Council Post: Developing An Effective Customer Journey Map: 16 Tips For Sales Pros

The buying behavior of a customer forms one of the most crucial pieces of knowledge for business development professionals. In business, the goal is to anticipate the consumer’s desire and then use that to sell them a product or service. The best way to do this is to develop a customer journey map.

These journey maps help sales professionals acquire a better understanding of the customer experience. The most useful customer journey maps offer deep insight into the consumer’s mindset at every step of the purchase. Below, 16 experts from Forbes Business Development Council provide useful advice for business development professionals who want to develop their own customer journey maps.

Forbes Business Development Council member share tips on how biz dev professionals can construct effective customer maps.

Photos courtesy of the individual members.

1. Connect On A Personal Level

It may sound cliche, but sales teams must connect with their customers on a personal level. We must understand their issues and how our solutions can help. No amount of data scrubbing, automated email campaigns or social media posts will replace direct conversations with our customers to determine those factors. All buying choices are personal, so we must connect on a personal level. — Aron Derbidge, Blackmere Consulting

2. Understand The Value They’re Looking For

Understanding the value that the customer is looking for is the first step. Instilling a culture of accountability that delivers that value at every possible point in the customer journey is key. Without ensuring that expectations around value creation are set, organizations will continue to spend resources providing a service that doesn’t meet what their customers thought they were buying. — David Gerry, WhiteHat Security

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3. Ask Questions And Learn Their Goals

Ask customers questions about how they operate, listen to what they say, internalize the information and have active conversations. Learn their goals and how they got to where they are. If you know the journey they’ve been on, you’re better equipped to draw the picture of where they are going and how they are supposed to get there. — Maxwell Schneider, Affinity Beyond Capital

4. Articulate Your Customer Personas

Start by thoroughly understanding your beachhead customer. The first step in the process of developing a customer journey map is effectively articulating your customer persona. Take the time to do the necessary primary market research to best understand who your customer is and everything else you can learn about them. — Adam Mendler, The Veloz Group

5. Engage With Interactive Initiatives

Get to know your customers by engaging them with interactive and value-added interviews/data collection initiatives. Hear what they want, put yourself in their place and create personas so you really understand life in their shoes every day of the week. Then you’ll see that you will probably find more problems that annoy them! Solutions can then be far more targeted. — Oluchi Ikechi, Accenture

6. Ask About Experiences

Ask customers about their own memorable personal experiences, and layer in your own. If you can determine the critical points in the journey, they are the right steps in creating a positive journey. — Fred Soller, DataOceans, LLC

7. Align All Customer Success Teams

Your customers don’t care how you’re structured from an organizational perspective. They must experience your brand from the initial engagement on the website, through closing the deals and to the renewal as one entity. Make sure your marketing, sales and customer success teams are tightly aligned and connected to create a seamless experience for your buyer. — Kevin Knieriem, Clari

8. Create A Unified Customer Experience

Creating a unified customer experience (UCE) is critical to making the customer journey work. The sales team needs to synchronize efforts with product development and marketing such that all platforms communicate the same messaging and same context, and that all customer touch points reflect intuition and uniform customer experience levels. A good product, but poor experience is worse than a bad product. — Wajid Mirza, Arthur Lawrence

9. Develop A Lead Scoring Model

Develop a world-class lead scoring model to understand where a customer is in their buying journey. Scoring models can provide valuable insights on the interest a prospective client has shown. These insights can help you engage with each prospect in more sharp, relevant and meaningful ways. It’s important to connect with customers at the right touch point at the right time with the right insights. — Rakhi Voria, IBM

10. Keep Track Of All Points Of Entry

Keep track of all the points of entry. Customer journeys all start somewhere and it’s easy to lose track of your active ads, posts, emails, calling scripts, landing pages, etc. Make sure to prune and update your points of entry, as well as verify that they lead customers smoothly through the best conversion funnel for them. Map out each funnel as you do this verification to see the big picture! — Alexander Divinsky, RMG Media

11. Create The Path Of Least Resistance

The goal is to create the path of least resistance by developing a logical sales cycle process. Generate a storyboard where each part is tied to a specific stage in the buying cycle. Write these stages on notecards, and list the appropriate assets and communications for that point in the cycle. Then, write the next verifiable step to keep moving forward in the cycle. — Christian Valiulis, Automatic Payroll Systems

12. Think Of The Journey Map As A Closed Loop

Instead of thinking of an average or typical customer, think about the market segments you operate in and the different personas in each of those segments. Once that is done, imagine the customer journey map as a closed loop and not a string from point A to point B. A closed loop implies that a delighted customer could be a repeat customer and/or an unpaid but highly valuable advocate. — Atul Minocha, Chief Outsiders

13. Ensure A Frictionless Customer Experience

An ideal customer experience is frictionless. We can help ensure a frictionless customer experience by making sure that every department in our organization speaks the same language and is part of a holistic experience. The customer journey map should ensure the handoff between direct sales, inside sales and customer service is seamless to establish a long-term relationship. — Julie Thomas, ValueSelling Associates

14. Consider Different Decision-Maker Roles

A committee with teams of a dozen different stakeholders are involved in most enterprise decisions. The map must consider the different decision-maker roles-what business value they need from the solution and what content they need to facilitate their decision. This means that each role has a different perspective on what is valuable to them, and a different journey as a result. — Tom Pisello, Mediafly

15. Work With Your Internal Teams

Work with your internal teams (marketing, product development, customer service/success, etc.) that have input in the customer experience. Understand your customer segments and personas, touch points and “magic moments” that really make a difference. Define what experience your customer desires, map the touch points across the customer lifecycle and ensure you have coverage across the entirety. — Hugo Harris, PwC Australia

16. Include Product Management

Add product management to your customer journey definition. Product managers research and understand specific problems for specific personas and create products and features which delight customers by solving problems. Each persona/product intersection is an origin of a customer journey. If you start somewhere else, your customers will likely get lost in their journey. — Douglas McDowell, SentryOne

Originally published at https://www.forbes.com.