3.3 Customer purchase mindset
“Only three things happen naturally in organisations: friction, confusion and underperformance.” Though management consultant, educator and author Peter Drucker said this in the context that everything else requires leadership, I think the principles applies equally to the communication and enablement of a leadership strategy. Make a strategy or approach too complicated, theoretical or unclear and it won’t work. Any operating model or business framework has to balance enough detail to meet the objective with being easy enough to understand, remember and work within.
A useful customer journey framework is one that can be operationalised across an organisation. There is no universal, perfect model of a customer’s lifecycle and the best model is always one that can be consistently and effectively adopt at scale. A perfectly modelled, imperfectly implemented customer journey model is the enemy of an imperfect but consistently adopted model. And multiple different models in the same organisation undermine the overall objective entirely, which is to remove friction and confusion from how teams work.
Customer centricity begins with a consistent description of the customer. The goal of the customer journey framework is to capture the broad stages that a customer goes through in their purchase process, and then to map that to sales and marketing actions. Customer journey frameworks ground understanding in what a customer must go through to purchase, rather than what an organisation must do to sell. Marketing activity should enable customers to solve their challenges faster, drive greater business value and impact and reduce their risks. Sales stages likewise have definitions of the activities that Sales should complete to enable and advance customers and they move forwards with a purchase.
Organisations can get tripped up on the idea that by mapping customer stages means that need to be able to place every customer precisely into one of them. As famed economist John Maynard Keynes said “I would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.” Expecting to map every customer to a precise stage of their purchase is to misunderstand the objective of a customer journey framework; it is not to perfectly put every customer in a precise box, but to enable an organisation to build great experiences and connections between boxes big enough that every customer will fit into one. Defining customers in a way that allows you to be confident in your classification while recognising a level of imprecision is a far more practical approach than fooling yourself with the idea of panopticon-like omnipotence that is mostly incorrect.
Customers will not follow your beautifully mapped journeys.
They will progress through elephant paths in your journey stages and while you will undoubtedly want to collect data on them as they do, you cannot know all things about all customers at all times. This is one of the areas of quantum uncertainty that marketers must learn to embrace. You can infer the stage a customer might be in, but if you were to actually ask them it would likely change the stage they are actually in.
Put another way, when an archer is practicing firing arrows at target they’re thinking about both accuracy and precision. Accuracy is about how close you are to the bullseye; precision is about how close your arrows land to each other. A precise archer that clusters all of their arrows tightly a meter to the left of the target has still failed to score any points. An accurate archer whose arrows are spread all of over the target will still be able to claim some points and advance to the next round.
The customer purchase path
The first rule of sales says that you cannot sell to a customer that cannot buy. You also cannot sell to a customer that has not identified a need to buy. You can, however, take a customer through the process of understanding their need, even if they weren’t previously aware of it. All customers, whether they’re net new, you’re cross selling to new buying centres or you’re upselling within an existing buying centres will go through the same states of a customer journey. Whether their purchase journey is completed entirely online, is fully supported by a sales person or is a hybrid of marketing-and sales-driven activity they will go through the same states of buying. It may take a week or it may take a year, but everyone will go through the same states. Everyone. Sales and Marketing must optimise their experience at each state and the best performing organisations operationalise this process so they can engage prospective customers early and define their reason to buy at the outset. This is the game you signed up to play by taking a career in marketing.
Below I’ve laid out a ‘standard’ customer purchase path. I put the word ‘standard’ in air quotes as it is a bit of a contradiction. There is no standard because no customer’s purchase journey will be the same. But precisely because there is no consistency we can gravitate towards this as the best average. In the UK, a woman’s estimated due date for giving birth is the date of her last period plus 280 days, or 40 weeks. This 40 weeks is the number that every prospective parent thinks towards, build their plans around and shares with friends and family, but really it’s the centre of a broad average. Only 4% of babies are actually born on their due date. No pregnancy is the same so the ‘standard’ gravitates towards the middle of a probability curve, which is the same principle we can apply with customer purchase paths. No organisation will follow an exact path through these states, but all organisations will go through them one way or another.
This path defines the states, definitions and mindsets a customer will go through as they identify a need, purchase a solution realise value and complete their purchase lifecycle. These seven states are discrete phases of the purchase that Sales and Marketing can model their plans against to enable buyers and customers in their purchase lifecycle. It is certainly possible to be more granular than this detail – particularly in states 4 and 5 where Sales may have more detailed definitions – but for many this framework represents a distinct, appropriate end-to-end view of the customer.
This framework makes no judgement about whether they are a new customer or a repeat buyer; whether they have to make small resupply purchases or strategic enterprise transformations; whether they have existing vendors or need new suppliers; or what knowledge they have about your capabilities, strengths or market leadership. I’ll repeat this one last time: all customers will go through these states to get to a purchase.
With small tweaks these same states would apply to most consumer purchases too. The status quo: I have a toaster that works fine. Problem identification: My toaster has stopped working. Solution research: Do I repair it or buy a new one. Recommendation development: It’s going to be more cost effective to buy a new one. These two look like good options. Consensus decision: My partner thinks the black one is best so I’ll buy that. Some states may be moved through rapidly, others may take time. You may have multiple buying centres within the same customer moving through at different rates. Marketing may also be engaging with and influencing stakeholders that Sales has not yet identified.
Consider this variant of the toaster scenario. The status quo: I have a toaster that works fine. Problem identification: But if my toaster had Bluetooth like the one I just saw advertised I could be notified when my crumpets are cooked. Solution research: turns out only one vendor makes Bluetooth toasters. Recommendation development: let’s get a Bluetooth toaster. In this scenario I could imagine the consensus decision being something like: my partner thinks I’m an idiot as we already have a working toaster (but I’ll keep trying and hopefully they’ll come around).
Customers will move through the purchase process in their own elephant paths. This framework defines all of the key states they may arrive at in enough – but not too much – granularity to allow you to define what actions you will take to best enable and empower them to move forwards. To understand the customer better you could add more detail, but don’t fall into the trap of over-precision at the cost of reduced accuracy or usefulness. Let’s explore customer objectives at different states of their purchase path.
1. Status quo
Value unaware: Customers may not recognise the benefits of the value you offer. They may recognise parts of your narrative but are unable to distinguish it from the general noise in the industry.
Problem unaware: Customers may experience pain points without being fully aware of the underlying problem. They are aware of the symptoms but may see these as unrelated and are not actively seeking to identify the cause.
Problem aware / Solution unaware: Customers are aware of the problems but might not have identified how far-reaching the effects are or that there are solutions that can help them address them. They want to continue doing their own research, empowering themselves by learning more.
Brand unaware: Customers are not aware of you. They may have a general interest in your area of specialism and the future of your industry. They want to be informed and inspired by thought leaders.
2. Problem identification
Value aware, opportunity / risk / need unaware: Customers are aware of the value of your solutions but are not clear how it could help their organisation or why they should prioritise it. They want to know that whatever investment they make has the maximum impact possible to answer their need and set the organisation up for success.
Need / risk aware, value unaware: Customers recognise that they have a problem they need to act on, but do not know how to tackle it. They want to educate themselves about different ways to solve their problem and create a shortlist of options to meet their need.
Brand conscious: Customers are aware of your organisation but do not know how it applies to them or solutions available. They want to know if you can be of value to their perceived unique business needs.
3. Solution research
Opportunity aware, solution uncommitted: Customers are refining their solution needs and have researched several options. They want to compare their top choices to understand which will best meet their needs, drive most value and have the lowest risk.
Brand informed: Customers know who you are and that you can add value to their organisation. They want to build a business case to gain internal adoption within the buying group to work with you.
4. Recommendation development
Project committed, vendor uncommitted: Customers are actively engaged with sales people from a shortlist of vendors. They want to develop a detailed understanding of value, cost and risk aligned to their specific needs.
Brand engaged: Customers are largely aware of the capabilities of your solutions, your values and your solution value. They want to see how you live by those values and how those come through in your solutions.
5. Consensus decision
Deal won: Customers have arrived at a decision to work with you but may be overwhelmed and struggle to get started. They want to understand how they go from proposal to value and validate the desired business outcomes and path to success.
Deal lost: Customers chose not to purchase from you, opting for a competitor or not to move forward with a solution at all. They want to proceed with their chosen approach and work towards their project goals, while continuing to support long-term needs.
Brand preferred: Customers need to identify and drive forward their most valuable strategic partners, elevating their relationships and collaboration within their organisations.
6. Value realisation
Successful implementation and adoption: Customers have deployed, adopted or onboarded your solution with the right teams. They want to ensure they get the most out of their investment and to start measuring the impact on their business. They may want to stay up to date with your latest innovations and solutions.
Implementation / adoption issues: Customers have not achieved the goals they set out to. They want to understand why they have not achieved the expected value, identify underlying problems and research new ways forward.
Implementation / adoption issues with a competitor: Customers are facing implementation, deployment or adoption issues that prevent them from achieving value. They want to solve these quickly and justify their investment so may look to recalibrate their needs or engage other vendors to bridge capability gaps.
Brand believer: Customers have experienced first-hand how you have impacted their organisation. They want to share that story internally and externally and position themselves as a leader among their peers.
7. Value evaluation
Value recognition: Customers have realised the goals they set out to achieve. They want to evaluate their current products and solutions against new business needs and consider the optimal solution set to achieve new outcomes.
Change requirement identified: Customers are not fully satisfied with their solutions and have identified a need for change. They are unclear on how they can move forward with this and may want to reassess if the vendor selected is still the best choice.
Brand advocate: Customers are willing to advocate for you publicly. They want to explore opportunities to show shared brand values and organisational value and to expand their partnership further.