How to build a customer journey in B2B
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Buyer personas and customer journeys are powerful tools that many B2B companies still overlook. Use real data to create clear personas and map every step of the customer’s experience, from first contact to a lasting relationship. This will help you to spot gaps in your sales process and uncover new opportunities. This will help you to spot gaps in your sales process and uncover new opportunities. Start with clear objectives, identify your key personas, and outline every interaction along the journey. This simple, customer-centric approach ensures your team delivers the right information at the right time, builds stronger relationships, and ultimately drives growth.
Creating the customer journey helps you understand your sales process - Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash
Most companies operating in a B2B environment don’t use buyer personas and customer journeys. A Statista survey revealed that only 36% of B2B companies employ both tools, while 24% use neither (Statista). In my experience, most SMEs I’ve worked with rarely use these resources. They might touch on them once, but never integrate them into their daily activities. Meanwhile, two-thirds of businesses conduct their own research and compare products before contacting a salesperson (Saleslion). So, how are these topics related? The surprising connection is that while buyers are becoming increasingly self-reliant, but many B2B companies are falling behind. Without clear buyer personas and customer journeys, you might not know if your products were part of the evaluation process, whether potential customers found the right information, or what opinion they might form about your offerings.
In this post, I will cover the topics…
What are Buyer Personas?
What is a Customer Journey?
A step-to-step guide on how to create a Customer Journey for your company.
Buyer Personas: What they are and how to draft them
Buyer personas are characters that represent different types of buyers. They help you understand who your customers are, what drives their decisions, and the challenges they face. All insights for tailoring your marketing and sales strategies.
Your personas should be crafted based on real data and market research. Start by gathering information through surveys, interviews, and CRM analytics. Look for common trends in demographics, job roles, motivations, and pain points, then synthesize this data into detailed profiles. Each persona should include a name, photo, background, needs, concerns, and goals. Make them memorable, so your teams can easily engage with them in their daily activities.
For a more in-depth look at personas, refer to Personas - A Simple Introduction or the original book Personas - User Focused Design by Lene Nielsen. The poster "10 Steps to Personas" is particularly helpful as it guides you step-by-step throughout the process.
To make it more tangible, here’s an example of a persona:
Perona Template - Production Paul
Pro-Tip: LLMs like ChatGPT are excellent for drafting your personas. Use them for clustering data, writing traits, or even generating images.
Customer Journey: Mapping the process
A customer journey illustrates the complete process a buyer—represented by your persona(s)—goes through, from initial awareness to becoming a loyal advocate. This map helps you identify every “touchpoint” where customers engage with your team, brand, or products across various channels. Each touchpoint should be designed to guide the customer toward a sale and if desired foster a long-lasting relationship.
The 5A’s Customer Journey
Before we dive into the details of designing these interactions, let's explore the different stages of the customer journey using the 5A’s model. Introduced by Philip Kotler in Marketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital, this model offers a high-level overview that applies especially well in today's digital sales processes.
These stages provide a framework to set and maintain the right touchpoints at every phase of the process. This model can be applied for B2B and B2C.
The 5A’s with their drivers and KPI’s for each phase.
The difference between B2C and B2B customer journeys
While the approach is similar for both B2C and B2B, the customer journey in B2B is often more complex:
Longer decision paths: B2B decisions involve multiple stakeholders, averaging 6.8 decision-makers in 2017 (and likely more today - HBR). This results in extended decision-making processes with more potential objections.
Structured purchase processes: Unlike often impulsive B2C purchases, B2B buying follows standardized procedures with competitor comparisons and negotiations, leading to longer cycles.
Vendor lock-in: Once a B2B purchase is made, repeat sales are typically easier, as the product is already proven and integrated into the buyer’s processes.
Complex decision drivers: B2C decisions are mainly driven by emotions and brand awareness, whereas B2B decisions also are based on functional value, ease of doing business, individual stakeholder benefits, and even inspirational value.
For further insights, see the HBR article, The B2B Elements of Value.
In summary, while both B2C and B2B customer journeys share common principles, B2B journeys are more complex and rich in phases.
Building a customer journey
Now that you have a solid foundation of background knowledge, let's explore how to build a customer journey effectively for your B2B company. In this chapter, I will walk through one use case, illustrating how to design a journey tailored to specific buyer personas. Keep in mind that you might need different journeys depending on factors such as:
Product(s) vs. Service(s): The journey may vary if you're selling a tangible product versus an intangible service.
First-time Purchase vs. Rebuy: New customers require a journey that educates and builds trust, while repeat purchases benefit from a streamlined process.
SME vs. Enterprise: The scale and complexity of the journey can differ between SMEs and larger organizations.
Other Factors: Industry-specific nuances, different buyer roles, and unique sales cycles all influence the journey.
The art lies in finding the right segmentation. You need to cover all relevant purchase scenarios without getting overwhelmed by too many customer journeys. For instance, you might consider mapping out separate journeys for:
A first-time customer purchasing a milling machine.
A returning customer looking to rebuy the same machine.
Special machine sales with more customization and more consultancy throughout the process.
1) Set your objectives
Begin by clearly defining what you want to achieve through improving your customer journey. This ensures you remain focused on what matters, rather than creating a plan that never gets implemented. Your objectives should align with your overall business strategy, and I recommend setting one primary objective to concentrate your efforts. Use the SMART principle—making your goal Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
For example, you might aim to increase qualified leads by 15% in Q2 compared to Q2 of last year.
2) Identify your personas
In this step, you want to identify all your relevant personas. As mentioned before, Personas - A Simple Introduction or the original book Personas - User Focused Design by Lene Nielsen with their “10-step method” to develop personas are an excellent resource that guides you through the process.
Once you’ve gone through this process, you'll have identified the relevant personas for your specific use case. For example, you might arrive at a structure like this:
Overview of all Personas for the customer journey.
Each persona should have a complete profile that includes their background, needs, concerns, and goals.
3) Identification of touchpoints and channels
Now it’s time to list every possible way a customer might encounter and interact with your brand. For a better overview, distinguish between online and offline channels. The goal is to create a clear overview of all touchpoints by categorizing them into those you can directly influence (such as your website or social media channels) and those you cannot (like independent reviews or word-of-mouth). This map will serve as the foundation for building your complete customer journey in the next step.
Below is a sample table illustrating how you might structure these touchpoints across each phase of the journey:
Structured overview on all touchpoints
4) Analyst the customer experience
In this step, examine the customer journey that your personas currently go through when interacting with your company. It doesn't have to be perfect right away. Start with a rough map and improve it incrementally over time. Gather a group of people from different departments such as R&D, Product Management, Marketing, Sales, and After-Sales to collaborate on this exercise. This cross-functional approach will ensure everyone gains a 360-degree view of the customer. This will deepen your collective understanding and highlight the main areas for improvement.
Draw the journey (from a customer view)
Start by visually mapping out the entire customer journey, including all the involved personas. Your map can be as detailed as needed, even more so than my example. Outline the various tasks, decisions, and milestones for each phase of the journey. To understand your reasoning later, include annotations or notes that explain the purpose behind each step. The clearer the visual representation, the easier it will be to spot gaps, overlaps, and opportunities for improvement.
The detailed customer journey
Identify the effective touchpoints
For every stage of your mapped customer journey, list out each specific touchpoint where interactions occur. Be explicit: whether it's a digital interaction like a website visit or live chat, or an offline event like a sales meeting or in-person support call. This detailed breakdown of touchpoints will be helpful for identifying opportunities for optimization.
Customer journey with all actual touchpoints
Add feelings and issues across the journey
Add the emotional experience of your personas and the issues they may encounter at each touchpoint. Ask yourself these question for every interaction:
How did the persona feel? Consider whether the encounter was positive, neutral, or negative.
What issues may arise at the current step? Identify any obstacles or frustrations. For example, a website that pushes “booking a demo” without providing key information during the research phase.
Was all the needed information available? Determine if the customer received the details they were looking for, or if gaps in communication may cause confusion or irritation.
Document these insights directly on your journey map. For each touchpoint, note down the persona's emotional state and any issues encountered.
Customer journey with all actual touchpoints and the experience at each stage
Write a story for the customer journey. Describe the reasons why the experience is positive or negative. This will give you a better feeling for the customer
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Paul first encountered the “Top-Milling” brand at EMO 2017. He noticing their booth’s engaging setup and friendly, yet not pushy, sales staff. Although he wasn’t the head of production back then, he walked away with a positive impression of the brand. Over the years, he continued spotting Top-Milling’s ads in Milling-Journal, which arouse his growing curiosity about their machines.
Later, Paul was promoted to head of production. When CEO Mark introduced an exciting new part with tight tolerances that their current equipment couldn’t handle, Paul immediately thought of Top-Milling’s latest model, the Top-Milling-Machine-100. Hoping to gather more details, he visited their website—but found limited information, which left him somewhat frustrated. To get specifics, he scheduled a sales consultation at Top-Milling’s headquarters.
Paul, Mark, Procurement Pia, and Maintenance Rick attended the meeting. They toured the showroom, where a knowledgeable sales consultant demonstrated the machine’s capabilities. The experience was positive, especially when they learned the price range fit within their investment budget.
Returning to the office, the team weighed their options. Pia insisted they compare at least two competing vendors, which resulted in mild frustration when the quotes of Top-Milling arrived three weeks late. Ultimately, the group concluded Top-Milling’s machine offered superior precision and potential for future part expansions, despite being more expensive. Pia and Mark then invited the Top-Milling reps for a final negotiation, which ended on a high note. They felt good about securing a small perk, prompting them to sign the deal.
A few months later, the machine arrived. Although initial setup had some hiccups, Top-Milling’s support team quickly resolved the issues. Once the machine was fully operational, the first batch of parts met all quality standards, leaving Paul and his team satisfied. Having fulfilled the new contract successfully, they’re now enthusiastic advocates of Top-Milling, ready to recommend the brand to industry peers.
5) Optimizing the customer journey
With your customer journey map complete, the next step is to refine and enhance it. Begin by addressing the areas where customers express the most dissatisfaction—you should already have a clear sense of your weak spots. Then, consult the 5A’s KPIs to identify which metrics best support your broader business strategy. Tackle these improvements gradually, rather than attempting to fix everything at once.
Experiment quickly: keep what works, and discard what doesn’t. This iterative approach brings continuous progress without overwhelming your team.
Conclusion: Embrace a customer-centric, iterative approach
Building and optimizing a B2B customer journey is not about achieving perfection overnight. It’s about continuous, incremental improvement. Throughout this process, we've learned how to define clear objectives, identify key personas, map and categorize every touchpoint, and understand the emotional experiences and challenges your customers face. By involving cross-functional teams, from R&D to after-sales, you ensure a holistic, 360-degree view of the customer experience. Tracking the right KPIs enables you to measure progress and identify areas for further refinement. Ultimately, adopting a customer-centric mindset will gradually improve customer satisfaction, and drive sustainable growth. Remember, the journey is evolving, so should your strategies.
