“Don’t make your customers work hard to spend their money.”

The Buyer’s Journey describes a fundamental shift from inside to outside thinking. From the Sales Cycle to The Buyer’s decision process. The key implication of this shift is that you have to align your Sales and Marketing activities with the Buyer’s Journey if you want to maximize customer adoption of your products and services.

The term “The Buyer’s Journey” was originally coined by a colleague and friend of mine Hugh MacFarlane back in 2003. Hugh has been a long time thought leader in this space and has written a remarkable book called The Leaky Funnel that explores this and the broader benefits of increased sales effectiveness resulting from aligning Sales and Marketing with the way customers buy.

“I am the world’s worst salesman, therefore I must make it easy for customers to buy.” – F. W. Woolworth, April 13, 1852 – April 8, 1919

The management challenge of achieving alignment plays out at two levels: 1) The task/activity level and 2) the Organisational level. Hugh describes the task/activity mapping between The Buyer’s Journey and The Seller’s Journey very succinctly here (Fig 1)

“Your task is not to work buyers through your sales process, but to help them along their buying path. An easier journey makes for an easier sale.” – Hugh MacFarlane, CEO of Mathmarketing

Question: Have you aligned your Sales and Marketing actions with your Buyer’s Journey?

Additional Resources:

Read more: The Buyer’s Journey – Part 1
View presentation on slideshare: The Buyer’s Journey
Read: How to align your sales process to your buyers journey by Hugh MacFarlane
Buy the book: The Leaky Funnel by Hugh MacFarlane