Do You Know What It's Like to Buy Your Own Product?

The pathway that a person takes between learning about an organization or product and becoming a customer is the single most important process in almost every business. And yet, we as consumers know that so few companies make the effort to understand the steps and stages, much less fix the problems, in their customers' own journeys.

Just this week, I was attempting to make a purchase of a retail product we were running low on. I didn't have a ton of time, but luckily, buying something like nutrition bars should only take a few minutes, right? Wrong. I was so frustrated after being kicked out of my logged-in state multiple time, then told there was a problem with my cart, then told to update my shipping address in PayPal (I was using a credit card), that I didn't finish the purchase.

We've all been there. Screaming "Please Let Me Buy Your Product!" into the void. If these companies are extremely lucky, we want the product so badly that we'll write a message to their support email that likely won't be answered or have a tete-a-tete with their disastrously bad AI chatbot. Then, we'll make the purchase with a slightly worse taste in our mouth than before. That's absolutely the case with the situation I shared above. I love the company (Huel) and the products, and the service so far has been excellent. So I will likely continue to buy from them, but my experience has taken me from an ambassador the organization and products to a slightly annoyed repeat customer.

So, for the companies thinking that these experiences don't matter, think again. Will I keep telling people about the products and the problems they're solving for me? Probably. Will I be telling my friends and colleagues about my issues with buying when the product comes up in conversation. Probably. And a buyer coming back after an experience like this is the exception, not the rule.

More often, depending on the product, we'll just eject ourselves out of the sales process. If we leave our items in the cart, we'll get a string of automated emails about how we "forgot something," and eventually those will fade away. And if this happens often for retail products, it happens even more frequently for bigger purchases like systems, software and services.

What makes it so frustrating is that these problems are entirely avoidable. The first step is for you as the business owner and leader to learn what it actually takes to buy your product. This doesn't mean getting a " quick download" from a long-suffering ops person or watching a recorded sales demo. It means secret-shopping your own solution.

Best-case, you’ll validate that you make it easy to find information about you and understand what you do, get in touch with you when ready, and work with you and your team. More likely, many of you would be shocked at how broken even the simplest form of this journey is for your prospective customer.

If there are just a few areas that need some TLC, you can create a plan to fix them in order of priority (priority in this case being the areas that are most likely losing you business right now). In most cases, the better route is to zoom out and re-create the customer journey as you know it should be. Importantly, this should be done through the lens of making it as easy as possible for your customer to understand who you are and what you do, and to buy what you have to offer in as few steps as possible.

I don't love the terms "buyer's journey" and "customer journey" because they sound more Wizard of Oz-esque than this process actually needs to be. Your customers likely aren't skipping down the road arm-in-arm, super excited to spend money on yet another thing that they're not even sure will work. Journey also implies a long, drawn-out adventure, which very few customers would ever want. Anyone who has ever watched that movie knows that the yellow brick road was a pain-in-the-behind and that sending someone down something like that isn't going to sell a lot of product.

An illustration by W. W. Denslow from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, also known as The Wizard of Oz, a 1900 children's novel by L. Frank Baum.

As with all marketing, we benefit from making this process as simple and easy-to-understand as possible. We'll call the final packaged assets "customer journey maps" here for lack of a better name, but I want you to think more deeply about each stage, which we'll call lead and customer stages. That's where the rubber meets the road for the actual experience you're providing, and what your prospective customers are getting from you or hearing about you throughout the process.

I've also found that it helps to start with one view into how customers are learning about and buying your product, and to build up from there. What you don't want as n output from this work is a super-complicated graphic that you and your team will never use.

Here’s the framework I use when creating these for my clients:

First, we identify each stage in the process of becoming and remaining your customer. I like to start with “Prospect Unaware of [Business]” as Stage I to show how the organization generates awareness. From there, stages could look something like (although we’ll want to customize it based on your unique model).

Stage II: Prospect Engages With [Business]

Stage III: Prospect Requests Information From [Business]

Stage IV: Discovery/Consultation Meeting

Stage V: Purchase Decision

Stage VI: Onboarding

Stage VII: Client Engagement 

Stage VIII: End of Engagement 

Stage IX: Post-Engagement 

Depending on your business, you could likely scale back even further than these stages. On the other side of the coin, avoid the temptation to add any superfluous stages.

The most important element in outlining these stages is to begin with the stages and interactions that a customer is having with you, your team, your website and your social media accounts today. Once you've identified the current state and the gaps, you can take the next step to identify further refinements. Remember, if you end up with a set of stages and interactions that reflect your ideal state instead of what's actually happening, it will be a lot harder to fix any issues that are affecting your customers in the buying process in the short term.

This guy is clearly overthinking and overcomplicating his customer journey. Drop that screwdriver and simplify, my man!

Next, under each stage, we fill in the following:

📍 General Lead Stage: Whether a prospect is usually cold, warm, warmer or ready to buy at the stage in the process.

✅ Stage Goals: What we’re trying to help the prospect or client do at this stage

🗣 Interactions: Which interactions the prospect or client is having with us at this stage

📝 Content/Assets for Journey Stage: What we need to create or surface at this stage based on the interactions identified

Taken together, you now have a good sense of the process customers are going through, from a time when they are unaware they even have a problem to when they cease to be your customer. Having a better handle on at least one version of how someone becomes your customer will help you identify the most critical and highest-impact areas to focus on to drive more conversions and more sales.

I've seen a lot of journey maps that add a smiley or sad face on each stage to identify how a person is feeling at that stage. You can definitely do that, but it doesn't seem to me to add a lot to what you're endeavoring to know, and I'm not sure it helps with creating what your customers need to see from you at each stage.

The other important thing to keep in mind is that many customer or buyer's journeys end at the decision or purchase stage. I think that's a mistake. It costs quite a bit more to bring in new customers than to retain existing customers, and businesses need to make sure they're as focused on each touchpoint in the process and bringing the same rigor for their clients as they are for their prospects. You can certainly start with the buying process first, but make sure you don't forget about what happens after that (including what happens after a client ends their relationship with you). Maybe they're gone for good at that point; if not, doesn't it make sense to have a process to keep them engaged so that they're ready to buy from you again when the time comes?

If you’re struggling with sales and marketing in any capacity, this is one of the very first areas I'd recommend you review.