The Modern B2B Buyer Journey: How We Built Ours and What We Learned
Most teams say they have a buyer journey. What they really have is a sales funnel. This playbook walks through the frameworks we evaluated, how we used the SiriusDecisions model, and the journey map we now use to turn signals into real conversations.
Summary
Funnels are company centric. Buyer journeys describe how people actually make decisions. We used the SiriusDecisions buying model to rebuild our journey, compared it to AIDA and Jobs To Be Done, and added three layers across each stage: signals, confidence, and content readiness. The result is a journey map that marketing, sales, and our Lead Nurturing Agent can all use to match timing and messaging to where the buyer really is.
Playbook in five moves
Separate funnel stages from buyer stages
Pick a framework and adapt it
Map signals and content to each stage
Align marketing, sales, and product on the map
Let AI agents activate the journey with humans in the loop
Funnel vs buyer journey: why the difference matters
A funnel describes how your company wants to move leads. A buyer journey describes how people actually make decisions. Those are not the same. When they drift apart, you get stalled deals, demo fatigue, and the sense that the middle of the funnel is a black box.
Research from Gartner describes modern B2B buying as a series of tasks buyers complete, such as problem identification, solution exploration, and supplier selection, rather than a straight line from awareness to purchase.[1] Buyers report that only a small part of their total time is spent with suppliers at all, and a large majority of that time is in digital channels.[2]
At the same time, data from 6sense and others shows that buying groups have grown to around ten or more stakeholders, especially in larger or multi national deals.[3] More people, less live time with suppliers, and more digital research means your internal funnel will fall out of sync with reality unless you build and maintain a buyer journey map.
Typical sales funnel
Top of funnel: visits, form fills, MQLs
Middle of funnel: nurture, meetings, opportunities
Bottom of funnel: proposals, negotiations, closed won
Useful for forecasting and internal stages, but silent on how buyers think and decide.
True buyer journey
Loosen the status quo
Commit to change
Explore solutions
Commit to a solution
Validate the decision
Designed around the tasks buyers must complete to feel confident about a decision.
Buyer journey frameworks we evaluated
Before we rebuilt our own journey, we worked through the main frameworks teams use today. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Understanding those options helped us justify why we anchored on the SiriusDecisions buying model and how we adapted it for our use.
Quick comparison:
Framework | Best for | Limitations |
|---|---|---|
AIDA | Copywriting, simple funnels | Linear, ignores committees and loops |
Jobs To Be Done | Product and messaging strategy | No explicit stages for sales and marketing |
SiriusDecisions buying model | Complex B2B decisions with committees | Needs tailoring and content mapping to be useful |
AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action
AIDA is familiar and simple. It describes a mental path from awareness to interest to desire to action. It still works for ads, landing pages, and direct response flows. For modern B2B buying, it leaves out too much. It does not capture internal consensus building, risk work, or how often buyers circle back to earlier questions.
Jobs To Be Done: progress and motivation
Jobs To Be Done focuses on the underlying progress a buyer wants to make. It highlights both functional jobs and emotional jobs. That emotional layer matters. Work from Google, CEB, and Motista found that B2B brands can have stronger emotional connection with buyers than many consumer brands, and that emotional connection predicts consideration and purchase more than satisfaction alone.[5][6] In practice, JTBD is excellent for product and message development. It does not give sales, marketing, and customer success a shared stage based map to coordinate around.
SiriusDecisions buying model: the one we chose
The SiriusDecisions model describes five stages buyers move through: loosen the status quo, commit to change, explore solutions, commit to a solution, and validate the decision. It was built for complex B2B purchases where committees and loops are normal, not edge cases.
It also lines up with what other research shows. Gartner describes modern buying as nonlinear and task based, with buyers often revisiting problem definition and solution exploration rather than moving in a straight line.[1] When we overlaid that model on our own deals, it matched how our buyers behaved much more closely than a simple funnel.
The Mabbly buyer journey: the stages we actually see
We started with the SiriusDecisions buying model because it reflects complex B2B purchases, but we quickly realized we needed a version that matches our category and ICP. Our buyers are mid market B2B SaaS teams that already have leads. Their real problem is stalled conversations, signal overload, and no shared definition of buyer intent across marketing and sales.
When we reviewed our own opportunities, we saw the same pattern repeat. Buyers spent most of their early time debating whether the mid funnel problem was real, then wrestling with internal alignment long before they compared vendors. Only later did they ask detailed questions about our product, integrations, and rollout plan. The five stages below reflect those real moments, not just a theoretical model.
Stage | What the buyer is really thinking | What we need to do at this stage |
|---|---|---|
Loosen the status quo | “We might have a mid funnel problem, but it feels fuzzy. We are not sure why conversations stall or if this is just normal.” | Make the invisible visible. Quantify pipeline decay, show how many leads go dormant after first contact, and connect that to lack of signal alignment between marketing and sales. Stay focused on clarity and cost, not on product. |
Commit to change | "This is costing us. If we do not fix it, we will miss targets again. We are not yet aligned on what fixing it should look like." | Create urgency by modeling the cost of stalled cycles and missed follow ups. Help the buying group agree that the problem is real this year, not something for a future planning cycle. Tie the mid funnel problem to metrics that leadership already watches. |
Explore solutions | "What options exist for this problem. More SDRs, different sequences, better intent data, a workflow tool, AI, something else.” | Position Signal Activated Growth as a category and explain how it differs from sales engagement tools, intent vendors, and generic automation. Reduce confusion instead of adding more tools to the mix. Give a clear mental model for how signal driven nurture works in their environment. |
Commit to a solution | “We think this approach is right, but will it work with our CRM, signals, review process, and team capacity. Can we trust AI in a live pipeline.” | Prove fit. Show before and after examples from similar teams. Walk through how the Lead Nurturing Agent uses their CRM fields, their signals, and their brand voice. Share a realistic rollout plan that starts with a segment, a review cadence, and a clear owner. |
Validate the decision | “Finance, legal, security, and leadership all need to be comfortable. We need to defend this choice internally and know that it will be adopted.” | Arm champions with a simple summary that covers business case, compliance, data handling, and rollout. Provide materials they can reuse with finance, security, and executives. Make it easy to say yes without surprise work. |
This journey map is now the backbone of how we build content, design outreach, and train our Lead Nurturing Agent. When the agent sees a pattern of signals that looks like early awareness, it reaches for content and language from Loosen the status quo. When signals look like integration questions and security reviews, it shifts to Commit to a solution and Validate the decision.
That alignment matters because buyers do not move in a straight line. Research from Gartner shows that modern buying is nonlinear and task based, with buyers often looping back to earlier questions before they move forward again.[1] Our buyer journey gives both humans and AI a shared map for those loops instead of a simple top to bottom funnel.
Signals and content: how we make the journey actionable
A buyer journey only helps if it can guide timing and content. We layered three dimensions across every stage: signals, confidence, and content readiness.
Signals | Confidence | Content readiness |
|---|---|---|
External and internal activity that suggests where a buyer is in their journey. | How strongly the buyer believes they need to change and that a solution will work. | Whether they have seen enough of the right content to move to the next decision. |
Examples of signals we use:
Job changes in key roles tied to revenue or marketing
Engagement with content that talks about mid funnel or buyer journeys
Multiple people from one account viewing the same resources
Mentions of stalled deals, lead fatigue, or signal overload in public posts
Research supports this approach. Demand Gen Report’s 2024 Content Preferences Benchmark Survey found that more than half of buyers felt vendor content was too generic and that buyers increasingly share content internally as part of consensus building.[4][7] Edelman and LinkedIn’s thought leadership studies show that decision makers reward content that is specific, insight rich, and clearly tied to their current decisions, not generic pitches.[8][9]
Our Lead Nurturing Agent ingests these signals alongside CRM data, then uses the journey map to decide what kind of message to suggest and when. Humans review those drafts so that tone, context, and ethics stay aligned with the brand. The journey map is the shared reference that keeps it all coherent.
How to build your own buyer journey map in four steps
Step | What to do | Output |
|---|---|---|
1. Separate funnel and journey | List your current funnel stages next to the SiriusDecisions stages. | A simple side by side map that shows mismatches. |
2. Define buyer questions by stage | For each stage, write the top questions buyers are asking. | One row per stage with real buyer language, not internal jargon. |
3. Map content and signals | Tag existing content and signals to each stage, then mark gaps. | One row per stage with real buyer language, not internal jargon. |
4. Align teams and tools | Share the map with marketing, sales, and product, and set review cycles. | A living document that informs campaigns, outreach, and product content. |
Workshop checklist
Bring recent win and loss reports, plus one or two recorded calls
Ask each team to write down what they think the journey looks like today
Start with buyer tasks and questions, not your internal stages
Capture language buyers actually use, especially in early stages
Leave with a draft map and a clear owner for the next revision
FAQ
What is the difference between a buyer journey and a sales funnel?
A sales funnel describes internal stages inside your company. A buyer journey describes external stages buyers move through as they define problems, explore options, and make decisions. Both are useful. They work best when they are mapped to each other instead of treated as the same thing.
Which buyer journey framework should we use?
For simple motions, AIDA can still work. For product and messaging work, Jobs To Be Done is very strong. For complex B2B sales with buying committees, we have found the SiriusDecisions model the most practical starting point because it is already structured around decision stages.
How often should we update our buyer journey map?
Treat your journey as a living document. Plan a review at least twice a year or whenever you enter a new segment, launch a new product, or see a clear pattern in where deals stall.
How does AI fit into the buyer journey?
AI can help by reading signals, suggesting next best messages, and surfacing content that matches each stage. Humans stay in the loop to protect quality and context. In our case, the journey map is what our Lead Nurturing Agent uses to decide how to respond to a given signal.
References
Gartner. “The B2B Buying Journey.” Research outlining nonlinear, task-based purchasing, limited supplier interaction time, and looping decision patterns. gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey
Gartner (2020). “Gartner Says 80% of B2B Sales Interactions Between Suppliers and Buyers Will Occur in Digital Channels by 2025.” gartner.com/.../2020-09-15-gartner-says-80--of-b2b-sales-interactions-between-su
Corporate Visions (2025). “B2B Buying Behavior in 2025: 40 Stats and Five Hard Truths.” Includes validated buying group size data (10–11 stakeholders on average). corporatevisions.com/blog/b2b-buying-behavior-statistics-trends
Demand Gen Report (2024). “2024 Content Preferences Benchmark Survey.” 51% of buyers say vendor content is too generic; buyers share content internally as part of consensus. DGR_DG283_SURV_ContentPref_April_2024_Final.pdf
CEB / Google / Motista (2013). “From Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B Customers to Brands.” Landmark study showing emotional drivers outweigh rational ones in B2B purchasing. thinkwithgoogle.com/_qs/documents/3988/promotion-emotion-b2b_articles_q5pm53H.pdf
Zorfas, A., & Leemon, D. (2016). “An Emotional Connection Matters More than Customer Satisfaction.” Harvard Business Review. hbr.org/2016/08/an-emotional-connection-matters-more-than-customer-satisfaction
Demand Gen Report (2024). “2024 Lead Nurturing & Acceleration Benchmark Survey.” Insights on nurture effectiveness, timing, and buyer expectations for relevance. DGR_DG305_SURV_LeadNurture_Sept_2024_Final.pdf
Edelman & LinkedIn (2024). “B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report.” Shows the influence of high-quality thought leadership on vendor selection, deal acceleration, and trust. 2024 Edelman–LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report
Edelman & LinkedIn (2025). “2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report.” Updated global dataset on hidden buyers, deal stall reasons, and buyer trust signals. 2025 Edelman–LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report
Dec 18, 2025