Aligning sales with the B2B buying journey: A guide

Today’s B2B buyers are more independent than ever. Most research vendors on their own, read peer reviews, watch demos, and compare potential suppliers, all long before contacting a sales representative (if they ever do).

What’s more, they don’t follow a tidy, linear path.

The issue is their movements are unpredictable and hidden from view. In fact, up to 90% of the B2B buyer’s journey is influenced by external information sources early—well before marketing and sales teams can reach them.

If your marketing strategy and sales outreach aren’t tuned to these behaviours, you risk showing up too late. A 2025 Gartner survey found 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience, but fully digital journeys can lead to purchase regret.

This makes the right blend of human and online interaction essential.

Knowing the stages of the average customer’s journey, how to map them to align with your account-based selling approach, and how to engage prospects at each step along the way is critical to realising your revenue-growth goals.

What is the B2B buying journey?

The B2B buying journey is the full process from recognising a business need, to researching solutions, selecting, and implementing a solution from a preferred vendor. The B2B buying process involves a series of online and offline touchpoints that shape perceptions and influence purchasing decisions.

Consider when a manufacturing company outgrows its CRM. The company’s sales team needs better lead tracking, operations seek integration with quoting tools, finance is focused on ROI, and IT prioritises security compliance.

Over several weeks, each buying-committee member researches, compares potential options, and runs pilots. Only then do they reach out to their shortlist. This cross-functional, months-long effort is emblematic of a typical B2B journey.

What’s the key difference between the B2B and B2C buyer journey?

Although both B2B and B2C journeys intend to convert high-value prospects into paying customers, the B2B purchase process carries higher stakes, given the amount of money companies aim to spend.

Today’s B2B buyers are accountable to their organisation, budgets, and teams. They can’t afford making the wrong decision that wastes resources, stalls projects, or damages their professional credibility.

That’s why they tend to be much more cautious than consumers.

Some of the common traits of the modern B2B buying journey are:

• Longer sales cycles: Forrester’s 2024 The State of Business Buying report found 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process. Many buying groups now include VP-level or above, and the CFO usually has final decision-making power. External advisors often weigh in on complex purchases, especially when dealing with raw materials, adding even more layers.
• Committees, not individuals: It’s not uncommon for a dozen or more C-level decision-makers and manager-level stakeholders to be involved in the B2B buying process at many businesses today.
• Proof over impulse: Leaning on ROI models, long-form case studies, short-form customer testimonials, integration specs, and security certifications is standard protocol for the modern B2B buyer journey.
• Omnichannel engagement: Many B2B buyers use several—sometimes 10 or more—interaction channels to engage with companies whose products and services are of interest to them.

Together, these factors all contribute to a slow B2B sales cycle that involves more cautious and complex decision-making. It’s on sales reps to earn prospective customers’ trust across these many layers of scrutiny.

Why the B2B buyer journey matters

Understanding your potential buyers’ path can have an enormous impact on growth. When buyers feel understood (even if it’s a perception from content interaction), you build trust and loyalty even before your first conversation.

When you map the B2B buying journey, whether that’s mid-market SaaS decision-makers or enterprise manufacturing procurement teams, you’ll:

• Provide more relevant and timely sales content to leads that speaks to their current priorities, problems, and pain points.
• Create a seamless handoff between go-to-market teams without disruption (think marketing handing off leads to sales).
• Handle objections earlier in the sales process to more effectively advance prospects in the funnel and improve win rates.
• Know exactly where potential customers tend to drop off, so you can fill content gaps, adjust messaging, and reduce friction.
• Support existing customers’ needs to retain their business and aid customer success with cross-sells, upsells, and expansions.

It’s no secret that companies that prioritise understanding the nuances and intricacies of the ever-changing B2B buying process close more deals and build stronger relationships that pay off with long-term revenue growth.

More specifically, it’s organisations that create enablement content geared toward every B2B buying stage that tend to win more often.

“Sales teams need targeted, streamlined materials that immediately share what a lead needs most to know before they make a decision,” per Highspot’s Guide to GTM Alignment. “With B2B buyers largely on leadership teams, they need to understand how you’re going to help them drive strategy and satisfy their customers.”

The stages of the B2B buying process

As noted, the modern B2B buyer’s journey is rarely a straightforward line, but knowing what buyers are doing, thinking, and feeling at each stage allows you to tailor sales engagement and content for real impact.

Once you know this path, you can use digital sales rooms (DSR) to keep stakeholders engaged. In fact, Highspot’s State of Sales Enablement Report 2025 found 48% of high-performing GTM teams invest in DSRs.

Awareness

At this stage, the typical B2B buyer knows that something is not working and is trying to figure out the scope of the problem. They begin self-educating through digital channels. Your goal is to create awareness and position yourself as helpful to potential leads, not make a hard sell.

The best way to support buyers is to create content that contains relevant and valuable information. If customers find your content useful, they are more likely to include you in their shortlist when they reach the consideration or validation stage.

• Best content: Blog posts, explainer videos, industry reports, and thought leadership.

Consideration

At this stage, the buyer is in solution exploration. They know they have options and will compare vendors. They seek proof that your product is a good fit for them by examining your track record, client results, and the associated risk level.

Personalising content for the target decision-makers, especially the champion, senior management, and CFO, is crucial. If they have objections, you may need to develop ROI calculators, business case content, competitive comparisons, security specs, and FAQ sheets.

• Best content: Case studies, comparison guides, ROI calculators, webinars, free trials.

Decision

At this stage, the B2B buying committee is ready to choose and wants to make sure they can confidently make the final call. This is the time to eliminate any last-minute buyer doubts and ensure the transition to onboarding is smooth.

Coordinate closely between sales, marketing, and customer success to ensure the message and value story remain consistent, regardless of who the customer speaks with. Using a shared enablement platform accessible to all GTM teams can keep them on the same page.

• Best content: Pricing details, implementation plans, customer references, security documentation.

Selecting your B2B target personas

Who are your buyers? Where do they shop for a solution? What keeps them up at night? Who do they ask for advice? These are all questions that need to be answered by a buyer persona. You may even have more than one.

For example, a SaaS buyer usually focuses on product capabilities and support, while an executive buyer considers the likely ROI of a platform. Once your internal teams have defined personas, they can tailor individual outreach.

Each persona should capture:

• Role and background: Include their job title, industry, responsibilities, and their influence over purchasing decisions.
• Goals and priorities: What they are trying to achieve, whether that’s reducing costs, increasing operational efficiency, or growing their business unit or company.
• Buying criteria: The key factors that matter most when evaluating potential solutions such as scalability, integration with their tech stack, vendor reputation, and ease of implementation.
• Non-negotiables: Must-have requirements like compliance certifications, security standards, or local support.
• Pain points: Specific challenges, often related to inefficiencies, outdated sales processes, or lack of data visibility.
• Current alternatives: The tools, vendors, or processes they use today, so you can see where you need to outperform competitors.
• Preferred communication channels: How they want to interact (email, live chat, phone, in-person meetings) so you can meet them where they are.

These personas will answer three questions your sales team has:

• Who is most likely to move the buying process forward?
• What problems (Jobs to Be Done) are they trying to solve?
• How should you position your solution so it resonates best?
• What can best differentiate your offerings from competitors?

Anchor your buyer journey map to these personas, and every interaction across each buying touchpoint will become more effective and likely to influence revenue.

How to map the B2B buyer journey

Mapping the buyer journey is one of the most fundamental sales, marketing, and product marketing activities. It’s the blueprint for everything else you do.

If you don’t have your buyer personas and a defined journey map, your messaging won’t land, your campaigns won’t connect, and your sales cycle will drag on endlessly because you’re selling blind.

Identify what’s driving buyer interest

Start by segmenting leads according to their motivation:

• Are they trying to solve a specific pain point?
• Are they still exploring and defining their needs?
• Are they currently comparing potential vendors?

These intentions help you group potential customers by business goals and set the stage for accurate customer journey maps.

Define or refine buyer personas

Once you understand the interest, build or adjust your personas to reflect who the business buyers are and what motivates them. The combination of demographic and behavioural data ensures each persona is based on real buyer activity.

Define the touchpoints

Map every touch a prospect has with your brand, including ads, blog posts, gated assets, product demos, events, chats, digital sales room visits, or follow-up. These are the moments that shape opinions and influence progress.

Look for friction across the journey

Identify where buyers stall due to unclear value propositions, missing content, or complex forms. Fixing these will keep deals moving.

Align your content with what buyers need at each step

Match your resources to each stage with educational, proof-focused, and risk-reducing content. The alignment of content to where they are in their journey keeps you relevant, no matter where or when they engage.

Review and update regularly

Your journey map will evolve as products, markets, and buyer behaviours change. For example, just a few years ago, a B2B buyer wouldn’t communicate through a chatbot, but now, many expect it. New habits and norms emerge quickly, so refresh your map regularly.

Monitor:

• Time to purchase: How much time typically passes from first touch to close? If you notice it’s getting longer, it may be because they’ve added more decision-makers, raised new concerns, or you have content gaps.
• Touchpoints: How many interactions does a buyer have before converting, and which are most influential? This will help you double down on a channel if you see it performing well.
• Conversion rates: How many leads become customers, and where do conversions rise or drop off? If you notice a high number of prospects dropping at a specific stage, it may indicate unclear messaging or other friction.

By monitoring these data points, teams can spot patterns before they become a problem, adapt as markets and competitors change, and keep buyers happy with consistent service.

Using technology to optimise the B2B buyer journey

Buyers want quick answers, information that makes sense, and an easy experience across all channels. Today’s technology can make all of this possible while also giving your internal teams visibility into buyer behaviours.

• Chatbots: AI-powered chatbots provide instant answers to common questions, guide buyers to resources, and qualify leads. Integrating a chatbot with your CRM automatically captures contact details, buyer intent, sentiment, and what they interact with, so sales can follow up with relevant context.
• Artificial intelligence (AI): This technology analyses large volumes of your data to find patterns, predict intent, and recommend next steps. Lead scoring performed by AI can also help sales teams focus on the accounts that are most likely to convert.
• Customer relationship management (CRM): Your CRM is a single source of truth for all buyer interactions. It should track every touchpoint, including emails, calls, meetings, and other online customer engagement. Sales, marketing, and customer success will have the complete picture to inform next steps, campaigns, and future handoffs.
• Sales enablement platforms: Sales enablement platforms like Highspot combine sales collateral, training, feedback, and customer engagement. For example, PagerDuty drove 46% greater adoption of DSRs by incorporating them into the deal motions and pairing them with strategic sales enablement workshops.
  • Related resource: Webinar—Harnessing Enablement Success with AI
• Digital sales rooms (DSR): DSRs create a personalised hub where buying committees or individual buyers can access relevant content, demos, and proposals in a private digital channel. Sales teams will have visibility into when and how buyers use the resources so that sales follow-up emails can be timed and appropriate.

When integrated, these tools will turn scattered touchpoints into a connected buyer experience that they expect.

Winning trust in high-stakes decisions

When it comes to large purchases in B2B markets, most buyers follow an arbitrary multi-stage process that requires patience from sales teams. They weigh risks, consult multiple stakeholders, and expect seamless alignment across every interaction.

The companies that win are those that deliver value from the first touch to the final handshake. They earn trust, remove barriers, and build relationships that lead to repeat business. Knowing the typical buyer’s journey—and aligning GTM around it—is what leads to long-term revenue growth.