Buyer's Journey Example

	A	B	C	E	G	I	K
1	Buyers Journey Example
2	This is a very generic buyer's journey that will need lots of customization to fit your situation. For an example of how this changes in a specific situation, look at the next tab, "Developer's Journey Example"
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4	Suggestions on how to use this spreadsheet
5		1	Start by documenting the key steps in your Marketing, Sales and Customer Success motion (under Vendor Steps).
6		2	Now start thinking about your Buyers journey for purchasing a product like yours. Document those steps in the Buyers Steps, aligning where appropriate with the steps you have designed
7		3	Look at the buyer's journey and look for steps that you are not addressing, and redesign your sales motion to make sure these are addressed
8		4	Now look at the steps that are most broken in your current motion, where conversion rates are far lower than you would like. Put yourself inside your buyer's head and try to understand why they are not doing that step. What is the Friction involved in the step? Is it too much work? Can you remove/lower the friction? What are their concerns about doing the step? Can you address those concerns better? What are their motivations to go through that step? Can you increase the motivations to pull them through the step using a reward of some kind? (Use the Friction, Concerns and Motivations columns in this spreadsheet to document what you uncover.)
9		5	Make sure you understand the "Full Wow!" required to make your buyer comfortable with writing a purchase order. (See below.)
10		6	Redesign the overall flow of your steps to remove steps, remove friction and concerns, and increase motivation to get your buyer to the Full Wow! moment in the shortest possible time. This will drastically improve your funnel conversion rates.
11		7	The key to success is becoming a master at getting inside your buyer's head and understanding how they are thinking as they are exposed to your sales motion. What works well for them and entices them to continue? What is a turn off that stops them from continuing? How can you use what motivates them to pull them through your process? Most funnels are designed around what the vendor wanted to happen and not the buyer. This process is designed to get you to redesign your funnel around your buyer, and not around how you, the vendor, wanted things to work.
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13	Note: need to break Product Free Trial into a separate journey with each step in the trial broken out - Time to Wow! analysis
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15	Two Useful things to have thought through:
16	1. What is the "Full Wow!" required to get the buyer comfortable that they can safely purchase our product?
17		Example:
18		- Belief that this pain is high enough priority to spend money here before other projects - Confidence that it solves the problem without creating new problems - Confidence that their users like it and will use it - Confidence that it is the best solution in the market - Confidence that they will get a good ROI for the money they will pay for it - Confidence that they will get good support if they need it - Confidence that the product will integrate well with their existing solutions
19		The above should list all points that you will need to address in your sales motion. Ask yourself: "what is the shortest path, lowest friction path that we can create to get the buyer to there?"
20	2. What is the TRIGGER that makes your buyer start looking to purchase something to solve their problem?
21		Understanding this will help you figure out who are qualified buyers, and how they are likely to go about their search for a solution
22		- Can you create this trigger (.e.g using a score like HubSpot's Website Grader, to make them feel like the problem is acute, and they need to solve it now.)
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25	Buyers Steps		Vendors Steps	Guess as to why this step has lower conversion than desired	Friction for the buyer in this Step	Buyer Concerns	Motivations to get through the Friction & Concerns
26	Trigger that makes them aware they have pain, and create desire to find solution		Content about the pain, and possible ways to solve Look for ways to create the Trigger. A good example of this was HubSpot's WebSite grader, which provided a free tool with high value to the customer by showing them what was wrong with the SEO on their Website. The score that WebSite Grader offered at the end acts as a trigger because not marketer wants to have a low score associated with their work. So they would look for ways to fix this, and that would lead them to the next step: finding out how HubSpot could help fix this.				Use of a free tool like WebSite Grader that offers high value to the customer with very low work can be a very powerful way to get viral word of mouth spread about the tool.
27	Research solutions		Content comparing different ways to solve the pain
28	Visit Review Sites		Ensure there are many excellent reviews on G2 Crowd, Capterra, etc.
29	Find budget (if required)
30	Shortlist vendors		Web page showing why vendor is better than named competitors
31	Visit Vendor Website		Website journey Often worth breaking out each step on a separate sheet to make sure this flow works properly	Ensure that there are clear journeys for each different buyer persona that might visit the site. And if there are multiple different pain points that they might be looking to solve, make sure there are separate journeys for each pain point.
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33			Capture their email address as a Raw Lead	Vendor doesn't have strong enough motivation to get them over the concern about giving their email address?		Get too many vendor emails and don't want to give out their email address to avoid getting more
34			Nurture the lead if they are not ready to do a free trial immediately	Most of the prospects that find your website will NOT be ready to purchase, and you will need to find a way to nurture them over time, while waiting for the right moment when they are able to consider using a new product, or when a trigger happens that makes them want to try something new.
35	Evaluate Product		Free Trial (Break out each step in a separate sheet for Time to Wow! analysis)
36			Sales call to qualify the customer	Hate getting calls from salespeople		Hate getting calls from salespeople	Call comes from knowledgeable expert that can provide value on the call, and who avoids overly sales tactics
37	Consider if the product will fit in their current environment (integrations, etc.)		Web page with listing of integrations and examples of how well this works
38	Evaluate ROI (cost vs benefit)		Pricing pages ROI calculator Testimonials from customers on cost effectiveness of solution		This involves a fair amount of work	Most buyers are not used to building ROI's for the purchase of a product.	Offer an ROI caculator that will do the work for them and spit out a nearly finished presentation that they can personalize and use
39	Get feedback from colleagues		Make it easy to invite colleagues to use the product
40	Get comfort that this is a safe vendor to buy from		List of customers with testimonials on the website Offer reference calls with existing customers
41	Present to Boss		Presentation template for how to present the benefits of Vendors solution
42	Run through purchasing process				If the purchase price is above some threshold (often $10k), then it will have to go through a more formal purchase process		Look for ways to create an easier entry point, where a champion on their own can make the purchase decision using a credit card, and then you can expand the footprint later on
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44	Implementation		Implementation
45	On-boarding		On-boarding	Successful onboarding is essential if you want low churn. If you fail to onboard successfully, and then try later on to save the account, it will be much harder as all the enthusiasm for the product will have evaporated. Consider scoring your Onboarding to make sure it was successfully done	What steps are involved? How much work? Who else has to get involved (e.g. IT, etc.)?		Look for ways to remove steps, friction, and other people that are required
46			Customer Success work to keep customer happy
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48			Renewal	In my experience, the two biggest reasons for churn are: - Did not onboard successfully - Lost the champion, or executive support for the project
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