Sufficient consensus
Journey mapping describes the stages from awareness to purchase and retention, with touchpoints, channels and emotions attached. It aligns teams and it makes gaps in the handover visible.
All information for the whole journey belongs in one directory with its subdirectories.
What the result pages leave out
These belong to the subject. People ask about them. They are missing from the agreed coverage.
- The conversations off the map. A recommendation from a colleague moves more decisions than any tracked touchpoint and appears in no analytics tool.
- Waiting. The map shows steps. Buyers spend most of their journey between the steps, doing nothing, for reasons nobody recorded.
- The journey that was abandoned. Maps are built from the people who arrived. The people who stopped halfway carry the useful information.
- Internal resistance. In business purchases the deciding conversation happens inside the customer's organization, without the vendor present.
- Re-entry. Someone who left and comes back nine months later enters at a stage the map does not contain.
What people actually want to know
- Who inside the customer's company has to be convinced, and what do they need in their hands?
- What made the last five buyers wait, and what ended the waiting?
- Where do people leave the journey and never come back?
- What does a returning prospect already know, and what has changed since?
A journey map is useful when it contains at least one stage the company would rather not look at.
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