The SaaS Buyer Journey: How to Move Prospects from Curious to Customer

Speaker A: Today's topic is the customer journey. It's one of the most important part, not only to understand how to build it properly but also just the uh, understanding of customer journey, how your customers make decisions and understanding that it's not just advertising to them and they are buying immediately. If founders understand that then it will be much easier for them to choose the right marketing channels. And we have experienced entrepreneur and co founder of Nok Allen. Which role does an understanding customer journey plays in startup success?

Speaker B: It plays a lot because end of the day, especially when startups start there is a lot of founder led sales and then they add sales rep marketing is being added and if you think from the get go how you want to approach their customers, what's the funnel they would go to even in the beginning of it. And it's probably going to help you show much better results. One of the problems is that once you start adding more and more operational aspect in the buyer journey then it's going downhill in a lot of the cases and you need to keep it always in mind like how you are improving and helping your buyers from the beginning up until they onboard and continue after.

Speaker A: Can you tell an example of a typical buyer journey maybe from your startup for example, or from past project?

Speaker B: It's like somebody heard about us somewhere, doesn't matter where they hear about us and they want to start exploring next phase. I'm going into our website, I'm looking around, reading material and then I want to start exploring more. Like um, I'm moving from top of the funnel and starting the flow. What is happening today in most of the cases is that then I would need to fill out a form and wait for somebody to come back to me. A lot of the time where it end up is that it takes few days until somebody get back to me and then we get on a call and it's usually 15 minutes call to understand who I am, what I want and then schedule another call. So by the time I really start getting the answer and getting the value that I need, weeks can pass until that will happen. It's becoming much more important for the company to collect all the data about me before they give me the value into the buyer journey itself.

Speaker A: How would a uh, good journey look like?

Speaker B: It's starting with the fact of thinking of the buyer. Right. Because it's his journey, it's not our journey. Think of the vire, where it came from, how do we answer what it came for? Like if it just came. I just want to read and learn. Sure, let me read and learn. Don't push me so many CTAs to just click and book a demo. The other part is make it easy, less distractions. And of course if you can make it something that is more direct like use messaging, use a share and able to drive engagement from the beginning that for sure is going to change the entire buyer journey because it creates trust, it builds relationship, it helps you kind of right from the beginning to set the expectation of that you care about those buyers and why they should move uh, in the journey with you and basically and look further into your solution.

Speaker A: So if people react to your LinkedIn post, for example, you don't try to send them immediately to your landing page and say hey, download that lead magnet or give us your email address. But you already have this person's attention and you value it and you communicate on this platform. If you send them a uh, message on the same platform. And it's all about trust building, it's all about helping and then the prospect probably will take the action whenever he's ready. But I also don't like if people are trying to push myself to a call. They didn't establish anything yet. I don't trust them to learn.

Speaker B: And you want to push me like waste 30 minutes of my time. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker A: It's a big investment from my side and from prospects side.

Speaker B: That's the issue because of KPI's right and metrics that we need to achieve. We just force people into the journey. Right? You just force them into a demo and then we are surprised like why after the demo they don't continue, why they disappear. And it's exactly because we kind of forced them to start something when they are not ready yet.

Speaker A: Also people are not so strong with emails anymore. It used to be like you try to get the person as soon as possible to your email sequence and the rest will be done by your email sequence. But that doesn't work anymore.

Speaker B: Exactly. When was the last time you sent an email to ChatGPT to ask him a question? Email is not the way human are engaging anymore. They, they're there and people are using them. But you see that we are celebrating like yeah, uh, we got a half a percent of people that clicked and opened an email like that. That's basically the reality. Rather than really looking like who do we brought value, how do we engage with them and kind of how do we move them further into the journey faster without the destruction that are happening, you know, throughout.

Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, with social media you have so much more possibility to give Value and to get trust. Those emails were very sales oriented. Of course it's very difficult if you just rely on emails. Let's start from the very top of the buyer journey and go step by step until onboarding qualification is not just

Speaker B: done from the sell side should be done. The buyer is also qualify you as a vendor. So if we define from the beginning the qualification, the use case, the what the buyer's outcome is, that will help us set the stage for the entire journey and even for the onboarding. Because we already know why they came and what they were after. So we know how to set the onboarding to be successful rather than restart everything like forget everything that happened in the buyer journey and now we restart all the discussion all over again.

Speaker A: Do you have some advice on properly managing and understanding what has been communicated with in different parts of the journey?

Speaker B: Start aggregating all of those aspects. Where the lead came from, what type of content did they read, what have they looked at, what they've engaged? The touchpoint is not just on the marketing side. The touchpoint is on the marketing and on the sales side to look at it from an engagement perspective. And of course today with AI it's so easy to drop all of it into the AI and kind of get a summary of every point. So we know exactly what we touched, what we've said here, what was promised, what was discussed and kind of just keep it as one flow. That's the way we do it. We collect all the touchpoint included in it. So nothing is being missed from when the buyer move from stage to stage on that perspective.

Speaker A: If a person sends you a dm, um, do you copy this information to your customer database or is it connected directly somehow?

Speaker B: Automatically it's connected directly. Make sure everything is tracked because you want to make it easy. If I need to start copy paste from one location to the other, the chances of salesperson is going going to do it are close to zero. And this data becomes super valuable for everybody.

Speaker A: So yeah, and also if you have meetings with the customer, it also summarizes the most important points.

Speaker B: Yeah, correct. The entire trans group will go into the CRM so it's all tracked and there is a summary of all the main topics that were discussed.

Speaker A: Let's explore each part of the customer journey in more detail. Maybe you can tell me how you are doing it in your startup or how you done it in the past, what not to do, what to do.

Speaker B: We believe in what with the approach we're taking is a lot of content is how one we Are pushing content to do it, to show education and to help people understand because that's help you build a brand, show that you can bring value. Then we push the NOx solution in any one of those aspects. It doesn't matter if I saw a great YouTube video, a great post on LinkedIn. What we drive the engagement from that point we basically add uh, the knock link into those points. So we allow the engagement from that point on for the lead to come in to ask questions, to start off in a chat to learn more, ask all the questions that they want to be ready and qualified. If the lead is a fit and they want to move forward, we'll definitely book a demo. In the demo we record everything, we store everything both in a CRM and in notion. We have a notion page for each customer that include all of the different aspect and activity about the customer, their size, how we fit, how we look at pricing, what their tech stack. Currently those are all the things that we are collecting throughout the qualification process with the customer.

Speaker A: What is for you the most important KPIs?

Speaker B: The fact that I got your email mean nothing. I'm not going to start bombarding with an email campaign. It's literally what we measure is from a click. So when they become a sales qualified leads, this is the metric that we look at from a velocity like how much time took, what's the percentage of those like how many people that clicked on it really became a uh qualified A uh sales qualified leads. Those are the two metrics to really focus on and that's what we mainly care about.

Speaker A: How do you recognize if a channel doesn't work to acquire clients?

Speaker B: We cannot just say oh this channel doesn't work. We need to look at all the mix of all the different touch points, not just look at the last one of oh they can because now I reached out to them on DM over LinkedIn. We definitely part of the discussion and the initial chat we understand how the customer heard about us, which touchpoint we've seen in the past, like maybe they've already engaged in some other activity. So we look at all of those parameters and we measure it as a graph group of activities rather than just purely oh this is coming from ads versus this coming from an event. We want to look at all of

Speaker A: those, what would you say are common misconceptions and mistakes in this phase.

Speaker B: It's like just looking at the channel and hoping that oh I am going to put money on ads or I'm going to write the content and I'm writing For a month post on LinkedIn and now I'm expecting LinkedIn to be the amazing channel. Instead of looking at the one channel, try to see like how the impact evolved, like how it grows. One of the tricks that we've found is that we ask our customers where do you spend time? Where, which communities your member is? Are there people there that you look, look for and you know, kind of rely on their answer. Uh, so that also help us to better understand like where we should be. Right. But expecting everything to happen in the first, you know, two to three months is yet it's like you piece of yourself to fail over. Sure.

Speaker A: And it's important to understand that you need several interactions. It also depends on the type of interaction. If someone is watching a TikTok video, it's so much less worth than if someone is watching a uh, five minutes video on YouTube for example.

Speaker B: Yep, 100% agree.

Speaker A: How did you start with your startup?

Speaker B: The solution of NOC is very visible when I'm putting it on my customer website. Everybody is exiting the website seat. And when we initially started we suddenly saw competitors of our customers coming to our website and check out the solution. We understood that we have a really interesting place with using virality and using network effect. And then the other part is referrals. A lot of the time you talk to somebody and they're interested in your demo. Maybe the solution isn't a fit, but still they were interesting asking them if they have any friends that they think it's relevant like those type of things. The beginning, beginning. A lot of the initial leads that came in were referrals of those type of people that got excited about our solution and you know, started sharing with their friends because of that.

Speaker A: Could you tell a little bit about the first approach where your clients were implementing a promotional like logo for your website?

Speaker B: Every CTA that we provide to our customers has a small powered by knock underneath it. If I'm coming in and I'm a competitor and I'm certainly starting to see instead of the regular book a demo form, suddenly an interesting cta. It's getting curious. I want to click and see what it is. They're clicking and then they see it, they experience the solution and we're already past the initial sales point. Right. Because they've already experienced as buyer the solution. We set ourselves a clear goal that we want that, you know, at least 50% of our traffic is going to come up from those type of activity because we strongly believe in inbound versus the, you know, pure outbound approach.

Speaker A: So yeah, what was the next step when you discovered this channel? But then at some point you probably said okay, now it's time to expand to social media, maybe to ads.

Speaker B: I believe that channels are supporting one another because if I was in a community, heard about knock, heard about the solution, I might keep on my day because I don't have a time. I didn't remember it. When you complete it with ads, when you can complete it without bounds, when you complete it in other activity, you can drive something much easier. Like I believe that somebody see an ad because going to book a demo, let's be realistic. First time I see an ad, that's why I'm going to book a demo. But no, it's like all keeping the brand and keeping the idea in my mind. So when I'm ready I know what's the next company, uh, I'm going to reach out to.

Speaker A: How does your funnel looks like when they get in touch with you?

Speaker B: Once somebody is getting in touch, usually they've already had an initial experience of the product and then we do a lot of the qualification over chat and usually after the first, first 15, 10 minutes we've already established, okay, here's a fit, let's move forward. And then we would schedule a demo and before the demo, uh, we would even use the chat again to ask the question, verify who they're bringing, what's the agenda that they gonna have? So then we usually would go on a demo, present the solution, answer the question, understand, you know, what are all the relevant people that needs to be involved, who else do we need? And then we usually do a setup session already even before the deal is closed, we do a setup not to set it up but to discuss what is needed from their perspective. So when we get contract signed on the onboarding, everybody know what's going to happen there. It's not going to be anything new.

Speaker A: Do you have a whole team who is available in the chat 24 hours or do you also have some AI? How do you solve that?

Speaker B: AI can cover exactly like off hours if you're on call, maybe they need to reach out just to do that. When somebody reaching out, that's where AI can take place and can really help. If we saw that the lead is already qualified based on the question that they ask, based on a lot of research that can be done in the backend using AI, that's where we'll basically knock to the human and bring it into the chat to start having the discussion. So no, we don't have 24 by 7 support.

Speaker A: Do you ask for email address like in the beginning or when do you ask for the email address?

Speaker B: I'm okay with asking for like what's your name and what's your company. I don't need it. The specific email address if I have one element. Try to even understand it from enrichment perspective. What is a company? Understand who you are. Pull from LinkedIn. We have all of those aggregation that's done in the back end to already get the data. So why do I need to pick the customers? I want to bring them value first, then they just keep on sharing because you know, if I give you value, you're happy to share with me more.

Speaker A: This fear of losing the prospect makes it even more likely to lose the prospect.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. The operational part of I want to do operation because I need to collect the data that causes to kind of put so many forms with 10 fields just to collect the data. So I'm not going to miss everything when in reality even if I get the domain, I can pull so much data about the organization and about who they are. I don't need all of this. That's why we see form fillers and email response are just dropping. Buyers are changing, the buyer journey is changing. And that's why we see that all of those systems needs to also be adjusted because of that.

Speaker A: And if people are pushing me, uh, towards something like I don't like it when there is no price, for example, you get the price only if you have a call with the salesperson. For me it's okay, then it's not that important at that moment. Maybe if they kept my attention with uh, smaller steps, I would buy it at some point. But if I need to invest so much time and effort.

Speaker B: No, even if you get pricing, then okay, I have a question right? If, if that's a fit for me, what I have to do, I have to go to book a demo and then know that I'm getting into like a uh, sequence and 30 minutes. But I just want to ask a quick question about that. Something in the pricing that wasn't clear again. Operation wins versus you know, the bar journey. That, that's really the case? Yeah.

Speaker A: How do you filter out those people who are not your target audience, who you don't want to follow up?

Speaker B: We use a lot of AI. We define today the AI that we have, like who sits in ISP based on the size of the company, based on maybe the tools that they're using, like a lot of different elements that we are looking at. And then if they're not in the initial cleaning of the ICP that say I can push back. The next phase is like one is, look what they're asking because you can easily identify the pattern just by the question of what they came. And of course the last layer is like just asking the question. And then if they're not a fit, we have a clear soft message that we send to those type of leads that help them understand like now you're not a fit. Let's get in touch when you're big. You know, we'll keep you posted as things evolve from our side. Those are the type of things in action that we take on our end.

Speaker A: What do you do with the other people who are interesting for you?

Speaker B: I keep them, keep on educating them because I have them on the chat. I can reach out to them in a few weeks. I'm trying to identify who else do I know inside the organization or how do I get into them. Um, you talked to me a month ago. Now maybe it's time to recap, try and see if you know when, when is the fit and what's the right timing from you from that perspective. But we usually keep this data with them because of that aspect.

Speaker A: What happens if they leave your chat before you get their email address? I mean you mentioned you can find the contact addresses on the tools.

Speaker B: We are collecting a lot of data in the backend and if we have enough data we can look at the different waterfalls, different data set databases that we are connected our own capability, uh, and kind of come up with the right approach and on that perspective just find all the small M stuff that make them. Keep in mind that it's not purely like I'm coming to sell you something. Maybe I want to share an example. Maybe I can invite you to a webinar I'm doing build the expertise so when they're ready, I will be the first vendor they will reach out to.

Speaker A: How do you treat them after they became your clients?

Speaker B: We maintain one channel with each one of the customer. We push product update there. We meet monthly with each one of those customers to kind of understand. So we try to maintain the relationship throughout again through different touch points. It's not just all human. Sometimes it might be push notification on new updates that are happening. It's a mix of all of those things that we are doing in order again to remind the customer that we are there and kind of understand what is their next initiative where next they're investing because that will help us grow in the future. It's again customer journey is really throughout, it's up until renewal and above that. So you always need to keep being there and in their mind on that aspect.

Speaker A: With push notifications, you mean if they log into your tool and then there are uh, push notifications or.

Speaker B: Yes, but also not just because we have with each one of our customers like uh, a Slack channel, a shared Slack channel. So we can push in that shared Slack channel, basically notification and kind of keep them posted on things so they are aware.

Speaker A: And also you probably try to post some content like you try to connect with them on maybe LinkedIn so that they see some content from you on a regular basis.

Speaker B: The fact that they're a customer doesn't mean we don't need to market them, doesn't mean we need to forget about them. It means we always need to keep, you know, top of mind.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Different channels require different effort from the client. Some channels are more pushier than others. And just posting LinkedIn content or YouTube content, it's very soft approach. And then few content pieces on different channels that gives them possibility to interact with your brand. And that's where the magic starts happening. Thank you so much. Do you have any last words to

Speaker B: our audience as a founder? Experience what your buyers are doing all the time, how the sales process work, what's the demo? Because end of the day we all get stuck in, you know, in the end and like in the result and in the numbers and the report and we forget that there are humans on the other side of our solution. So we need to make sure that we all the time look at what it is and find a way to keep on, you know, fixing it and improving it all the time.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a good idea to put yourself into the shoes of your target audience and just imagine you are searching for this kind of solution that you are offering and then you see which kind of competition you have to choose from and how you behave and it makes it a bit easier. And of course, the more real life experience you have with your clients, the more calls you have, the more video calls, especially interactions, the more easier it becomes to understand which channels they use, how do they behave, what are important things and less important things for them. Would you like our audience to connect with you or to visit the website?

Speaker B: So on LinkedIn along Rosenberg, you can find me easily and I'm sure we can share it afterwards in the notes. The website of my company is called Knock AI Knock, like knocking on the door. Um, love for you to try it and maybe we'll chat with some of the people in the audience for sure. So, yeah.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, Ellen.

Speaker B: It.