Why the "Buyer's Journey" is a myth

This week's edition

• Introduction
• The Article - The Myth of the Buyer's Journey
• The Other Article - Preparing for your first Executive Meeting
• Tactic of the Week - there is no tactic this week

Introduction

Wow, doesn't tempus fugit? It's been a month since the last issue of this "weekly" magazine. Oops, sorry.

Still I suspect that few, if any, of my lovely subscribers have had your lives blighted by my tardiness. Somehow I can't see thousands of people looking at their calendars and saying "Where's Steve's latest edition - I'll die of anticipation if it doesn't arrive soon?"

However as it's been quite a while since the last issue I've changed it a bit. I promised a while ago I'd write about preparing for your first Executive Meeting - and I will. But I also promised (via a post) I'd write about why the Buyer's Journey (at least as usually imagined) is a myth.

So this week you get two Articles. But no Tactic of the Week because there's a limit to how many I can come up with. So here's the first article.

As always I will respond to all comments and questions and I'd very much appreciate it if you'd "like" this article (assuming you do) so the LinkedIn house elves share it with more people. If you'd like to share it I'll be even more grateful.

The Article - The Myth of the Buyer's Journey

On August 10th 2022 I posted the following:

WHAT DO THE ANCIENT ROMANS HAVE TO DO WITH #SALES ?

Even though their roads were straight & they conquered a lot of people, the ancient Romans could be pretty lazy.

Rather than creating their own gods, for example, they just took the Greek gods and gave them new names. Zeus became Apollo, Poseidon became Neptune, Aphrodite was renamed Venus (I bet she loved that) and Aries became Mars. Sometimes they didn't even bother to change the names - Apollo in Greece became Apollo in Rome.

We can be pretty lazy in sales too. Twenty or more years ago we talked about the Sales Cycle.

Now, in an effort to be "customer centric" everyone (or a lot of people) talk about the Buyer's Journey. Well, I have some bad news - for you and for the Greeks & Romans. Your gods don't exist.

Just as Jupiter and Zeus are relabelled myths, the Buyer's Journey is just a salesperson's perspective of what they imagine buyers do. It's the Sales Cycle reimagined.

But it's still a myth. Because the Buyer's Journey (as imagined by salespeople) DOESN'T EXIST. It's a myth. A fable. A construct.

In my next newsletter, due out soon (that's this one), I'll explore this & tell you what "buyers" (who don't think of themselves as buyers - that's a clue why the Buyer's Journey is misleading) REALLY do.

So what do Buyers REALLY do?

First, here's what they DON'T do. They dont wake up one day and think "oh, I might go out today and look for an ERP (or a CRM, or a tractor, or a submarine, or whatever you sell)".

Nobody really wants whatever you sell. They want to solve a problem or gain an advantage. They want their life to be better, or easier, or whatever. They want the result your product or service can provide. The things you sell are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

So when we define the "Buyer's Journey" in terms of them looking for whatever you sell we both simplify it - dramatically - and truncate it. Because a lot of things happen before they start looking for an ERP or a CRM or a tractor or a submarine.

The traditional view of the Buyer's Journey starts with the "buyer" being untroubled and unaware. In other words all is Hunky Dory (great album - I saw Bowie as Ziggy Stardust) in their world. Then something happens to make them (presumably) troubled and aware. They acknowledge the problem and immediately start looking for a solution.

If only.

But there's as much chance of that actually happening in real life as there is of there being Life on Mars. And if you sell using that as a guide your sales aree likely to go from Ashes to Ashes. So what does happen in real life?

Real life

In real life there is no company in the world that is "untroubled and unaware". Every company has lots of problems. Even wildly successful companies have lots of problems. Such as "How do we keep customer service up with demand? How do we invest all this cash that's rolling in?"

What happens is that a company has a problem that, potentially, you can help them solve. It's one of a hundred problems. It may be a problem but that doesn't mean it's a priority. It may cause a bit of pain but if you're trying to stem bleeding from a cut artery you're not going to worry much about a blister on your foot.

But if you're going in a marathon the blister becomes a big deal.

There's a Pain Threshhold where the company is aware an issue is becoming a problem. But there are lots of other problems and it isn't until the issue passes the priority Threshhold that they (probably reluctantly) are forced into doing something about it.

Until this happens there's no journey, Buyer's or otherwise. But once they've agreed they have to do something about this problem they jump (or more likely creak) into action.

But the action they jump in to isn't to look for your product or service. It's to look at different ways to solve that problem, one of which involve whatever you sell but many of which don't.

For example

Imagine you sell a SaaS solution to help companies sell more effectively. It might be a CRM, it might be an AI tool or a software-assisted sales methodology. You sell to companies that have more than 200 salespeople and winning a new customer is worth at least $100k a year to you, so over five years they have a lifetime value of $500,000.

(Incidentally if you sell an SaaS solution and your average customer life is five years you can dramatically increase your revenue over the long term by implementing strategies to keep them for ten years).

Your ideal customer is a company with 200+ salespeople in your territory (and perhaps in a particular set of industries) that wants to sell more effectively.

Let's imagine that fits your ideal customer profile and it wants to sell more. In fact NEEDS to sell more - their sales are tanking, their shareholders are up in arms & their salespeople are discouraged and many are leaving. Their pain is big enough that they have to do something about it. And you can help. Happy days.

So what happens? The key executives get together - lets say the CEO, CMO, the Head of HR and the Sales Director - and 'they say "we're in deep poo, we need to sell more".

But they don't suddenly say "OK, we'll buy a new CRM" (or whatever you sell). They say "what's causing this problem?" - often there are multiple causes - and they look at a strategy to fix it.

But often they don't all agree, at least at first, on the cause or the remedy.

The CMO blames the Sales Director because the sales team doesn't follow marketing generated leads up quickly enough. The Sales Director says the CMO only generates crap leads. The CEO says he's worried about the high turnover of salespeople & asks the Head of HR what he thinks and the Head of HR suggests changing the commission structure & doing some better sales training.

Eventually they decide what the root cause of the problem is and they agree to try a particular approach. Here's the problem.

Eight times out of ten that approach doesn't lead to your solution. If you sell an AI solution that can help them to sell more using sophisticated analytics & they decide they need sales training, or to recruit more salespeople, or to buy a CRM, or to reduce prices, or to increase prices, or to focus on selling to existing customers - none of those paths lead to you.

If you aren't talking to them BEFORE they become a sales opportunity you have no chance of influencing their decision. They might be on a journey, but you're sitting in a taxi in Charles de Gaulle airport waiting for someone who's on a plane to Singapore.

But let's assume you're lucky and they do decide that what they really need is what you sell. What do they do?

Well, the executives don't call you themselves, that's for sure. They get their minions in and say "we're looking for a leading edge AI tool for sales - go look at the market". If you're lucky and your marketing is good they may call you and ask about prices and timeframes and stuff.

Or they may not.

Then the minions come back and say "these are the top three candidates and this is how much it will cost and this is how long it will take" and the management team sets a budget and a timeframe. Maybe. Because as we know a heap of these scenarios end in "no decision" - or to be more exact "do something else".

But if they do decide to go ahead they are, from your perspective, what used to be called a BANT qualified lead. If you happen to call them around now, or you're lucky enough for them to call you, you get all excited because they have a need, a budget and a timeframe. Of course chances are you're talking to a minion, not the decision maker.

But there are several problems with getting involved at this stage.

1. If they decide to go down a different strategic pathway you lost the deal before it became an opportunity because they didn't even decide to look at the category of solutoions you sell.
2. You weren't involved in all the preceding strategic discussions so you don't really understand, and certainly didn't help, their thinking.
3. Someone else probably helped them set the budget & you may well be in there puraly as column fodder.
4. You probably aren't talking to, and may not even have access to, the real decision makers.
5. You may not even understand the strategic reasons they're looking to buy. And if you just trot out your standard value propositions you may miss the mark entirely.

So when I say the "Buyers Journey" is a myth I mean the simplified, linear, truncated journey bears little or no relationship to real life. It doesn't just involve one person and it goes backwards and forwards like the crowd's heads at Wimbledon.

Which means attempts to shepherd buyers like sheep along a journey by sending a cadence of communications to match the journey are very unlikely to succeed.

So what do we do about it?

If the much-touted vision of a Buyer's Journey is a myth, or at least dramatically over-simplified, what do we do. Originally the Buyer's Journey was a noble attempt to turn the focus from us, the vendors, onto them, the customers. And that's a good thing.

But we need to understand what really happens and not mistake the map for the territory.

It means, when you're selling high value B2B products and services you need to:

• Refine your ideal customer profile so you're selling to a smaller number of higher probability targets.
• Get in early, when the problem is just an ache, which means you must...
• Take a long term view. It means the sales opportunities you're working on today will have been seeded months or even years ago. The biggest ERP deal I ever sold was eight years in the making (I sold a lot of others in the interim of course) because that's when they were ready to buy because the pain of not buying was too great.
• Don't focus only on finding people who are ready to buy today. Studies say only 3% of your target market is looking for what you sell at any one time. (I don't know what studies but it makes sense to me). So if you're relying on getting your timing right you're putting yourself behind the eight ball. Companies that are ready to buy today probably started thinking about solutions to their issues a long time ago. So you need to be talking to people today to fill your pipeline in six months, a year, two years.
• Don't focus entirely on using automated communications to guide people along an imaginary Buyer's Journey. If you're going to nurture and educate potential customers - especially ones with a lifetime value of $500k plus - you need to be talking to and understanding them.

My friend, ex-manager & client John Bedwany had a saying. "When a company in my target market is in the market, I will know about them & they will know about me". That's a pretty good philosophy for a sales and marketing team. And the "I will know about them" part is at least as important as "they will know about me".

So if you're trying to match your sales and marketing to what your prospects really do, talk to them early about their issues and challenges from their perspective & keep doing it until their pain/prosperity threshhold is breached.

The Other Article - How to Prepart for Your First Executive Meeting

OK, it took me a while to write the first article so I'm going to cheat here and cut/paste an article I wrote ages ago.

I will update it though.

Here's the scenario.

You’ve finally scheduled that meeting you’ve been trying to get with a high level executive in one of your biggest target accounts. You know first impressions are critical and you want to make sure you get it right and don’t fall at the first hurdle.

Ask yourself these seven questions to help make the meeting a resounding success:

1. Are you meeting the right person?

This is a question you should be asking before you schedule the meeting. If it’s your first meeting in the account you should be aiming for the highest level executive you can reach – assuming the solution you’re selling affects them.

The best way to do that is to define your business value proposition for that specific company and, depending on the company you’re targeting, approach the CEO or other senior executive.

Tell them you’d like to discuss how you can help them to achieve a specific business goal that they really care about. If they do really care about it they will either see you or refer you to the person who has responsibility for that area.

Example:

A very small South African software developer was trying to get in to Australian telcos to discuss their complex billing software. They had no offices, customers or staff in Australia. They didn't even have a web site

But if we had approached the IT Department, the CIO or procurement they would have been knocked out of the ballpark on day one due to their lack of presence in Australia.

After discussing their solution we decided they had the capability to allow large telcos to generate new revenue streams from their customers by offering more flexible pricing.

So we called the CEO of Australia’s largest telecommunications company, spoke to his EA and said we’d like to discuss helping to generate new revenue streams for them. We were referred to his second in command who in turn organised meetings with several Executive General Managers and the CTO – purely because we’d identified a business issue that they cared about that our client could help them with.

It’s critical to enter a major account at the right level. If you start at the top and you’re referred down, you go to a meeting with the imprimatur of the person who referred you.

If you enter via the bowels of the ICT department or through a middle manager it can be difficult, if not impossible, to climb to the level of the people who make the final buying decision. If you can’t get to the final decision-makers your chances of winning a deal are significantly reduced – and even if you finally reach them you’re seen as someone who operates on a lower level rather than a valued business partner.

For the purpose of this article, let’s assume you’re meeting with someone at the right level to discuss helping them with a business issue they care about.

2. What do you know about the company and person you’re meeting?

It’s no longer enough to go into a meeting with a senior executive and ask “tell me about your business” or “what keeps you awake at night?” Senior executives expect you to have done your research before they meet you.

You need to understand what the company does, who its key customers are, its offerings, its history and its business challenges.

You also need to know as much about the person you’re meeting as possible – what other positions they have held, what they care about in their current role and so on.

By doing effective research using the company web site, annual report, newspaper articles, industry research, LinkedIn profiles and articles the executive has published you should be able to get a good picture of the company and executive you’re meeting with.

 3. What is your key objective?

It’s important to know what your objectives for the meeting are – and not to have too many. One is ideal.

If it’s your first meeting it’s too early to sell. They aren’t interested in your company, your offering, your brochures, presentations and case studies.

They are interested in themselves and their business issues and the possibility you might be able to help them.

It varies depending on the circumstances, but usually the objectives of a first meeting are:

• To discuss the business issue you can help them solve, its implications and consequences
• To show you understand the issue
• To develop credibility as a person and an organisation that can help them
• To agree there’s potential for you to help them
• To agree on the next step

The first meeting should be almost all about them and very little about you. You should encourage them to do the talking by asking intelligent questions then listening to (and taking notes of) the answers.

You shouldn’t take presentations, brochures and other marketing aids to the meeting and under no circumstances should you even consider demonstrations during a first exploratory meeting.

My strong recommendation is that the only props you should take to a first meeting are your brain, your research and either a pen and paper or a laptop/table for taking notes. Personally I prefer a pen and paper - it removes the temptation to use the laptop and looks more elegant (and confident) when you walk in unarmed with technology.

Oh, and this may seem bleeding obvious, but TURN YOUR MOBILE OFF.

4. What is their key objective?

You know what you want from the meeting. But what do they want?

Senior executives are very busy and they have many demands on their time. They rarely meet anyone without a specific objective – so what’s their specific objective for their meeting with you?

You should be able to make an intelligent assumption about their objective based on the reason they accepted the meeting and what was said to get them to agree to it.

However, the best way to validate your assumption is - to ask them. Two questions you can ask are;

“I know you’re busy so why did you accepting this meeting?” or more simply “What do you want to get out of this meeting?”

Then make sure you address those objectives as a priority - and at the end of the meeting ask them if you’ve done so to their satisfaction.

5. What intelligent questions can you ask?

The quality of the questions you ask will determine how they view you.

The statement “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” is in fact a stupid statement (if there’s no such thing as stupid question, what sorts of questions do stupid people ask?).

Generic questions such as “Tell me about your business” or “What are the top three business issues you’re facing?” simply show you haven’t done your research. If you’re talking to an important target account and you believe you can help them with a key business issue you need to know a lot about that issue, its effects and how to fix it.

By asking intelligent questions you not only get the detailed responses that allow you to understand more but you show that you understand their issues.

If you’re meeting to discuss a specific business issue then the questions should be related to that issue and should demonstrate your familiarity with the issues and its impact.

Example:

“I know you recently bought another company. In our experience there are many logistical and cultural issues when you’re trying to integrate two companies. How are you handling the issue of merging your sales teams?”

That shows you know about them, it shows you know about the kinds of issues they face and it gets more information on the area you’re interested in (assuming you’re interested in helping people with their sales processes).

6. What questions are they likely to ask?

At some stage, they're going to ask you questions. The better you’ve prepared the better your answers will be and the more professional you’ll look.

Ask yourself: “What questions are they likely to ask and how will I respond?” – remembering you want them to do most of the talking. So prepare answers that are accurate, honest – and ideally fairly short.

If they ask: “What do you do?” resist the temptation to launch into your company or product pitch. They don’t really want to know what you do. They want to know what you can do for them. The correct answer is: “We help companies like you to <solve the business problem you’re there to discuss>”.

And if they ask a question you can’t answer, rather than prevaricating it’s better to say: “I don’t know - but I’ll find out.”

7. What's the next step?

You should have a next step clearly in mind. It may be to get a referral to another executive, it may be to organise an investigation, arrange a presentation or schedule a demonstration.

(In fact I prefer to leave demonstrations until much later and avoid them altogether if possible. In my mind demonstrations often cause people to focus on the minutae rather than look at the big picture. If you're trying to sell and ERP you don't want people obsessing over the colour of the screen or the number of digits in the part number field)..

Whatever it is, know where you want to go, understand where they want to go and agree on the next step at the end of the meeting.

Once the meeting is over you should send the executive a summary of what you discussed, what you agreed and what the next step is.

Tell them it's your recollection of what was said and could they check it and make sure you didn't miss anything.

Use what they told you in their own words as much as possible. This a) makes you listen carefully; b) makes you take detailed notes, which stops you talking too much; c) impresses them with how much you listened and understood; and d) gets their agreement on what was said, or clarification if you got things wrong.

Summary

Like anything, implementing these ideas depends on many factors and circumstances. The key issues are:

• Initial meetings are to develop credibility and learn, not to sell
• Make it about them first, them second, you third
• Listen as much as possible. Talk as little as possible. When you do talk, ask intelligent questions.
• Understand what they are trying to achieve
• Understand them and their business issues
• If you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get a meeting at the right level, you need to prepare and research thoroughly
• Your objective isn’t to qualify an opportunity – this should be a by-product of the meeting, not the rationale for having it
• Know where you want to go and where they want to go after the meeting
• Prepare, think then prepare again

Read zis carefully - I shall zay it only once*

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So, if you found this useful and/or entertaining, please, please, please - I'm begging you, please - take the time to click the little "like" button (that's the thumbs up) at the top and if you have time please comment on it and/or share the article with your LinkedIn connections.

What's in it for you? The warm inner glow of helping an aging Englishman still struggling with the trauma of Brexit - and kudos from your LinkedIn connections for letting them know about such a riveting and amusing newsletter (I might be pushing that last one a bit).

And I will answer all questions or comments, if only because it gets readership up,

*Michelle of the Resistance - English humour at its best/worst

Tactic of the Week

I told you, there's no Tactic of the Week. You got two articles - what more do you want?