This is Part I of the last in a series of four articles that poses the question:What is the intersection between optimal sales leadership… and the optimal use of today’s technology?

There are, we believe, four pillars of technology that support any modern sales team. In previous articles, we have shared the first three.  The first pillar is an accurate, constantly updated sales process. The second pillar is our sales methodology. The third is our own technologically savvy sales leadership, which aligns the sales process and the methodology and sets the team culture.

Now, it’s time to look at the final pillar – and for a lot of teams, this pillar is the easiest to overlook. It’s all about the ways that you can use your technology can support you buyer’s journey.

It’s usually pretty easy for us to think about the seller’s journey. That’s our sales process, and most of us are accustomed to thinking about that journey, simply because we already know what our own decision-making process looks like for deciding who we want to work with (and who we don’t). But what about the buyer’s decision-making process?

It’s not all about us. As sales leaders, we want to learn to take a step back and ask ourselves what the buyer’s journey looks like. We want to know what their investigative process is, what events are likely to trigger that process, and how they will typically make important decisions about what they’re going to do next.

Of course, different organizations are going to have different ways of mapping out the buyer journey. Some are going to be very sophisticated; some will be more intuitive and informal. But no matter what your approach is, no matter what the size of your company or your team is, and no matter how complex or simple your selling cycle is, you can improve your team’s efficiency by leveraging your technology to support the buyer’s journey.

Consider: Your selling process has different stages. So does the buyer’s journey. A prospective buyer in, the first stage of that journey is likely to be preoccupied with certain questions that you and your team can learn to predict – and be ready to address. Not only that – there’s going to be a backstory. That same prospective buyer is going to have gone down certain predictable roads by the time they get to the first stage of the journey. Your team should understand what twists and turns those roads were likely to have presented, and what challenges and expectations the buyer is likely to have as a result. In other words, if you’re not well briefed about the typical backstory that connects to each buyer stage, you’re at a market disadvantage.

Once you have a deep understanding of your buyer’s journey, you can use technology to give your team a much better chance of meeting the buyer where they are. This is important, because where the buyer is at that moment is where all the best discussions happen.

Next month, we’ll complete the four-pillar series with part II of the fourth pillar.