Working with Business-to-Business (B2B) prospects can be more complex compared to the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) space in a lot of ways. As a business, you need to create a good customer experience not only for individual user or customer, but for the company decision-maker who signs-on for your product in the first place.
By this, I mean that you need to consider both the sales marketing side of your B2B customer (buyer persona), as well as the user community that lives within your customers’ organizations. This will create profitable relationships with your clients over a long time by meeting the needs of both the industry you cater to, as well as the day-to-day user of your product or service.
My article will give you an introduction to how to think about the B2B customer journey how to optimize your B2B customer journey map and strategy.
What is the B2B customer journey?
You can think of the B2B customer journey as a storyline that describes your end-to-end relationship with a particular B2B client. There are multiple stages in the relationships that are often described as “touchpoints” or “customer interactions” in industry terms. At every touchpoint, there’s a different customer interaction that leads to a new part of the customer journey.
Typically, a B2B customer journey will include the stages of the customer journey of how your clients and your company start a relationship and formalize it as part of the purchasing process (e.g. they hear about you, test your products, and compare to a few competitors and sign a deal). Then they make a purchase decision and become your current customers.
This process continues all the way to a situation where existing customers become loyal customers (loyalty), or end the relationship (exit).
How does the B2B customer journey differ from the B2C customer journey?
The main difference is in the number of stakeholders you need to consider throughout the customer journey as well as the workflow around the buying process that tends to be different when an organization (B2B buyer) is involved rather than a B2C buyer.
Typically, in B2C customer journeys, you only take into account one type of person (buyer) who goes through all the touchpoints, both as the buyer and the user of a product or a service.
In B2B customer journeys there’s an added complexity. It’s very common that you have two types of personas to consider—the buyer and the user. Oftentimes, you have a few people (personas) who are involved in the decision-making process.
We can think of it this way. Whenever there’s a need for a new software product as a result of pain points, there is a person or a group of people that could be managers or practitioners (or both) who would act as the “buying committee” and deal with you in the very early stages of your relationship.
Once the relationship is formalized and you have onboarded your B2B client, then you’ll start working directly with the users of your product (e.g. developers, designers, lawyers, etc.).
Many B2B contracts are yearly, so you’ll probably meet someone from the buying side at the end of the year once again to evaluate the service and see if and under which terms your relationship continues. As you can understand there’s a continuous sales cycle that involves customer retention in B2B sales.
B2B customer journey stages
Typically, you’ll be looking at the following touchpoints in an end-to-end B2B customer journey:
Awareness
Usually, a potential B2B buyer figures out they need a solution to a new problem they identified based on current pain points. They will start doing some research looking for SaaS solutions to resolve these pain points based on their customer needs, and this is how they become aware of your company, as well as your competitors.
This touchpoint is usually handled by the B2B marketing people who have to plan for creating a good “information scent” to lead users to your website with a carefully planned SEO strategy based on how they would typically look for solutions.
This step usually involves good efforts on both your social media channels as well as on search engines.
Consideration
At this stage, a potential client starts digging deeper into a few solution providers in an attempt to find the best solution for their pain points. Your sales reps will typically get involved in this stage and will seek some potential customer feedback to learn how you can work together.
Sometimes this stage is long and involves many parties (especially in large organizations). The content marketing team also has an important role to play here providing all the necessary information to the decision-makers (the B2B buyers).
Decision
Your lead was impressed and made a decision to become a client! That’s exciting, you overcame all the roadblocks in the sales process. These steps usually involve a bit of negotiation and back-and-forth conversations to make sure a client gets the best solution.
The sales team, including sales engineers and sales reps, plays an important role here. Also, in the marketing jargon, this step is often called “conversion” since we convert a lead to being an actual customer. Conversion rate is one of the most common metrics in both eCommerce and B2B marketing.
Implementation
Every software solution needs a change management strategy to become fully adopted by users.
This step could take up to a few months with complicated products, and it typically involves an implementation specialist who builds a roadmap for successful implementation and adoption of the product, going through a few milestones.
Service
After the implementation is done, your B2B customers are now getting continuous service from you. You have to make sure your customers get the support they need, enabling you to build trust and ensure continuous retention, as well as profitability.
Typically, it would be the responsibility of the account manager, customer support, and the customer success team to oversee smooth continuous service.
Growth and expansion
Once your client’s renewal date approaches, you might try to identify opportunities for growth (e.g. more licenses, the next service tier, etc. ). This is typically handled by the account manager and renewal manager.
Exit
Just like any other relationship in life, sometimes your business relationship with a B2B client has to come to an end because of one or a few valid reasons.
Even this stage has to be well-managed, because if you end your relationship on a good note, there’s always a chance your client will return to you (or recommend you!) in the future.
How to create a great experience for B2B customers?
Now that you understand the customer journey touchpoints that are involved in the process and their complexity, let’s look at a few things you can do to create a great customer experience for your B2B customers based on their customer expectations.
Personas and Firmographics
The first you can do is to learn who your buyer personas are, what are they looking for, and what roles they typically do in an organization. Bear in mind that in large organizations there’s a group of people who will be involved in evaluating and onboarding new suppliers with an average of roughly 7 different stakeholders evaluating the tool.
By learning the type of buyer persona (with the help of a good CRM tool!) you can potentially better cater to their needs.
When it comes to the organizations themselves you can use firmographics, which is the same thing as demographic criteria when we deal with individuals. By segmenting organizations by size and location, you’ll be in a better position to create a B2B customer experience that fits these criteria.

That leads us to the next point.
Lead Qualification
In order to create a great experience, you have to make sure an organization is ready to embark on a journey with your company.
After you collected enough leads and data about online behavior, done some firmographics, and understood the buyer personas, you can start to see trends and qualify the leads as “high likelihood to become a client” or not.
It’s good for you as a business to understand where to invest energy in creating a great experience, and it’s good for prospective clients too. After all, you’d rather estimate who’s not ready to become a customer and know not to invest too much time there.
These prospective customers will appreciate it too, and will probably be back in the future when they are ready. The data analytics team and the marketing team can help you orchestrate this process, and having a good CRM tool in place can be very helpful for good lead qualification.
Customer journey mapping
Mapping the B2B customer journey is one of the best techniques to see which touchpoints in the end-to-end journey cause the most severe pain points. Usually, it helps you identify knowledge gaps, understand where to dig deeper, and then improve the journey as a whole.
Remember that you have to choose one type of buyer persona to make the most of this exercise. This past article on the CX Lead can guide you on how to create a customer journey map step-by-step.
Content Strategy
In a world where people consume so much information online, a good content strategy that fits all stages of the buyer journey is an essential part of any good experience.
If you have content people on your team, you’ll have to work with them on creating this content. For example, in the awareness phase, you need good teasers such as videos and pages that contain short explanations of what your solution is. The goal here is to get attention.
Afterward, the idea is to give more information that will allow potential clients to dive deeper and even compare your solutions with your competitors. White papers, reviews, and case studies could be helpful here. For instance, if Gartner mentions you in their reports and gives you a good rank, then this is something you can leverage in your content marketing strategy.
During implementation and service, you would want to create “how-to” articles and videos as well as FAQs that will support your clients all the way from the implementation phase onward.
An interesting example is Usertesting, a tool for UX research. They took into account the fact that there’s a new group entering this profession coming from other jobs (e.g. market researchers, and even journalists) and they need to be trained on some research methodologies. To help, they created the UserTesting Academy that allows organizations to support their design and UX research employees from that angle.
Onboarding
There’s nothing like a first impression. If your organization can come up with an implementation strategy for your new clients, they will appreciate it and potentially stick with you for a long time.
After all, every organization that looks for solutions is trying to solve a problem. The tool is only part of the solution, but a good strategy around change management that could lead to adoption is crucial, and many organizations do not know how to do it. That’s why you need to include a strategy around this part, too.
Related read: Customer Onboarding Tips And Best Practices
Customer support
After onboarding new customers, they’ll for sure need help and support to use your new features and make the most out of your tool.
A great customer success manager and strategy make a big difference in the customer experience. As B2B customer journeys are ongoing, since renewal dates occur every year, you want to always be perceived as "that good vendor who rocks the support strategy."
User Community
If you want to go beyond renewal and branch into a more growth-oriented strategy, you need to come up with a way to help your customers build an internal user community around the tool.
If you can create this user community, you’re more likely to have your client’s loyalty for longer and, get a better deal next year, since people spread the word inside their organization and the demand for licenses could potentially grow. Community-led growth is your key to getting into this stage.
Bloomfire, a content management system, has a great example of a user community. This enables users to learn how to be an admin to the tool, and also how to manage their own knowledge and content communities on Bloomfire. This is done by sharing best practices (by Bloomfire and the community), allowing people to ask questions, and getting feedback from other members about problems and solutions.
Digital Transformation in B2B Journeys
B2B customer journeys are undergoing a major shift towards digital-first engagement, driven by buyers’ preferences for convenience and autonomy. Modern buyers increasingly favor self-service options, enabling them to explore solutions independently before engaging with a sales team.
This trend emphasizes the importance of digital assets such as interactive websites, detailed product catalogs, and knowledge hubs that provide comprehensive information. Organizations need to invest in creating seamless online experiences that empower buyers to access product specifications, pricing, and case studies without friction, enabling them to make informed decisions on their own terms.
The digital transformation extends beyond self-service into the realm of data-driven personalization. By integrating AI-powered chatbots and recommendation engines, businesses can anticipate buyer needs and provide tailored suggestions based on browsing behavior.
Customer Journey Mapping and Analysis
Mapping the B2B customer journey is an essential practice for understanding buyer behavior and identifying pain points. By creating detailed journey maps, businesses can visualize every touchpoint, from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement. This process allows organizations to uncover gaps or friction in the customer experience and address them proactively.
For example, a journey map may reveal delays during the onboarding phase, prompting efforts to streamline implementation timelines or enhance training resources. Analyzing these maps provides actionable insights that are crucial for refining customer interactions.
In addition to mapping, collecting and analyzing feedback is critical. Surveys, interviews, and analytics tools help gather real-time data on customer sentiments and preferences. Platforms like heatmaps and session recording tools enable businesses to observe customer interactions and make informed improvements.
Personalized B2B Customer Experiences
Personalized experiences are no longer optional in B2B relationships—they are a key differentiator. Tailoring interactions to meet the unique needs of buyers fosters loyalty and advocacy, as customers feel valued and understood.
Personalization can be achieved through several means, such as targeted marketing campaigns that address specific pain points or personalized email follow-ups offering solutions based on past conversations. Even small gestures, such as addressing customers by their name or referencing previous interactions, can create a significant impact.
The impact of personalization extends beyond initial engagement. For instance, during contract renewals, understanding a client’s usage patterns and challenges allows account managers to offer solutions that align with their evolving needs.
Use of Digital Tools for Optimization
Digital tools play a pivotal role in optimizing B2B customer journeys by providing visibility into data and trends that were previously difficult to track.
Tools like customer journey analytics software enable companies to monitor interactions across various touchpoints and channels, revealing critical insights into buyer behavior.
AI-driven platforms can automate repetitive tasks, analyze sentiment from customer feedback, and suggest actionable improvements. Implementing these tools ensures that every step of the customer journey is well-monitored and aligned with the broader business strategy.
Role of Customer Data Platforms
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are becoming indispensable for centralizing and managing customer information in B2B environments. These platforms aggregate data from multiple sources, such as CRM systems, website analytics, and customer service logs, creating a unified and comprehensive customer profile.
CDPs facilitate improved collaboration across teams by ensuring everyone has access to the same data. Sales, marketing, and customer support can align their efforts, delivering a consistent experience at every stage of the journey.
The ability to analyze and act on centralized data allows businesses to anticipate challenges and proactively address them, significantly enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Challenges in B2B Journey Mapping
Mapping B2B customer journeys can be challenging due to the complexity and length of the sales cycle. Unlike B2C journeys, B2B engagements often involve multiple stakeholders with varying priorities and roles, making it difficult to pinpoint the most critical touchpoints.
For instance, a decision-maker may focus on pricing and ROI, while end-users prioritize ease of implementation and support. Identifying and addressing these differing perspectives is crucial to creating a cohesive map.
Another challenge lies in integrating experiences across various channels. B2B buyers interact through emails, calls, webinars, and digital platforms, and ensuring a seamless transition between these touchpoints requires careful coordination.
Emotional Resonance of Touchpoints
While B2B relationships are often perceived as transactional, the emotional impact of customer touchpoints plays a critical role in engagement and loyalty. Positive experiences, such as timely support or personalized onboarding, can evoke feelings of trust and satisfaction, while negative interactions, like delayed responses or technical glitches, can lead to frustration.
To harness emotional resonance, businesses should actively seek and act on customer feedback. Whether through surveys, interviews, or social listening, capturing client sentiments allows organizations to identify areas for improvement.
Tailoring touchpoints based on this feedback ensures that customers feel heard and valued, fostering stronger connections and long-term loyalty. Emotional resonance is the foundation for building relationships that go beyond mere transactions.
Best Customer Journey Mapping Tools
Here are the customer journey mapping tools I recommend to businesses looking to get started on B2B customer journey optimization.
Get started with B2B customer journey mapping
As you can understand, the B2B customer journey is complex and involves many moving pieces, touchpoints, and stakeholders. If this article helped you understand that, you’re already in a better place compared to where you were before you read this article.
The next steps would be to learn how to find opportunities for improvement by creating a customer journey map, and how to work with different stakeholders within your organization that could help you create an amazing experience through the B2B customer journey.
Related Articles:
- Best Customer Journey Mapping Tools
- How To Optimize Your Website Customer Journey For Happier Customers
- Best Customer Data Platforms
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