Marvin Smith's List: Buyers Journey or Buy Cycle

• he principles of customer centric marketing, integrated marketing and so on do little to dramatically ‘move the needle’ on understanding how B2B buyers purchase in the social era.

• The riddle is rooted in social media’s affect on how buyers purchase.  In today’s socially engaged world, over seventy percent of the buyer’s purchase process is completed before a sales person is every contacted. The process is self-directed and leverages the transparency of markets as buyers research their problem, potential solutions and the efficacy of those solutions without needing, or wanting, to talk with a sales person.
• By the time the buyer engages with a sales person, they have a preferred solution, a list of open questions and a price in mind. Sales, in turn, find they have limited influence on the buyer’s process.
• Solving the riddle requires a new mindset, one that is rooted in aligning to the Buyers Journey.  A core principle of the Buyers Journey is that everyone is a buyer all the time, even customers. 
• Proactively shape the buyer’s experience and, by doing so, accelerate revenue growth.  Since the buyer self-defines their journey, it is Marketing’s responsibility to intimately understand and enable the buyer by offering the right content and calls to action through the information channels the buyer prefers at each step in the Journey.
• understanding the issue’s root cause, exploring best practices, and learning how peers have addressed the need.
• Through social media they connect with peers and learn what it is like being a customer, if the product performs as promised, and the actual outcomes others have realized.  
• Up to this point the Buyers Journey has been self-directed by choice with limited vendor involvement. At the same time the buyer’s experience has been shaped by their interaction with vendor content, social media, customers and others.

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