B2B Buyer Journey Mapping: 3 Ways to Improve the Process

Mapping the buyer journey is a useful conceptual framework for thinking about how customers become aware of, evaluate, and make their purchase decisions. Its prescriptive approach provides a structured way of documenting the steps in the process. The output is easy to understand and share internally and with partners. The journey map provides a common touchstone for alignment across marketing and sales functions.  However, based on our twenty-five years of helping B2B clients understand their customer’s buying process, building buyer journey maps can be unnecessarily resource-intensive. Therefore, we present the following three recommendations for your consideration.

1. Confirm Buyer Journey Mapping is the Right Tool for the Job

At Isurus, we’re big proponents of choosing the right tool for the job. Because buyer journey mapping is ubiquitous, it is an easy go-to for questions about the purchase process. When clients come to us interested in using primary research to map their buyer journey, we first ask: What is the question you really need answered? Rather than needing to define every step from awareness to a purchase decision, marketers often want to answer a specific question. For example, perhaps they made an internal decision to sell upstream to the C-suite—or as high as they can realistically reach. They don’t need to revisit the full buyer journey to validate this approach. They need to focus on two questions: To what degree is the most senior decision-maker involved in the buying process, and how to position their solution to resonate with senior decision-makers. For other clients, the driving question is whether B2B customers would accept a self-service sale model.  In both examples, the client doesn’t need to map the entire buyer journey. They want to understand what is going on at specific points and why.

Embarking prematurely on a full-blown buyer journey mapping exercise risks shortchanging insights on the critical questions.  Buyer journey maps are necessarily a mile wide and an inch deep.  Starting the initiative with the mindset of “we need to build/update the buyer journey map” distracts the team with thinking about aspects of the journey that aren’t important for the question at hand (best case) or worst case shifts too much focus away from the areas where you need the insights.

This misalignment between need and research approach isn’t unique to buyer journey mapping. We see similar dynamics play out when B2B marketers find themselves under pressure from senior management to conduct an NPS study. The best remedy is to start by outlining the key decisions to be made and the questions you need answered to help you make those decisions. Then, evaluate methods and frameworks to identify the one that best addresses your most important informational needs.

2. Start with Readily Available Data

Interviews and surveys (primary research) play an important role in defining and validating the buyer journey map. However, we don’t recommend starting with these data sources to build out the entire journey from awareness to consideration to decision-making. The more efficient approach is to establish the foundation of the buyer journey map with readily-available data from internal sources, relevant published reports, and GenAI tools. Internally, Sales and Business Development folks can provide insights into the role and organizational level of prospects they interact with, the questions prospects ask, and the typical steps prospects run vendors through. Published secondary research on the B2B buying process can also offer useful information on buyer behavior at a broad level. For example, Forrester’s 2023 B2B Buyer Journey Report provides insights that apply across sectors. Generative AI tools can be used to create synthetic buyer journeys as a starting point for further refinement and validation. By combining these readily-available information sources, you will be able to profile the mechanics of your customer’s buying journey.

Then, use primary research to fill in the critical gaps and gather authentic insights from the buyer’s perspective. For example, internal data and secondary research will not provide useful insights into buyers’ challenges when evaluating vendors or the criteria they use. You need to ask them these things directly.

The advantage of this approach is that it focuses the primary research on the areas where it will provide the most value. In buyer journey mapping exercises, there is little ROI in validating things you can accurately profile with internal sources.

3. Target the Individual with the Broadest Insights into the Journey

When conducting surveys or in-depth interviews to inform your buyer journey, in the ideal world, you’d talk to everyone involved. Unfortunately, this is unrealistic for a couple of reasons. The first is a practical reality. Whether you talk to customer or prospect organizations, you’re unlikely to convince every stakeholder involved in the journey to provide feedback. The second reason is project scope. Collecting insights from individuals with different roles in the journey across multiple organizations makes sense methodologically, but it also quickly increases the research scope. And unfortunately, an expanded scope comes with an increased need for time, budgets, or both.

When choosing which stakeholders to interview along the buyer journey, many B2B marketers default to targeting the most senior person involved in the decision—the budget approver. This is okay if the primary goal is to gather opinions from senior management and figure out how to sell your solution upstream. However, it is not the best choice if the goal is to understand the roles, needs, and challenges at each step of the process.

In Isurus’ experience, asking the most senior decision-maker about the buying process produces something to the effect of My team brings new ideas and solutions. That’s part of their job. If something looks promising, I authorize them to conduct a formal evaluation. They research our options and solution providers. They present me with a few options to consider along with their recommendations. Most of the time we go with their recommendations. I am not involved in the technical evaluations of the products.

This type of data is okay if the objective is just to gather the opinions of senior management – how do we sell upstream. But it’s not the best choice if you are trying to flesh out the buying process. Going to the other end of the continuum—the employees at the front end of the process—typically provides many insights into technical requirements and how the long- and short-lists of vendors are created. However, they usually don’t provide insights into strategic considerations and budget priorities.

Therefore, for a more manageable scope, the best position is typically someone in a Director, AVP, or VP role. They are close enough to the day-to-day to understand the technical needs and requirements and can speak to the senior management perspective on new solutions.

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When used correctly, buyer journey mapping is a powerful tool for marketing, sales, and customer experience teams.  When building journey maps, look for opportunities to make the process more efficient and increase business value.  Contact us here for more information on how Isurus supports buyer journey research.