The B2B customer journey is a decision lab

When you mention a customer journey workshop, most B2B leaders imagine sticky notes on a wall, colourful arrows between touchpoints, and a team nodding at the obvious: awareness leads to consideration, consideration leads to purchase.

But B2B doesn’t work that way. Your buyers don’t stroll down a funnel. They stumble, circle back, drop out, get pulled into procurement detours, and sometimes reappear months later with a new decision-maker at the table. The customer journey isn’t a line. It’s a labyrinth.

Why most customer journey workshops fail

The problem isn’t the tool. It’s the mindset. Most workshops are borrowed from consumer marketing. They assume one person makes the decision, that emotion drives action, and that a smooth experience will be enough to close the deal.

In B2B, none of that holds. Decisions are collective, stretched over time, and always under the shadow of risk. A CFO cares about cost. A technical lead worries about integration. A user cares about ease of use. If any of them hesitate, the deal stalls.

This is why generic journey mapping exercises so often end up in a drawer. They describe an idealised path rather than the messy reality of how organisations buy.

What a B2B journey really looks like

Think of it less as a funnel and more as a chess game. Every move triggers a counter-move. An enthusiastic marketing manager might be in love with your solution, only to be blocked by IT security. A signed-off budget can still be frozen by finance. Silence after a demo might be the sound of your prospect navigating their own internal politics.

In most B2B journeys, the real competitor isn’t another vendor. It’s the inertia of doing nothing. The endless cycle of meetings, risk avoidance, and “let’s wait until next quarter.” Mapping this reality means recognising that time is as much an obstacle as price.

What a workshop should actually deliver

A B2B customer journey workshop isn’t about pretty diagrams. It’s about decisions. Done right, it reveals where friction slows down deals, where trust breaks down between your brand and the buying group, and where speed creates real advantage.

At WIT, our workshops go beyond description. We frame the journey as a decision-making system: who holds influence, when alignment is possible, and how to design messages that land with different roles in the room. The outcome is not just a map, it’s a playbook.

Learn more about our Customer Journey Workshop

Why strategy workshops save time

The irony is that most teams resist journey workshops because they “take too much time.” Yet the absence of shared understanding wastes far more. Misaligned teams chase the wrong prospects. Marketing and sales argue over what stage a lead is in. Leaders make decisions in the dark.

A well-run workshop is a shortcut. It saves cycles by aligning everyone around the same reality. It ensures your marketing strategy isn’t a series of guesses but a set of deliberate, testable actions.

If you want to see how a sharper strategy can accelerate growth, explore our strategies for businesses.

Don’t draw the ideal

If your customer journey still looks like a funnel, you’re not mapping reality, you’re drawing a wish. In B2B, the real journey is made of slow moves, silent pauses, and sudden accelerations. The workshop is not about making it pretty. It’s about making it usable.