Buyer's Journey: How to Align Your Sales Process

A typical B2B buyer's journey is anything but linear. Decision-makers do extensive research and engage with your brand across multiple touchpoints before talking with sales or completing a purchase.

To shorten your sales cycle, you need to know how your target audience makes purchase decisions. Learn how prospects navigate each buying stage and map them to your sales process so you can improve customer acquisition and start growing revenue.

What is the buyer's journey?

The buyer's journey is the path of discovery, research, and decision-making that customers go through when purchasing a product or service. It includes three distinct stages — awareness, consideration, and decision — which overlap with both the customer journey and the sales funnel.

Buyer journey vs. customer journey

The buyer's journey and customer journey both refer to a series of interactions a consumer has with a brand during the decision-making process. In fact, the first three stages of the customer journey are identical to the buyer's journey.

But while the buyer's journey ends at the decision stage, the customer journey continues after the initial purchase. It includes two additional stages that cover customer retention and loyalty.

As a result, the customer's journey captures the entire lifecycle. It spans discovering the brand to becoming a repeat customer and a loyal advocate for its products and services.

Buyer journey vs. sales funnel

Both the buyer's journey and the sales funnel illustrate the purchasing process. But they do so from two different perspectives:

• The buyer's journey shows the customer's point of view.
• The sales funnel reflects the perspective of the company — specifically the sales team.

As a result, the two processes include many of the same stages, just with different names. Some funnels include up to six stages, with several (e.g., interest, evaluation, and engagement) to cover the consideration process.

Below, we'll cover how to map the sales perspective to the buyer's perspective to sell more efficiently.

What are the three stages of the buyer's journey?

To understand your customers' buying journey, you need to know how the decision-making process works for your buyer persona. This step-by-step walkthrough of the stages of the buying process covers what prospects typically do, think, and ask on the path to purchase.

Awareness stage

At the awareness stage, the buyer is aware of pain points or symptoms of a problem. But they don't yet have a full understanding of the problem or how to solve it. So when they search for answers, they tend to describe the problem rather than the solution.

As an example, suppose your typical customer is a salesperson who needs to reach more prospects via cold email. During this stage, they might notice that their outreach efforts aren't getting the results they want.

So they might start to think that their current approach is too time-consuming and there must be a better way to connect with prospects at scale. So they might ask:

• "How are successful sales reps handling cold outreach?"
• "Is cold email still effective?"
• "What's a good response rate for cold outreach?"

Consideration stage

During the consideration stage, buyers begin to research solutions for their problems. They're able to name the problem, and they start to discover brands, products, and services that might be able to help them.

As they explore solutions, they might read reviews of software platforms or watch explainer videos. And they might think about how much time these solutions would save and how they'd work with an existing tech stack.

At the consideration stage, a potential buyer might ask:

• "What are the deliverability rates for this platform?"
• "How does this platform and that one compare in terms of features?"
• "How can I use this platform to automate my cold outreach process?"

Decision stage

Once buyers reach the decision stage, they have a short list of potential solutions for their problems. So they're spending time evaluating each one, asking others for advice, and reviewing use cases.

To make the right decision, they typically demo or trial different solutions. And in many cases, they negotiate pricing to secure a solution that fits with their budget.

As they get closer to making a purchase, a potential buyer might ask:

• "How quickly will I see ROI from this software purchase?"
• "Do you have case studies from other customers in my niche?"
• "Are subscriptions flexible if I need to scale up or down?"

Why you need to know the customer purchasing journey

Understanding every stage of the purchasing path takes time. But once you know how potential customers navigate this process, your sales and marketing teams benefit by:

• Creating a better customer experience. When your process reflects prospects' needs, challenges, and questions at each stage, it creates a smoother experience that often leads to more conversions.
• Developing more relevant sales and marketing efforts. When you know what prospects are thinking and asking at each buyer journey stage, you can create content that speaks their language.
• Making the sales process more efficient. The more data you collect at each stage, the better you can support the decision-making process, helping prospects navigate the journey more efficiently.
• Supporting your account-based marketing (ABM) efforts. Once you understand the buyer's journey, you'll have an easier time creating targeted content that you can customize for your top accounts.

How to align your sales process with the buyer's journey

Don't expect prospects to match their customer journey map to your sales funnel. Instead, tailor your sales process to the different stages of the buyer's journey.

Awareness stage

At the awareness stage, take time to understand your ideal customer profile (ICP). In addition to their industry, company size, and annual revenue, make sure to clarify their pain points and goals. Then, create educational content that speaks to these customer needs.

At Livestorm, we regularly produce blog posts that answer questions about promoting webinars and hosting different types of live events. For example, our post about B2B webinar ideas is designed to inspire potential customers while introducing them to our webinar software.

Our B2B marketing strategy also includes comprehensive guides on topics like video marketing and virtual events. Plus, we collect original data and compile it into assets like our 2024 Webinar Marketing Report.

Our webinar toolbox also attracts potential customers as they become aware of questions about hosting or improving live events. With our tools, prospects can easily achieve tasks like outlining webinars, creating webinar scripts, and analyzing webinar engagement.

At this stage, the goal of our content marketing strategy isn't converting prospects into paying customers. Instead, we focus on providing helpful information and building tools that create value for our ICP.

Consideration stage

To connect with prospects at the consideration stage, introduce content that focuses on the solutions your product or service provides. This often includes comparative content, customer stories, and lead generation campaigns.

For example, we've developed a webinar software comparison guide that lets you evaluate Livestorm with top competitors. Each side-by-side table compares customer ratings, functionality, and key features.

Our collection of Livestorm customer stories features dozens of case studies. Each one walks through the process of how the customer used Livestorm to solve a specific pain point — and it quantifies the customer's results.

We also use our software platform to showcase our solution and generate leads using a webinar funnel. Our webinar library includes a mix of quarterly product webinars and co-marketing events that allow our lead generation efforts to reach a wider audience.

At this stage, we typically encourage interested customers to take a closer look at our product. This often involves prompts to sign up for a product demo.

Decision stage

To help prospects make the right purchase, we focus decision stage content on achieving specific outcomes and overcoming objections. At this stage, we often use video content, including a combination of webinars and video conferencing.

For example, we've created an on-demand Livestorm demo that potential buyers can access at their convenience. It shows our webinar software in action, helping customers assess how our platform works and if it meets their needs.

Our virtual selling strategy also includes live demos, which provide more personalized walkthroughs and pricing discussions. Interested customers can book a live demo by clicking the call to action button on our homepage.

Our sales team uses Livestorm's video conferencing features when hosting these demos. This creates an opportunity to showcase our platform's video call capabilities while presenting a customized demo and answering customer questions.

Livestorm to optimize your buyer's journey

Whether you want to connect with prospects one on one or in large groups, Livestorm can help. Our webinar software is designed for live and on-demand events as well as video conferencing and virtual meetings.

With Livestorm, you can:

• Host live webinars and record them for evergreen lead generation
• Set up virtual meetings with buying teams
• Hold video calls in dedicated video conferencing rooms
• Sync data with CRMs, marketing automation tools, and 1,000+ Livestorm integrations

Curious how Livestorm can support your sales process? Sign up for Livestorm and set up your first webinar or video call in minutes.