Your customer journey is crucial for continued success of your business so it’s important to review your process regularly to understand if there are areas you can improve. 

You need to be guiding prospects and customers through every stage of their relationship with your business. From the first interaction to becoming loyal advocates, every step matters.

In this article, we’ll cover 7 tips for managing your customer in different parts of their journey.

1. Stop Chasing Job Titles

Our first tip starts at the beginning of the customer journey, in prospecting. 

Job titles are unreliable. A “Head of Sales” might seem like the right person to contact, but the real decision-maker could be someone with a less obvious title, maybe a manager driving a project behind the scenes.

Follow what companies are doing, not what people are called. 

When businesses are expanding, launching products, or restructuring, decision-makers reveal themselves, if you know where to look.

Spot Real Decision-Makers By Monitoring Events

• Announcements: Look for product launches, acquisitions, or expansions. These moves create urgent needs.
• Leadership Changes: New hires in senior roles typically re-evaluate vendors and make changes fast.
• Industry Events & Conferences: Speakers aren’t just presenting, they’re usually project leads driving change internally.
• LinkedIn Activity: Who’s talking about company wins, team expansions, or launching initiatives?

Engage Based on Context

Once you’ve identified who’s actively driving change, tailor your outreach to what matters to them:

• Reference Specific Activity: “I saw your team launched (product/initiative). How are you scaling (related challenge) as demand grows?”
• Offer Relevant Insight: “We helped (similar company) speed up (process) after their product launch.”
• Ask Smart Questions: “What’s been the biggest challenge scaling your team since launching (project/product)?”
• By following real business activity, you bypass gatekeepers and engage true decision-makers at the exact moment they need help, when they’re ready to buy. 

2. Stop Pitching Features

Next, we move onto the ‘consideration’ stage of the customer journey. 

Most sales pitches fail because they focus on features, not solutions. Prospects don’t care about what your product does, they care about how it solves their problems.

Diagnose Before You Prescribe:

Stop assuming you know the customer’s problem. Ask better questions upfront to uncover real challenges before jumping into a pitch.

What To Do:

• Lead with open-ended questions: “What’s your biggest challenge with (specific process) right now?”
• Uncover root causes, not symptoms: If they mention “slow onboarding,” dig deeper: Is it due to a lack of training tools or fragmented processes?
• Confirm understanding: Restate what you’ve learned to show you get it, before talking about your solution.

Tailor the Message for Every Stakeholder:

Different stakeholders care about different outcomes. Your pitch should match their priorities, not just rattle off product features.

1. What Problem Are You Solving?

Pinpoint the root issue. Is it slow processes, missed targets, poor visibility, or high costs? Ask your existing customers. 

2. How Does It Improve Daily Work?

Highlight the specific ways it makes tasks easier, decisions smarter, or teams more productive. Show, don’t tell. 

3. What Long-Term Results Does It Deliver?

Show how it drives measurable business growth, from increased revenue to reduced expenses.

Deliver Proof, Not Promises:

Your prospects have heard every promise in the book. Back up your claims with data, real-world success stories, or concrete ROI projections.

What To Share:

• Case Studies: Use specific metrics, not vague results like “increased productivity.”
• Benchmarks: Show how similar companies improved after using your solution.
• Live Demos with Context: Don’t give a generic tour, walk them through how your product solves their exact challenge.

By focusing on real business problems, you align your solution with what prospects actually care about. This turns your pitch from a product demo into a strategic business conversation, and that’s what wins deals.

  3. Closing and Negotiation

Our next tip focuses on the decision stage, looking closely at stakeholder misalignment. 

During the ‘decision’ stage of the customer journey, deals often stall because of stakeholder misalignment, when key decision-makers have conflicting priorities or lack buy-in. Addressing this early can prevent delays and drive deals forward.

Identify Decision-Makers Early

Don’t assume one person has full authority. Map the decision-making group and understand who controls budgets, influences decisions, and blocks approvals.

What To Do:

• Ask Directly: “Who else should be involved in this conversation to move the project forward?”
• Use Multi-Threaded Outreach: Build relationships with several stakeholders at once, ensuring broad support.

Build a Unified Business Case

Tie your solution back to shared business goals everyone can agree on. This shifts the conversation from individual concerns to a company-wide priority.

What To Do:

• Focus on the Big Picture: Connect how different teams benefit, ensuring no one feels left out.
• Create a Clear Impact Summary: Use metrics that resonate with all stakeholders, like time saved, increased revenue, or reduced costs.

By identifying decision-makers, addressing concerns proactively, and building a unified business case, you create alignment across teams, turning potential blockers into deal champions.

  4. Onboarding and Implementation

Onboarding is your customer’s first experience after the deal is closed, and it sets the tone for the entire relationship. But this stage often brings new challenges, like additional stakeholders or resistance that surfaces after implementation begins.

You can use Salesforce to improve your onboarding process, here’s how:

Smooth Handoffs: 

Use Salesforce to ensure customer success teams have full visibility into the account. Annotate your notes with stakeholder preferences or concerns to prevent repeated discovery and keep everyone aligned from day one.

Internal Champions: 

Focus your onboarding efforts on champions and supporters identified during the sales process. Their advocacy can help drive adoption and act as a bridge to other stakeholders, smoothing the rollout process.

Potential Obstructions: 

Resistance from certain stakeholders during the sales cycle can carry into onboarding. Highlight these risks in Salesforce to proactively address concerns through tailored training or outreach.

By handling onboarding with care and precision, you can strengthen relationships, ensure a successful start, and build the foundation for long-term value.

  5. Adoption and Value Realization

Adoption can be one of the trickiest stages of the customer journey. You’ve got to get users to engage while also aligning internal stakeholders to ensure your solution becomes an integral part of their workflow. Without this alignment, adoption can stall, and the value of your solution may never be fully realized.

Here’s how you can manage adoption effectively:

Engagement: 

Use Salesforce to track and strengthen relationships with key stakeholders. Insights into “Intimacy” and “Opinion” scores, as provided by our tool, OrgChartPlus, help you focus on influential contacts who can drive broader adoption within their teams.

Address Resistance: 

During the sales process, you may have identified stakeholders who were hesitant or resistant to change. By carrying these insights into the adoption phase, customer success teams can anticipate potential challenges and tailor their engagement to overcome them.

Champions: 

Champions and supporters identified during the onboarding process can play a critical role in sustaining adoption. Prioritize these relationships and leverage their influence to drive enthusiasm and engagement across the organization.

By focusing on key stakeholders and proactively addressing resistance, you can help customers maximize the value of your solution, helping you create long-term partnerships.

  6. Renewal and Expansion

Renewals secure repeat revenue, and present opportunities to grow accounts through upselling and cross-selling. 

However, the biggest risk during renewal is losing visibility into the relationships and priorities that have shifted over time.

Here’s how you can approach this stage:

Renewal Advocacy: 

Focus on maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders who can advocate for renewal. Use Salesforce to keep track of key decision-makers and ensure they remain engaged throughout the customer journey.

Expansion Opportunities:

Pay attention to evolving organizational needs. For example, identifying departments that could benefit from your solution but weren’t initially involved can open doors for upselling or cross-selling.

Churn Risk: 

Look for early warning signs, such as declining engagement or reduced interactions with influential stakeholders. Highlighting these risks in Salesforce allows teams to act quickly, re-engaging critical contacts before renewal discussions begin.

By staying proactive and leveraging Salesforce to track and adapt to your customers’ changing needs, you can turn renewals into opportunities for deeper partnerships.

  7. Advocacy and Customer Referrals

Everyone knows a happy customer is one of your most valuable assets. 

Beyond renewals and expansions, satisfied customers can become advocates, helping you win new business through referrals and testimonials. However, this kind of relationship doesn’t happen by chance, it requires maintaining strong relationships with the right people.

Here’s how you can nurture advocacy effectively:

Identify Key Advocates: 

Use Salesforce to make centralized notes of stakeholders who are highly satisfied with your solution. Look for champions or economic buyers who have seen the direct value of your product and are likely to recommend it.

High-Impact Contacts: 

Work on building deeper connections with stakeholders who have influence, both internally and externally. Their advocacy can open doors to new accounts or help secure endorsements for case studies, testimonials, or events.

Leverage Networks: 

Pay attention to professional networks and informal relationships within your customers’ organizations. These connections can provide valuable referral pathways to potential leads.

To turn customers into advocates, you need to ensure they feel valued and supported throughout their journey. By identifying and nurturing key relationships, you can use the power of advocacy to grow.

The Right Tool to Guide Every Step of the Journey

Managing the customer journey is no small feat. You’ve got prospects to identify, decision-makers to align, blockers to manage, and champions to leverage – all while ensuring no opportunities fall through. 

It’s impossible to stay on top of all this without full visibility. And a basic contact list in Salesforce isn’t going to cut it.

That’s where OrgChartPlus comes in.

Here’s exactly how it can improve your customer journey:

• Spot Real Decision-Makers Fast: Forget chasing titles. With drag-and-drop org charts, you can map out decision-makers, influencers, and blockers, all in one view, directly within Salesforce.
• Relationship Strengths: Track who’s an advocate, who’s on the fence, and where your team needs to strengthen ties using intimacy scores.
• Navigate Internal Politics: Go beyond formal hierarchies. Visualize the real “political map” so you can build support where it matters and avoid late-stage surprises.
• Collaborate: Add notes and insights to org charts so everyone on your team knows exactly what’s going on. Who to focus on, where risks lie, and how to move deals forward.
• Simpler Renewals: Keep tabs on stakeholders as relationships shift over time, ensuring you’re always engaging the right people to secure renewals and uncover expansion opportunities.

If you’re serious about mastering the customer journey, OrgChartPlus makes the whole process easier, and smarter.

Want to see it for yourself? 

Start a free trial and see how OrgChartPlus can improve the way you manage the customer journey.

Summary

The customer journey is about building great relationships and delivering value at every stage. From prospecting and lead qualification to renewals and advocacy, each step is an opportunity to deepen connections and drive long-term success.

Our tips provide the foundation to manage this journey, but OrgChartPlus takes it to the next level. By visualizing stakeholder relationships, understanding influence dynamics, and addressing challenges with precision, you can close deals faster, and turn customers into loyal advocates.

If you want to start managing your customer journey better, try OrgChartPlus for free!