The buying process is the series of steps a consumer takes when making a purchasing decision. This journey begins when a person recognizes a need for a product or service and progresses through several stages, such as searching for information and evaluating alternatives, before concluding with a post-purchase evaluation of their decision.
The consumer decision-making process typically involves five key stages. It begins with problem recognition, where a consumer identifies a need. This prompts an information search, where they gather details from sources like online reviews or personal experience to find a solution.
Next, consumers evaluate their choices, comparing different products or brands. After weighing the options, they make a purchase decision. The final stage is the post-purchase evaluation, where they assess their satisfaction with the product and the brand.
A consumer's purchasing journey is shaped by a complex mix of internal and external factors. These influences vary depending on the individual, the product, and the buying situation, impacting the final decision.
While both involve acquiring goods or services, the buying and procurement processes differ significantly in their scope, complexity, and application.
Businesses encounter several key obstacles in effectively managing the consumer buying process.
Optimizing the buying process means enhancing every stage of the customer's journey. By implementing targeted strategies, businesses can remove friction, build trust, and guide consumers more effectively toward a purchase. Key approaches include:
How does the B2B buying process differ from B2C?
The B2B process involves more decision-makers, a longer sales cycle, and a focus on ROI. In contrast, the B2C process is typically shorter, more emotionally driven, and centers on individual wants and needs.
Why is the post-purchase stage so critical?
This stage is vital for customer retention and advocacy. A positive post-purchase experience builds loyalty, encourages repeat business, and generates valuable word-of-mouth marketing, turning customers into brand promoters.
How has the digital age impacted the buying process?
The internet has empowered buyers with access to vast information. Online reviews, social media, and competitor comparisons now heavily influence the evaluation stage, making a strong digital presence essential for businesses.
Account-based advertising is a hyper-focused B2B strategy that targets key accounts with personalized ads across multiple channels.
The open rate is the percentage of recipients who opened an email. It's a primary indicator of a subject line's effectiveness.
Affiliate networks are platforms that act as intermediaries between publishers (affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs.
A Call for Proposal (CFP) is a document that solicits proposals, often through a bidding process, for a specific project or service.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy that uses paid tactics to increase a website's visibility in search engine results.
Digital advertising is the practice of delivering promotional content to users through various online and digital channels like social media or search engines.
Pipeline coverage is a key sales metric. It's the ratio of your total open pipeline value to your sales quota for a specific period.
Inventory management is the process of ordering, storing, and using a company's inventory, from raw materials to finished goods.
Multi-channel marketing uses various platforms—like email, social media, and direct mail—to engage with customers wherever they are.
Retargeting marketing is a digital advertising strategy that targets users who have previously interacted with your website or brand online.
Email verification is the process of confirming that an email address is valid and deliverable, which helps improve campaign performance.
A Proof of Concept (PoC) is a small exercise to test whether a business idea or project is technically feasible and has real-world potential.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) centralizes customer data from all sources to create a complete, unified profile for each individual customer.
Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) is the portion of the market your business can realistically serve with its current products and sales channels.
Data enrichment is the process of enhancing raw data by adding missing information from other sources, making it more complete and actionable.
Customer relationship marketing is a strategy for building lasting connections with customers to foster long-term loyalty and engagement.
Cold calling is a sales tactic where reps contact potential customers by phone who haven't previously expressed interest in their product or service.
The customer lifecycle is the journey a person takes from first becoming aware of your brand to becoming a loyal, repeat customer.
Intent-based leads are potential customers whose online actions—like searches or content engagement—signal a clear interest in buying a solution.
No Cold Calls is a sales strategy that replaces unsolicited calls with warm outreach to prospects who have already demonstrated interest.
A RESTful API is a web service interface that uses HTTP requests to access and use data, adhering to the constraints of REST architecture.
Phishing attacks are fraudulent attempts to trick you into revealing sensitive data like passwords or financial info by posing as a trusted source.
Ad-hoc reporting is the creation of one-off reports to answer specific business questions as they arise, providing instant, targeted insights.
Omnichannel marketing creates a seamless, unified customer experience by integrating a company's various communication and sales channels.
Predictive lead generation uses data and AI to find prospects most likely to buy, helping teams focus their efforts on high-value leads.
Deal flow refers to the stream of business proposals and investment opportunities that a company or investor receives.
Sales forecast accuracy is a key metric that compares your predicted sales revenue against the actual sales revenue you ultimately achieve.
Data-driven lead generation is the process of using data insights to identify, attract, and convert high-quality leads into customers.
Internal signals are data points from your own systems, like website visits or product usage, that indicate a customer's buying intent.
Escalations are the process of moving a customer issue or sales opportunity to a more senior or specialized team member for resolution.
Employee advocacy is the promotion of an organization by its staff members, who share positive messages and content through their personal networks.
CPM, or Cost Per Mille, is a key advertising metric. It's the cost an advertiser pays for one thousand views or impressions of a single ad.
Sales automation uses software to streamline and automate repetitive, manual sales tasks, freeing up reps to focus on selling.
Outbound leads are potential customers a business proactively contacts through outreach like cold calls, emails, or social media.
Sales workflows are a set of automated actions that streamline the sales process, helping teams engage leads consistently and close deals faster.
A sales dialer is software that automates outbound calling for sales teams, allowing reps to connect with more prospects in less time.
Website visitor tracking collects and analyzes data on user behavior to understand their journey and improve the overall user experience.
Scalability is a company's ability to handle increased workloads or market demands without a drop in performance or a spike in costs.
A Champion/Challenger test pits a new 'challenger' against the current best-performing 'champion' to see which one performs better.
Learn about big data, including understanding big data characteristics, benefits of leveraging big data, & challenges in managing big data.
A payment gateway is a service that authorizes and processes payments for businesses, acting as a secure link between the customer and the merchant.
Account View-Through Rate (AVTR) is the percentage of target accounts that see an ad and later visit your website without clicking on it.
Lead enrichment tools are platforms that automatically add missing data to your leads, like contact info, firmographics, and buying signals.
A sales playbook is a guide that outlines your sales process, best practices, and tools to help reps sell more efficiently and consistently.
Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD) is a focused strategy where SDRs target key stakeholders within specific, high-value accounts.
A product champion is an internal evangelist who drives a product's adoption and success by ensuring it solves real problems for their team.
Content curation involves gathering, organizing, and sharing the most relevant online content on a specific topic for a particular audience.
Average Customer Life is the average time someone remains a customer. It's a key metric for predicting revenue and measuring customer loyalty.
Forward revenue is the total value of all active, committed contracts that are expected to be recognized as revenue in the future.
Precision targeting is a marketing strategy that uses data to identify and reach a highly specific audience most likely to convert.
Cost Per Impression (CPI) is the price an advertiser pays for each time their ad is displayed to a user, irrespective of clicks.
A spiff is a short-term sales incentive, often a cash bonus, paid directly to a salesperson for selling a specific product or service.
Product-market fit is when a product meets the needs of a strong market, leading to high demand, customer satisfaction, and organic growth.
A Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the page displayed by a search engine after a user enters a query, listing results ranked by relevance.
Sales enablement provides sales teams with the necessary tools, content, and information to help them sell more effectively and efficiently.
A Product Qualified Lead (PQL) is a user who has experienced a product's value, signaling a strong potential to convert to a paid customer.
Predictive lead scoring uses AI to analyze data and rank leads by their likelihood to convert, helping sales teams prioritize their efforts.
A pain point is a specific, recurring problem your target customers face, causing them frustration, inefficiency, or added costs.
Sales pipeline management is the process of organizing, tracking, and managing potential deals through every stage of your sales funnel.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.
Learn about B2B marketing attribution, including challenges in B2B marketing attribution, & key metrics for effective attribution.
A Representational State Transfer (REST) API is a web service that uses a simple, stateless architecture for systems to communicate online.
Funnel optimization is the process of improving each stage of the customer journey to maximize conversions and drive revenue growth.
Solution selling is a sales approach focused on understanding a customer's pain points to offer a comprehensive solution, not just a product.
Sales development is the process of identifying and qualifying potential customers to create a pipeline of sales-ready leads for closers.
Sales Operations, or Sales Ops, streamlines sales processes, manages tools, and analyzes data to help sales teams sell more effectively.
Load testing is a type of performance testing that determines how a system behaves under both normal and anticipated peak load conditions.
Learn about business process management, including benefits of implementing BPM, steps to effective BPM, common BPM mistakes to avoid, & BPM tools and software.
Data cleansing, or data scrubbing, is the process of detecting and correcting inaccurate records from a dataset to improve data quality.
A buying committee is a group of stakeholders within an organization who are jointly responsible for making major purchasing decisions.
Demand capture is the strategy of engaging potential customers who are already actively looking for a solution that your company provides.
Lead scoring models rank prospects by assigning points for their behaviors and demographics, helping sales teams prioritize their outreach.
Average Selling Price (ASP) is the average price at which a particular product or service is sold across different markets and channels.
Freemium is a business model offering a product's basic features for free, while charging for advanced or supplemental features.
Regression testing ensures that new code changes don’t negatively impact existing features. It's a key step to maintain software quality after updates.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the predictable, recurring income a business expects to receive each month from all active subscriptions.
Sentiment analysis, or opinion mining, automatically determines the emotional tone behind text—whether it's positive, negative, or neutral.
A small to medium-sized business (SMB) is a company whose employee count and annual revenue fall below certain industry-specific thresholds.
An inside sales rep sells products or services remotely from an office, using digital tools like phone and email to connect with customers.
No Forms is a method for capturing lead data directly from your website visitors' profiles without requiring them to fill out any forms.
Data hygiene is the practice of ensuring your customer data is clean, accurate, and up-to-date by removing duplicates and correcting errors.
A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.
A commission is a service charge paid to an agent for a transaction. It's typically a percentage of the sale, rewarding performance directly.
A System of Record (SoR) is the authoritative data source for a specific type of data. It acts as the single source of truth for an organization.
A Software Development Kit (SDK) is a set of tools that allows developers to create applications for a specific software package or platform.
Workflow automation uses rule-based logic to run a sequence of tasks that would otherwise require manual human effort to complete.
Dynamic territories are fluid sales assignments that adjust based on real-time data, ensuring reps can focus on the highest-value accounts.
Triggers are predefined conditions that, when met, automatically launch a workflow or action, ensuring timely and relevant outreach.
A Sales Manager leads a sales team, setting goals, analyzing performance, and developing strategies to drive revenue and meet targets.
A Data Management Platform (DMP) is a software that collects and organizes audience data from various sources for targeted marketing efforts.
Your email deliverability rate is the percentage of sent emails that successfully land in a recipient's inbox, rather than bouncing or going to spam.
A Sales Director leads a sales team, develops strategies, and is responsible for meeting a company's revenue targets.
Data mining is the process of discovering patterns, trends, and useful information from large datasets to make better business decisions.
The marketing mix is the set of marketing tools a company uses to sell products, defined by the 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
A sales territory is a specific group of customers or a geographic area that a salesperson or sales team is responsible for managing.
Day Sales Outstanding (DSO) is a financial ratio that shows the average number of days it takes for a company to receive payment for a sale.
Fulfillment logistics is the entire process of getting an order to a customer, from storing inventory to picking, packing, and final shipment.
Sales funnel metrics are key data points that track how effectively you're moving potential customers from awareness to a final purchase.
Video selling uses personalized video messages to engage prospects, build rapport, and guide them through the sales funnel to close more deals.
A stakeholder is any individual, group, or party that has an interest in an organization and the outcomes of its actions.