Today’s buyer journey is driven by the customer, not the seller. Buyers do their own research. They read reviews. They check out your competitors. And by the time they talk to you, they already (mostly) know what they want.
6sense’s 2024 Buyer Experience Report shows that 80% of B2B buyers initiate contact with vendors, 81% have a preferred vendor in mind when they do so, and the average buyer is nearly 70% of the way through their purchasing journey before they ever speak to a sales rep.
Now, that doesn’t make sales obsolete. Since buyers only spend a small fraction of their time with reps, your sales function is more important than ever.
In a world where reps have far fewer moments to influence the deal, those moments have to count. Sellers need to deliver real value, fast. They need to show up as trusted advisors, not product pushers. Because no matter how much content a prospect consumes, they still can’t navigate complex buying decisions alone.
Read on to learn how to accomplish that by aligning your sales process with the way today’s customers buy.
The challenges of aligning the sales process with the buying process
These days, customers no longer need to rely solely on salespeople for product information. Buyers now expect easy access to information, enabling them to conduct thorough research on their own before making a purchase. Sales representatives remain essential to the buyer’s journey, but in our experience, there are quite a few things standing in their way:
- Lack of visibility into the buyer journey (e.g., what content the prospect has seen or what internal conversations are happening)
- Legacy sales playbooks built around linear funnels and outdated cold outreach tactics
- Lack of coordination across revenue teams (sales, marketing, and CS)
- Misaligned messaging, like marketing content vs. sales pitches
- Overloading the buyer with too much info, too soon
- Slow response times at critical moments
- Rigid qualification steps and stages
As the vendor, you can’t force your process onto them. You have to realign your sales process to match how the buyer approaches products and services. While this alignment presents its fair share of challenges, they can be easily overcome once understood.
Understanding buyer expectations
To effectively align sales with customer-centric selling, it is crucial to understand their expectations. Today’s business buyers are looking for personalized experiences, timely responses, and relevant information. They want to engage with salespeople who understand their needs and can provide value beyond what they can find on their own. Building trust and establishing a genuine connection has become essential to the modern sales process.
Sales representatives are no longer just walking, talking fact sheets. 87% of B2B buyers say they expect reps to acts as “trusted advisors.” Clients expect sales teams to be insightful and helpful in directing them toward making the best possible purchase decision that meets their unique requirements.
It’s a good idea to examine the buyer’s journey to understand customer expectations and find ways to build meaningful connections. You can streamline processes and remove obstacles by mapping the journey, understanding how customers react at each stage, and analyzing why some may leave.
Mapping the buyer’s journey
A customer experience journey map acts as a compass. It’s a visual representation of the entire experience your customers have with your brand, from their first touchpoint to post-purchase engagement.
Defining different stages in the buying cycle
The customer journey has natural stages that should be covered in your map. Understanding the stages ensures you effectively create a structure upon which your customer journey rests. Think of the journey as the natural progression that evolves from first contact to lifelong relationship.
- Awareness: The journey begins when a potential customer becomes aware of your brand. It’s like the first glance exchanged between two people, marking the beginning of something special. This stage sets the tone for everything that follows.
- Consideration: As the journey progresses, customers delve deeper into considering your offerings. They’re exploring the possibilities, much like dating someone to see if they’re a good match. Your task is to ensure they see your brand as the perfect fit or obvious choice.
- Decision: This is the moment of truth. Here, the customer decides whether to commit to your brand or walk away. It’s like proposing to your significant other; you want to make it a compelling, memorable experience so they can’t say no.
Understanding how customers react at each stage of the journey
Part of understanding the customer lifecycle and their buying decisions is realizing customers have specific needs and expectations at each stage of the buyer’s journey, and sales teams have unique opportunities to address them.
In the awareness stage, they seek educational content that enables them to understand their challenges and highlight possible solutions. Sales teams can provide increased value by offering insightful content that addresses these pain points.
In the consideration stage, customers require detailed information about products or services, seek guidance, and take time to evaluate options. Knowledgeable, engaged sales teams can differentiate themselves by showcasing flexibility and offering solutions to specific problems.
The decision stage is the final push, where customers may need incentives, discounts, or special offers to drive purchasing. Items offered in the decision stage sweeten the deal.
Analyzing why customers drop throughout the journey
Analyzing why customers drop off during the buyer’s journey empowers sales teams to identify areas of improvement. And, for every problem, there are solutions a company can implement to address drop-offs. Some reasons a user may leave the buyer’s journey include:
A lack of personalized attention
Customers expect personalized experiences throughout their buying journey. They may lose interest if they feel that their needs or preferences are not being addressed. Personalization is critical to building trust and rapport for an effective customer-centric sales strategy.
Slow response times
If the sales process involves delays in customer inquiries, it can create frustration. Processes that speed response times increase the likelihood of closing the sale.
A complex or lengthy purchasing process
Streamlining and simplifying the buying process is essential to keeping customers engaged. If customers are confused or frustrated by the buying process, they may drop off. A company can alleviate purchasing process issues by removing unnecessary steps and redundant information gathering, as well as clarifying instructions.
Inadequate information or guidance
Customers rely on accurate and relevant information to make informed decisions. They may lose confidence if they encounter minimal product information, unclear pricing details, or insufficient guidance. However, providing comprehensive and transparent information keeps customers engaged.
Pricing misalignment
Clients may abandon the sales process and explore other options if they perceive the pricing as unfair, unclear, or too high. Aligning pricing strategies with customer expectations and providing transparent pricing information will minimize drop-offs.
Unresolved concerns or objections
Customers may have concerns or objections that need to be addressed by the sales team. Active listening and effective objection handling are crucial for keeping customers engaged.
Competitive offers or alternatives
Customers often compare multiple options. Providing unique value propositions and addressing customer pain points can mitigate the risk of competitors scooping up potential clients.
Aligning your sales process with the buying process
Now that we have explored the challenges of aligning the sales process with the consumer buying decision process let’s discuss how to keep buyers engaged and aligned throughout their journey. Three key pillars contribute to the success of digital techniques and the alignment between sellers and the buyer experience.
Pillar 1: Communication
If you want to align with how your buyers buy, you have to start with how your sellers sell. And not just what they say; when and how they say it matters just as much.
Too many sales teams still operate like it’s 2012: pushing content, pitching features, and trying to control the narrative. But buyers today are already deep in their journey by the time you show up. They don’t want a sales pitch. They want clarity.
- Lead with what they already know. Instead of starting at square one, find out what they’ve already researched and meet them at square five.
- Speak their language, not yours. Ditch the jargon and product talk. Buyers want to understand outcomes (i.e., how your solution maps to their specific pain or goal). Customize your messaging to match where they are in the process.
- Be consultative, not transactional. Your job is to help them make a confident decision. Ask questions. Dig into their priorities. Give them the information they need, not just what your deck says.
- Close the loop with marketing. Reps should know which content buyers are engaging with. Use that intel to shape smarter, more relevant conversations.
- Follow up with purpose. Buyers are busy and juggling multiple priorities. Every touchpoint should offer something useful (like a key insight, a case study, or an idea worth thinking about).
Pillar 2: Technology
Technology is vital in streamlining sales processes and enhancing the buyer experience. Evaluate your sales team’s tech stack and pinpoint the tools that truly support them (and customer needs) is essential. By leveraging the right technology, a business can automate repetitive tasks, gather valuable insights, and provide customers with a smoother purchasing experience.
Focus on technology that aligns with the company’s and customers’ requirements while removing any bottlenecks hindering the process. A few tools that are great for a customer-centric sales approach:
- CRM software
- Sales enablement platforms
- Data analytics and insights tools
- Social selling tools
- Guided selling tools
- Document and contract management platforms
Since you almost certainly already have a CRM, sales engagement platform, and basic automation tools, you should be looking at your quote-to-revenue process. For instance, you might have a CRM with quoting, but a platform like DealHub can handle complex pricing, generate accurate quotes fast, streamline approvals, and guarantee consistency across teams, all while giving buyers and sellers a smooth, guided experience.
Pro tip: Automate the noise, not the nuance. Use software to eliminate repetitive tasks like follow-ups, meeting scheduling, and data entry so your reps can focus on strategy and relationship-building.
Pillar 3: Enablement
Salespeople need the right skills, knowledge, and resources to engage effectively with customers at each stage of a customer-centric sales strategy. That’s where sales enablement comes in: it gives teams the necessary tools and training they need to sell effectively. This’ll make it 100x easier for them to uncover and understand customer needs, offer relevant solutions, and build meaningful relationships.
- Battle cards
- Content libraries
- Sales playbooks
- Guided selling flows
- AI tools and insights
- Buyer intent data via DealStream
These are all examples of sales enablement.
Aligning sales processes with a customer journey empowers organizations to better understand the road ahead, reducing friction in the process. When harmonizing sales and buying processes, businesses can provide a seamless and personalized customer buying decision process that meets customer expectations.
How CPQ enables a frictionless buying experience
One powerful tool that facilitates the alignment of sales and the buying process is Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software. CPQ solutions enable a frictionless buying experience by simplifying complex sales processes and providing accurate quotes quickly.
Streamlined product configuration
CPQ makes the configuration of products and services easy. Customers receive accurate and customized quotes based on specific requirements, which you (or an admin) program into its backend rules engine. This level of efficiency empowers salespeople to focus on building customer relationships rather than getting caught up in time-consuming administrative tasks.
Pricing aligned with customers’ budgets and preferences
CPQ empowers sales teams to align pricing strategies with customers’ budgets and preferences. By integrating pricing rules and discounts into the CPQ system, businesses can offer competitive, personalized pricing options that resonate with customers. This flexibility creates a positive buying experience to enhance customer satisfaction.
Centralized platform for products, pricing, and quotes
CPQ provides a single source of truth, where salespeople can quickly access product information, pricing details, and quote history. That way, reps have everything they need to address customer queries promptly and make informed recommendations. By comprehensively viewing the customer’s journey, salespeople can engage in meaningful conversations and tailor their approach.
CPQ for complex selling
B2B sales processes are notoriously complicated. So, how do organizations streamline deal management for better interactions when dealing with complex CPQ interactions?
One of the best ways is with DealHub’s CPQ software sales tool. Its Agile CPQ enables salespeople to create quotes with customized product and pricing configurations based on the buyer’s needs, syncing all interactions with a deal’s documents within the organization’s CRM.
The result is a much more streamlined sales process and a customer-centric sales strategy that safeguards the accuracy of the quote information, as well as product selection and pricing regulations.
Agile CPQ delivers automated cross-team workflows to reduce manual processes and drive efficiency while ensuring a smooth adoption with guided selling playbooks.
True sales alignment starts with buyer empathy.
The best sales teams today are guiding more than they’re “selling” in the traditional sense. They know the buyer’s journey isn’t a straight line, and they’re trained, equipped, and empowered to add value at every twist and turn.
When you align your sales process with how your customers actually buy (through effective mapping, clear communication, and continuous enablement using tools like CPQ and sales playbooks), you stop creating friction and start building momentum.
That’s how deals get done faster, win rates go up, and buyers walk away confident in their decision.
