Are sales not growing as fast as you'd like?

There could be a lot of factors contributing to that. Some in your control and some completely out of your control.

One suggestion is to look for friction in your buyers journey that could be slowing them down or *gasp* maybe deterring them all together.

What is friction?

Friction refers to any obstacle or resistance that hinders the smooth flow of a customer’s journey towards making a purchase. 

This extra effort that the customer has to spend could impact sales either by slowing down the process or perhaps causing them to abandon all together. 

Where could there be friction? 

Let’s look at your buyers journey.

For my DIY’er’s reading, let’s look at a general buyer journey… 

Customer journey framework

Awareness → Consideration → Decision → Onboarding/Retention → Loyalty/Advocacy

I like to create an in-depth matrix where we look at what the customer is doing, how they are feeling, what their experience is through each stage. I also look at all the touch points, our goals (as the business) and our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) so we know how we are measuring success.

I’ll share a quick story of when I created an in-depth customer journey that included everything I just mentioned above - and it also mapped which department or team in the company was responsible at each stage.

It helped bring together sales and marketing - and for those that know me, know I’m BIG on sales and marketing alignment. But it also highlighted our operations and customer service departments as they each had a role in the customer journey.

When I shared the document, I remember getting the question, this is great, but what do we do with it? Essentially how do we make actionable?! 😅

That’s the best kind of question you can get! And, helps me to this day make sure my strategies are always actionable 🙏

So, to answer the question…

Making the customer journey actionable

→ Having your customer journey documented helps you identify gaps and opportunities… as well as friction in your buying journey!

→ Balancing all the buyers touchpoints, feelings, and experiences helps ensure you have the right marketing mix and communication channels and cadence.

→ I added a row for content creation. Super actionable as the customer journey helps ensure we have the right content along the journey to reduce friction and guide buyers through the journey.

→ The KPIs identified helped us align our goals, by department, to our customers and their journey.

So, now back to the question in your mind - where might there be friction in my buyers’ journey?

Here’s a few to consider - and keep in mind, mapping out your customer journey will help you uncover your specific gaps and opportunities:

Are you easy to find?

Here we’re in the awareness stage, obviously. Are you where your best potential customers are? Do they know you are a choice? Is your positioning and your messaging clear? Are you easy to find, or perhaps is there friction at this stage already?

Are you easy to connect with?

We can start to get really nuanced here! If on social, can they easily connect with you? Is the user experience and user interface on your website clear or is there friction built in. Perhaps too many fields on a contact form? Or maybe your site isn’t intentionally guiding them through your site?

Are you easy to buy from?

Simple as that - is there friction in the purchasing steps?

Another quick story for you 😆 

→ Working with an e-commerce brand, I uncovered “friction” at the last stage of the checkout process. Customers would get all the way to the second to last step and then abandon. Well, an abnormally high percentage abandoned.

So we made fixing this friction a priority and were able to make some changes to the process that helped decrease that abandonment rate and increase revenue.

So, I share that story with you because sometimes sales aren’t growing as fast as you like due to friction. It might not always be about new customer acquisition - you may have opportunities to drive sales right there in your customer journey!

If you made it this far, thank YOU! I appreciate you sticking with me through my stories. Let me know, do you think you might have friction in your buyers journey impacting your sales?

If you know anyone who might benefit from this post, please do share 🙏

Rooting for you!

‘Til next week 👋

Maeve