Where the buyer’s
journey began
Today, ‘buyer’s journey’ is part of the everyday language of marketing. In 2003, Hugh gave that idea a name.
He was writing The Leaky Funnel to explore how businesses could better organise and manage their combined sales and marketing efforts. He needed a simple way to describe the progression a buyer goes through – from being unaware they have a problem to understanding what they need, comparing their options and making a decision.
So he called it the buyer’s journey.
There was no grand plan to introduce a term that marketers around the world would still be using more than two decades later. Hugh simply needed a few words that could hold a much bigger idea.
Rather than present that idea in a prescriptive marketing guide, Hugh explored it through a business novel. The result was a more human way to understand a complex problem – and a framework that has shaped align.me’s work ever since.
What you’ll take from the book
The central idea of The Leaky Funnel is simple: your sales and marketing should be organised around the buyer, not the seller. Why? Because buyers follow their own process.
Long before they are ready to speak to a salesperson, buyers work through questions about the problem, what they need and which approach to take. But the buyer’s journey isn’t linear. They may revisit earlier questions, pause or bring new decision-makers into the process.
When sales and marketing don’t account for that movement, opportunities stall or leak from the funnel.
The book gives you a framework for changing that.
1.
See the funnel from the buyer’s side
Understand the stages customers go through before they buy and what they need at each point in their journey.
2.
Give sales and marketing a shared framework
Bring both functions together around the same buyer, the same journey and the same commercial outcome.
3.
Recognise where buyers leak
Identify where opportunities lose momentum, stall or leave the funnel altogether.
4.
Choose the right next move
Plan sales and marketing activity around what buyers need to think, understand or do next – rather than expecting every tactic to make the sale.
The Leaky Funnel put into words ideas that Hugh had already begun applying with B2B businesses – and those ideas have continued to shape align.me’s approach to planning, marketing and training.