Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

This article was first published  June 17, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog

This is the third in a series of articles about designing a great lead nurturing system. So far I’ve talked about coming up with a universal definition for the word “lead” and the marketing database you need to house your prospects’ contact information and communication history.

Now let’s look at the importance of understanding how your buyers buy. Anyone who has been marketing or selling in the business technology world lately doesn’t need me to tell them that it’s tough out there. More people than ever are now involved in your prospects’ purchase decisions. Selling cycles are getting longer. Response rates to most types of lead generation programs are going down. And buyers don’t want to talk to sales people until much later in the game.

It’s the buyers that I want to talk about in this article because they are firmly in the driver’s seat. They control what information is required, when it’s required, and how it’s going to be accessed. They can find out nearly anything they want to know about you, your products, and their options without your help.

This is very different from the sales and marketing world that many of us are used to, and it takes a different approach. Since the buyer is in charge here, the best move on your part is to clearly understand the entire buying process and carefully map your marketing and sales efforts to meet the buyers’ needs. In other words, you can become the equivalent of a buyer’s GPS – providing the exact information the driver needs to move toward his or her destination.

Mapping the Trip

This exercise calls for active participation by your best sales and marketing people. Other customer-facing departments such as client support are good to include too.

You can chart your customers’ buying process by following these steps:

1. First, talk to your customers and – if you can – talk to some prospects to find out what they went through when deciding to buy your solution. Seems obvious that you’d start with the customers, doesn’t it? But a startling number of marketing programs are based on input from everyone except the customers.
2. Next, gather your sales and marketing experts, draw a spreadsheet on a whiteboard and list each of your buyer’s decision points (one per column) across the top of a chart.In a typical multi-stage buying process you’re likely to have decision points such as: establish need, research options, create a preliminary (long) list, cut to a short list, select and negotiate, and delivery or deployment. Remember, these are the steps in the buyer’s process – not the steps in your selling process.
3. Down the left-hand side, give one row to each of the following:

1. Who is involved in the decision at this point?

2. What are their business issues and obstacles?

3. What questions do they usually ask?

4. What answers will move them to the next stage?

5. Where do they go for this information?

6. What marketing and sales tools do you need?

4. Now fill in the boxes, answering each question for each decision point.

I first ran across this process in a book called Rivers of Revenue by Kristin Zhivago. It works.

Bonus Benefits

This exercise gives you a picture of your prospects’ decision-making process that will help accelerate just about any marketing or sales program. And it also creates a new level of understanding between your sales and marketing people. By charting the buying process you will have taken a big step toward aligning your marketing and sales team – an accomplishment with such great benefits, I can’t begin to do the subject justice here.

Once you’ve mapped the process and identified marketing and sales needs, you have a great tool to select the best marketing tactics, develop the most effective messaging, and get rid of any waste. If you’re spending money on marketing efforts that don’t meet a requirement of the map, stop. Eliminate them and focus your resources on efforts that support the map.

We are highly unlikely to return to a time when companies control the selling process, so you might as well get used to letting the buyer drive. However, by understanding the process and providing the right answers at the right time you can make sure you’re in the car – and not underneath it.

This article was originally written in 2005.