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The sales cycle has changed, more than most companies realise. In the past, the sales journey would begin when a company connected with a prospect, showcased its value and paved the way to potential conversions. Now, buyers are the ones with all the power.
In a digital world, consumers in every industry have access to more information than ever before. They can learn everything they need to know about a problem (and its solution) in minutes, without ever having to speak to a sales rep. Studies show B2B buyers complete about 70% of the sales cycle on their own before speaking to a rep.
So, what does this mean to your company’s sales process? How can you adapt to a world where consumers navigate most of the purchasing journey themselves?
Here’s where things can get confusing for old-fashioned companies. Countless organisations still think the “sales cycle” and the “buyer journey” are the same thing. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Your sales cycle might start with “prospecting” – or reaching out to customers.
However, the buyer journey starts long before this, when a customer recognises an issue or a goal they want to accomplish, and starts researching options themselves. Most prospects today already know exactly what they want and need before they speak to a sales rep.
This means your sales strategy needs to start a lot earlier than you’d think. The cycle should really begin with the combined efforts of your sales and marketing teams – working together to generate demand, deliver value to customers, and increase brand awareness.
Adapting your sales cycle to fit the new buyer journey by providing the content customers need to research, compare, and choose products themselves, pays dividends. It gives you an opportunity to start building relationships with customers from day one, directing them towards your company before you ever attempt to reach out and make a sale.
Ultimately, the sales cycle is no longer as important to the success of your business as a strategy that encompasses the entire buyer journey. While it’s still important to have strategies in place for prospecting, nurturing relationships, and improving retention, it’s also worth remembering as little as 5% of a buyer’s journey is typically spent with a salesperson.
So, how do you centre your sales strategy around the buyer journey?
The first, and most obvious step, is figuring out which stages are actually involved in your buyer’s journey. Before your customers even interact with your business, which channels do they use to collect information about a product, service, or solution?
How do they discover information and news, or learn about the trends in your industry? What guides their decisions when they start evaluating potential companies to help them with their pain point?
Mapping your customer journey will help you determine where you need to start building authority and presence. For instance, 82% of B2B brands use social media channels to generate demand, leads, and interest for their business.
Today’s buyers don’t make decisions based on the lofty claims they hear from sales reps – at least not most of the time. Instead, they do their own research, to draw their own conclusions about whether your business is reputable, authoritative, and trustworthy.
According to statistics, 54% of sales reps believe the biggest change they’re seeing in their role is a growing need for trust among prospects. Customers want to know that you’re credible before they even consider talking to you. While you can focus on building trust through the sales cycle, by connecting emotionally with consumers and delivering value, it makes more sense to start early.
Validate the strength of your business by creating content and marketing campaigns that highlight your core values, and the benefits of your products. Use thought leadership content, from reports and webinars, to whitepapers and case studies, to give your claims more credence.
Content production is often associated with “marketing” more than sales. But as we mentioned above, these two concepts are becoming increasingly intertwined. Developing content for each stage of the buyer journey is an excellent way to strengthen your relationship with customers.
Blog posts and articles that cover relevant topics in your industry help to increase brand awareness and showcase authority in your space. Videos that demonstrate the features of your products, or compare them to competing solutions help customers during the “comparison” process.
Even well-crafted landing pages can assist customers in making purchasing decisions before they consider reaching out to a sales rep. Content won’t just give your brand more presence throughout the buyer journey, it will also empower your sales team.
The content you create will give sales professionals useful information to draw on when they get to the point of actively interacting with a prospect.
One important part of tailoring your sales strategy to the buyer journey is recognising that not every customer will go through the same purchasing process. No two prospects are entirely the same. They may have different goals, needs, and pain points. That’s why, in 2022, a quarter of sales professionals said that demand for personalisation had impacted their role that year.
Personalising your sales strategies doesn’t just mean using different pitches and sales methods with every customer you target. It also means ensuring you’re supporting and educating customers with content created for each “segment” you serve.
For instance, if your company sells email marketing software to all kinds of companies, you wouldn’t just provide insights into how large enterprises can use these tools to increase productivity. You would also explore the potential challenges small businesses can overcome.
In the traditional sales cycle, the “end” of the process happens when a salesperson successfully closes a deal and completes a sale. However, the buyer journey doesn’t stop after a customer purchases something from you. Famous studies from Harvard remind us that acquiring new customers can be five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer.
If you want to stay lucrative in a competitive market and earn consistent revenue, then you need to continue to connect with and support your customers, even after they’ve handed over their cash. This means developing customer success teams who can onboard and train new customers or building effective customer experience teams.
It also means creating the kind of content that might be useful to your customers after they make a purchase, such as webinars, or step-by-step guides.
Ultimately, the way consumers purchase products in both the B2B and B2C landscape has changed significantly in recent years. Focusing entirely on an old-fashioned sales cycle is no longer the best way to grow and enhance your business.
If you want to thrive in the years ahead, you’ll need to learn how to tailor your strategy to the journey of your buyers – working with them every step of the way.
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