The Real B2B Buyer's Journey

By Perry Rearick, Chief Editor, Follow Your Buyer

The single force disrupting the way B2B solution providers market and sell is also the most critical to business success, buyers.

Empowered buyers have fully embraced and sharpened their skills, over the course of several decades, to access digital content on demand that helps them solve problems. And they pushed long-held B2B marketing and sales traditions aside, rendering them obsolete.

Despite this change, far too many B2B solution providers have been slow to change and adapting to new and better ways have been muddled. This leads to underperforming marketing and sales in which real problems are hard to diagnose.  

Buyers complete about 80% of their journey before they reveal themselves to a seller. And by the time they reach the last 20% of their journey, sellers have determined which solution providers can help them best and who they trust to speak with.

So, what are they doing in the various stages of their journey?

For simplicity, I’ll refer to three stages, early, middle and late. If you want a more detailed explanation, you can refer to the long form article The Real Buyers Journey.

While I am referring to buyers, a better description is problem solvers. Through most of this journey, buyers see themselves as trying to solve a problem. Keep that top of mind!

Early Stage. The early stage of the journey is when buyers are becoming aware of a problem they have. That’s right, not a product or service that a solution provider is offering, but a problem they have. Once they are confident that they fully understand the problem and have clearly defined it, they will establish outcomes, develop a strategy, and will often produce written strategic guidance.  

Middle Stage. During the middle stage of the journey, using their strategic guidance, they will develop various courses of action to accomplish their objectives and solve their problem. One or more of the courses of action may require them to seek help from another organization. In that case, they set vendor criteria and compare and examine various alternatives.

Late Stage. The late stage of the journey is when the buyer approves the plan to solve their problem and measures the results.

References:

“Selling to the C-Suite” by Nicholas A.C. Read and Stephen J. Bistritz. Chapter 1 explains the 8 stages of the buyer’s journey.

Gartner continues to conduct research annually on the B2B buyer’s journey and remains one of the most trustworthy sources, The B2B Buying Journey: Key Stages and How to Optimize Them.