Never Mind the Sales Process—What About the Buyer’s Journey?

When organizations talk about their sales processes, they are usually thinking in terms of a sequence of sales activities, typically encapsulated in a series of pipeline stages, which are designed to move a prospect from first contact to a successful sale.

There’s overwhelming research to prove that having a formalized sales process has helped many organizations to improve sales performance. But if my recent observations are anything to go by, many well-established sales processes seem to have something of a blind spot when it comes to two absolutely critical elements of successful B2B selling: What is the prospect doing and thinking at each point in their buying decision process, and what can we do to recognize where they are and facilitate their onward journey?