to map your customer journey. Every business and customer experience is exclusive , therefore the right thanks to map your journey will really depend upon your specific business, what you’re selling and who your customers are.

1. Awareness

In many sorts of companies , “awareness” is employed to explain the purpose at which customers become conscious of your business and enter your marketing funnel. For B2B businesses, however, awareness occurs when a key player becomes “aware” that they have a haul.

Depending on the matter your business solves, this might be something that your potential customers discover on their own. The key player here might be anyone, from customer service reps who are frustrated with their buggy support software to a CEO trying to find how to revitalize their business. It all depends on what you’re selling and who is suffering from the matter it solves.

On the opposite hand, your business may very well play a key role during this stage. Your customers don’t know they have an obstacle or are missing out on a chance until they see an advertisement or hear from your sales team.

Regardless of how your customers discover that they have a problem, it’s important to know why that problem occurs, how it comes up and who is suffering from it. The more you understand the pressures that are driving your customers, the better it'll be to point out to them how your business can meet their needs.

2. Knowledge

Once your customers are aware that they have an obstacle, they begin to find solutions. Again, counting on your business, your customers might discover you during this stage…or they could not.

In some cases, it'd be a situation where low-level employees mention the matter with their supervisors. The difficulty is (or becomes) significant enough to urge passed up the chain of command and decision-makers start to seem into their options.

If awareness starts at a better level within the company, things might go the other direction. If a CEO doesn’t have time to seek out an answer on their own, they could delegate the task to a different key decision-maker.

Or, alternatively, if you’re the one who created awareness around the problem, your potential customers might plan to check out all of their options. even though they love your product or service, many businesses favor evaluating multiple options before making a choice .

If you understand how your customers acquire information about their options during this phase, you'll often find ways to insert yourself into the information-gathering process. Along the way, you become a trusted ally—which may be a great initiative towards becoming a valued partner.

3. Consideration

Most of the time, when businesses are considering the way to handle an obstacle , they’ve got tons of things to believe .

Is the problem really that big of a deal? What's the scope of the problem? What proportion are they willing to spend on a solution? Is this something they can solve internally? Can their existing partners solve the problem? Will the advantages of the answer outweigh its direct and/or indirect costs?

It’s loads to think about .

The good news is, this is often another excellent spot for your business to urge involved. Share case studies. Show them why investing in your solution may be a great idea. Explain why your business is that the best, the simplest , the most affordable, the whatever-est option they might choose.

This is your opportunity to actually shape and direct the thinking of your potential customers. There are tons of the way to try and do this, but if you’re smart about it and specialise in providing an excellent experience, you'll do tons to make sure that you simply find yourself on the shortlist of potential solutions.

To do that, though, you actually need to understand the priorities and concerns of all the decision-makers who are going to be involved during this process. It isn’t enough to convert the secretary, you furthermore may need to convince the boss, so confirm you recognize who the key players are and the way to win them over.

Even if you don’t play a big role within the consideration process, your business must get on a possible customer’s radar by the top of this phase. If you don’t, there’s a really good chance that they’ll move to the choice phase…and your business won’t be within the running.

4. Decision

During the choice phase, your customers weigh the pros and cons of every one of their different options. In this phase, your goal is to assist them to decide that your business is worth a try.

You want to try and do everything you could to assist your customers to get through this phase as quickly as possible. After all, the longer they stay within the decision phase, the likelier they're to develop “paralysis by analysis” or decide that change is just too much work.

For many B2B businesses, the choice phase is where the marketing-sales handoff occurs.

Marketing is usually focused on building awareness and trust, which is how your business gets into and thru the choice phase. Once your potential customers have decided that your business is worth a try, though, your sales team takes over and delivers a more personalized experience.

Of course, things don’t always go this manner . If your potential customers discover they have an obstacle because your sales team cold-called them and told them about it, the road between marketing and sales could be very blurry.

The key here is to know the thought process your customers are browsing within the decision phase. The better you understand that thought process, the better it'll be to hurry it along and snag a spot at the highest of their list of solutions to undertake .

5. Trial

In the trial phase, your potential customers will plan to give one or more of their top options a try. Based on what you’re selling, which may mean sample orders, an attempt period, trying out several competitors simultaneously, or simply going all-in.

Regardless of how they plan to approach things, every B2B sale starts with an attempt period. Your customers are feeling you and your solution out.

This is a critical time for your business, because even customers who are “all-in” aren’t really “all-in”. Your solution remains an unknown and if things aren’t going well, it won’t be long before they jump ship.

To prevent that from happening, you would like the transition from marketing-to-sales-to-fulfillment to be seamless. If you set incorrect expectations during the start of your customer journey, you’ll just find yourself with frustrated customers.

From a business perspective, that’s an error you can’t afford to form .

Generally speaking, it costs much more to land a replacement customer than it does to stay an existing customer around. Marketing and sales are an enormous investment—one that must pay off.

To minimize turnover—especially during the first months of a replacement business relationship—it’s critical to believe things from your customers’ perspective. What kind of expectations do they have? What are they trying to find out of the relationship? How are you able to make their new-customer experience as comfortable, easy and fulfilling as possible?

The better you'll answer these questions, the more likely you're to form it through this significant phase and establish a very profitable long-term partnership.

6. Settle down

The settle down phase is fairly straightforward. Once you’ve made it to the present phase, your customers are beginning to feel good about working together with your business. They took a gamble…and it paid off.

During this phase, most businesses rest on their fulfillment team, marketing automation, or some combination of the two to manage the customer experience. At now , the goal is to stay the customer happy and still build trust in your brand.

The longer you still exceed expectations and deliver an excellent experience, the calmer your customers will feel. This particular problem is solved, in order that they can focus their attention on other, more pressing issues.

As far as your customer journey goes, you would like to feed into that feeling. You would like every interaction to fill your customers with peace, confidence, and therefore the assurance that this is often not something they have to stress about.

7. Relationship

By the time you’ve made it through the settle down phase, you’ve hopefully wowed your customers to the purpose that they love your business. You’ve made life better for them and your business, your employees, and/or your products became a valued part of their business.

At now , you’ve established a true relationship.

Once you've got this type of relationship and history, your customers are invested in helping your business succeed, too. You’ve given them an excellent experience, and now they’re happy to return the favor.

So, need a case study? They’d be happy to assist . In fact, they'll be one of your biggest advocates amongst their peers and associates. Have a replacement product to sell? They’re probably interested. Need someone to place during a good word with a possible client? They’ve got your back.

This is where your customer journey pays off success . Your customers have now gone from a cost to a marketing asset. They’re getting results, you’re making good, sustainable money and everybody is enjoying the connection .

It can take tons of your time and work to urge to the present point, but once you are doing , these customer relationships form the backbone of your business. They’re easy to take care of , highly profitable and just plain fun!

In the end, this type of relationship is that the whole reason why you invest in developing your customer journey. The better you're at cultivating great customer experiences, the more of those relationships you’ll develop and therefore the better your business will perform.

Conclusion

Each customer journey is exclusive , but they typically have enough in common that you simply can map specific steps that the majority of customers will follow. These steps are often broadly described as: awareness, knowledge, consideration, decision, trial, settle down, and relationship.

The goal of your customer journey is to urge potential customers from start to end within the best (and cost-effective) way possible. You would want to supply an excellent experience from start to end.

The better you understand your customers, their needs at each stage of their journey, and their journey as an entire , the simpler you'll be at nurturing your customers throughout their journey.

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