1. The B2B Customer Journey

Your B2B customers will go through the customer journey, from learning about your brand to becoming repeat buyers. Each step of the customer journey includes lead management events to move them forward to the next step. The goal is to get B2B prospects through the journey where they make repeat purchases. 

The B2B customer journey consists of these five stages:

• Awareness

• Consideration

• Conversion

• Loyalty

• Advocacy

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Every lead management trigger at each stage of the journey must work correctly if you want to make sales. Is there a stage in your B2B customer journey where your leads stall and don’t move forward? This is where B2B customer journey mapping comes in.

B2B customer journey mapping manages your customers’ progression through your sales funnel. It analyzes the sequence of touches your prospects will encounter at each stage of the customer journey. A B2B customer journey map does this with a visual representation of your lead management system. 

There are different types of B2B customer journey maps, ranging from simple to complex. There are seven steps when creating and using your B2B customer journey map: 

1. Define your buyer personas

2. Identify your touchpoints

3. Research your customers

4. Map out the stages of your map

5. Analyze your customers’ behavior and pain points

6. Create an action plan

7. Monitor and make improvements/adjustments to your map

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2. Importance of Mapping

B2B customer journey mapping is important for your company’s financial success as it affects sales generation. According to the Aberdeen Group's studies, lead generation mapping improves the average sales cycle time from 0.9% to 16.8%. Faster sales cycles reduce bottlenecks in the sales funnel and keep your leads fresh. 

Customer mapping helps you provide a pleasant experience. It offers guidance and direction as to which touchpoints go in each stage and how to improve them. When B2B customers trigger the right touchpoints at the right time, they are more likely to convert. 

Specifically, B2B customer journey mapping has the following benefits:

1. Nurture and Qualify Leads 

A B2B customer journey map focuses on your customer’s experience. These experiences through your funnel introduce, educate, and get your leads to use your product or service.  

Altman Vilandrie & Co. discovered that good customer journey mapping increases qualified lead conversions by up to 25%. Starting the sales funnel with higher-qualified leads increases the probability of a sale. It also makes nurturing those leads easier. 

2. Help Measure Conversions and Lead Quality 

With a B2B customer journey map, you can track your leads back to the lead generation channel they came from. You’ll also be able to measure the conversion rate of every lead management touchpoint. This will allow you to improve, narrow down, or eliminate the content in your lead generation funnel. 

Tracking the lead generation channels that brought customers to the top of your funnel will help you measure their quality. With high-quality leads at the top of your funnel, the greater the chance for a sale at the end. 

3. Helps Better Acquaint You With Your Leads 

Relationships are important in lead generation. B2B customer journey mapping forces you to understand your leads to provide them with the best sales experience. This involves personalized lead management touchpoints that elicit greater engagement. 

The more engagement through lead management events a lead experiences, the more information you’ll learn about them. As you learn about your leads, the more useful, timely, and personalized messaging you can provide them. This increases revenue, decreases churn, improves customer satisfaction, and increases repeat purchases. 

4. Uncover and Scale New Lead Generation Channels

You likely have a lead management process that uses certain channels to convert prospects into sales. A B2B customer journey map breaks down the stages of your funnel and customer experience. This map helps you track the effectiveness of your lead-generation tools and uncover new ones. 

A B2B customer journey map helps you see which channels are working and which ones aren’t. You can update and modify the lead generation channels to improve customer experience. Additionally, mapping creates new touches by which customers can experience your product or service. 

5. Enables Low-touch Conversions

A customer journey that involves a lot of customer service support is frustrating for the sales leads and time-consuming for your sales reps. B2B customer journey mapping helps produce low-touch conversion experiences that reduce annoying and time-wasting human interaction. 

6. Meet the Unique Needs of Your Customers 

B2B customers are selective in who they do business with. They want to support brands that understand their pain points and whom they can trust. B2B customer journey mapping builds trust with your customers by providing a foundation for your sales and marketing strategies. 

With a game plan of what automated lead management touchpoints you’ll use throughout your funnel, you’ll generate personalized content. With personalized messaging at the stage they are at in the sales funnel, prospects will move forward.

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3. Automated Lead Management Workflow & Automated Lead Qualification Workflow

Automated lead management and lead qualification workflows convert your leads into customers. Business-to-business sales companies have a process of taking leads through their lead generation funnels. A lead management system that qualifies prospects will make the conversion process efficient and effective. 

The lead generation management workflow has the following stages: awareness, research, decision-making, and purchase. As a lead moves through the funnel, the closer a relationship they will have with your company. It becomes more important to deliver timely, personalized, authoritative communication to leads.

Automation enhances both workflows. Today’s technology allows you to create triggers and send out communications to the lead when they complete a desired action. This nurtures leads through your lead generation funnel. 

Business-to-business lead management and lead qualification help leads move faster through the funnel. A lead management workflow consists of lead capturing, lead tracking, lead qualification, lead distribution, and lead nurturing. Managing your leads helps you identify where various leads are in the funnel. 

It is risky not to have a lead management or lead qualification workflow. Without them, your funnel will have leaks (prospects falling through the cracks). You’ll have missed follow-up and lead engagement opportunities. 

4. Workflow Automation

A lead management workflow process consists of a series of touchpoints or triggers that are completed sequentially to generate sales. The actions executed by leads throughout the process are pre-defined rules a company sets beforehand.

An automated lead management workflow enhances your lead generation process by replacing manual tasks with software automation. Many of the automated sales lead generation tools are easy to use and install. 

Below are common workflow automation tools that are used for lead generation: 

• Lead Nurturing

• Lead Scoring

• Lead Filtering and Management

• Personalized Email Marketing

• Form and Page Creation

• Campaign Management

• Social Media Management

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Getting Started With Workflow Automation

To cultivate and prioritize B2B leads and increase ROI, you need to develop, manage, and maintain your workflow automation process. Below are the steps to get started with your automated lead management workflow:

1. Define your goals. What do want to achieve? 

2. Define your leads. Who are the leads you’re targeting? How do you qualify those leads? It is helpful to create buyer personas for each of your target audiences.

3. Define the desired outcomes of each stage of your lead management workflow. How will you know when a lead is ready to move forward to the next stage? How will you re-engage a lead that has stalled or fallen out of the workflow?

4. Create your triggers and touchpoints. Determine the rules that will deploy the communication leads receive based on their actions. 

5. Determine which sales and marketing automation tools you need. There are many workflow automation tools out there. Only invest in the ones with the functionalities and integrations your workflows need.

6. Tweak and revise. Regularly look at your workflows for trouble spots that can be improved. 

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5. Workflow Logic

 Workflow logic involves rules that will be used to filter leads as they go through your automated lead qualification workflows. This is important when you use sales and marketing automation integrations. 

When you use CRM, email, social media, or other sales integrations for workflow automation, the logic will look like triggers. When you use workflow logic, your leads will be filtered into the correct workflow or stage of the funnel. 

For example, if your company does business internationally, you’ll have a workflow for leads in each country. A business-to-business lead in London will trigger to go into the London workflow. There will be lead actions that set off triggers to deploy planned-out communication that moves them forward. 

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As mentioned earlier, automated lead management gives prospects a smooth journey through your funnel. Many lead generation platforms integrate with automation tools. LeadBoxer, for example, integrates with numerous automated sales and marketing tools and platforms.  

Mapping the journey your B2B leads take through your automated lead management workflows sets the foundation for good customer experience. Using various sales automation tools and integrations enhances the buyer’s journey, which produces quicker sales and happier customers.