How to Run a Customer Journey Map Workshop (And Why It's Essential for Your GTM Strategy)

Here's a truth most founders learn the hard way: you can't build an effective go-to-market strategy if you don't understand how your customers actually buy.

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Not how you think they buy. Not how you wish they bought. How they actually move from "I have a problem" to "Take my money."

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This sounds simple, right? Just map out the buying journey from your customer's perspective. But it's something we consistently forget to do. We default to thinking about the sales process purely from our own perspective: What do we need to do? How do we move deals through the pipeline? What's our next step?

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We build sales stages, define handoffs, create internal checklists—all focused on our side of the equation.

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But the magic happens when you stop and put yourself in your customer's shoes. When you really envision the process from their perspective—their questions, their fears, their internal politics, their competing priorities—everything changes. Your messaging gets sharper. Your timing improves. Your sales conversations become actual conversations instead of pitches.

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That's where customer journey mapping comes in—and why I run this workshop with every founder I work with.

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What Is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is a visualization of your customer's experience with your brand, from awareness through purchase and beyond. It includes touchpoints, customer sentiments, motivations, pain points, and actions plotted in sequential order.

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The goal isn't to create a pretty diagram for your pitch deck. It's to understand your customer's perspective well enough to optimize every process that touches them.

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Here's the thing: the elements that impact or enhance the customer journey vary by buyer persona. Which means you can't create a meaningful journey map until you've done the foundational work of defining your ICP and buyer personas.

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Why This Matters for Your GTM Strategy

Gartner research shows that B2B buyers spend only 17% of their buying journey meeting with potential suppliers. When they're comparing multiple vendors? Your sales rep might get 5-6% of their total decision-making time.

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That's it. 5%.

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This means the vast majority of your customer's journey happens without you in the room. They're researching independently online (27% of their time), meeting with their internal buying group (22%), and researching offline (18%).

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If you don't understand what's happening during that other 95% of their journey, you're essentially hoping you even make it into the 5% cut and that your process is compelling enough to overcome whatever narrative they've already built.

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Hope is not a strategy.

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The Four Stages of the Customer Journey

Before you can map the journey, you need to understand its stages:

• Awareness: Your customer has realized they have a problem and a pain point to solve. They may not even know they need a product or service yet—they're just starting to research. Your aim here is to help them navigate their new pain point, not push for a purchase.
• Consideration: They've done enough research to know they need a solution. Now they're comparing brands and offerings. Your aim is to help them navigate a crowded marketplace and move toward a purchase decision.
• Decision: They've chosen a solution and are ready to buy. No more educational content—it's about making the purchase process as seamless as possible.
• Advocacy: Post-purchase, your job is to deliver an excellent onboarding experience and ongoing service. The aim is retention (renewals) and referrals.

Before You Map: Define Your ICP and Buyer Personas

You can't map a journey if you don't know whose journey you're mapping.

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Quick refresher: Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) describes the company that's a perfect fit for your solution. Your Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of the person within that company who buys from you. I've written detailed guides on how to define your ICP and how to refine your buyer personas if you need to do that foundational work first.

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Important: If you have more than one ICP or buyer persona, you need to complete this exercise for each one.

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For example, if you sell to both enterprise and mid-market customers, those are two completely different buying motions. 

• Enterprise deals involve procurement, legal review, multiple stakeholders, and 9-12+ month timelines. 
• Mid-market deals might close in a few months with one decision-maker and a few influencers–no security review, no big legal negotiation. 

The emotions, questions, and barriers at each stage are different. The touchpoints that matter are different. You can't map them on the same journey and expect it to be useful.

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Same goes for different buyer personas. A VP of Engineering and a CFO approach their buying process very differently, even within the same company. Map them separately.

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How to Run the Workshop

Now for the practical part. Here's how I structure customer journey map workshops:

Who Should Be in the Room

All of your customer-facing people should be part of this exercise. That means sales, customer success, support, onboarding—anyone who talks to customers regularly. They each see different stages of the journey and hear different questions, objections, and feedback. You need all of those perspectives to build a complete picture.

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If you're a small team, that might be three people. If you're larger, it might be ten. The point is: don't leave out voices that have direct customer contact.

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Time Required

Block 2-3 hours. You can do it in 90 minutes if everyone comes prepared, but give yourself a buffer for the conversations that emerge.

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The Workshop Structure

Part 1: Align on ICP and Persona (30-45 minutes)

Before mapping the journey, confirm everyone agrees on whose journey you're mapping. Review your ICP definition and primary buyer persona. If there's disagreement, resolve it now—this is foundational.

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Part 2: Map Each Stage (60-90 minutes)

For each stage (Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Advocacy), work through these six questions:

1. What is the customer thinking or feeling? What is keeping them going, or stopping/slowing their process?
2. What is the customer's action? What are they physically doing—calling peers, running Google searches, reading reviews, building internal business cases?
3. What is the customer's touchpoint with your business? Where would they discover you and what would they find when they do?
4. What do we want to change about this step? Based on what you've mapped, where are the gaps or friction points?
5. How and/or why will we make this change? Get specific about the action items.
6. What's your competitive advantage at this stage? Where do you have an edge over alternatives?

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Use a whiteboard, Miro, or the template I've included below. The format matters less than capturing honest answers.

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Part 3: Identify Gaps and Opportunities (30 minutes)

Once you've mapped all four stages, look for patterns:

• Where are customers getting stuck or slowing down?
• Where do we have no presence at all?
• Where are we showing up but not adding value?
• What questions are we not answering with our content and marketing?
• Where do competitors have an advantage we need to address?

This is where rows 9-10 of the template come in—documenting what you want to change, how you'll change it, and where you can lean into your competitive advantage.

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The Questions That Surface the Good Stuff

Here are prompts I use to get past surface-level answers:

• "What do customers tell us they were doing before they found us?"
• "What do customers say surprised them about working with us—good or bad?"
• "Where do deals stall? What's happening at that moment?"
• "What questions do we get asked repeatedly in sales calls?"
• “What causes the most friction during contract negotiations?”
• "What do churned customers say when they leave?"

If you don’t know the answers to any of these questions, that’s ok. Document where your knowledge or understanding has gaps and then seek out the answers from your actual prospects and customers. 

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What to Do With Your Journey Map

A journey map that sits in a Google Drive folder helps no one. Here's how to actually use it:

• For Marketing: The map tells you what content to create for each stage. Awareness-stage content should address pain points, not pitch your product. Consideration-stage content should help buyers compare options and build internal consensus. It also helps you determine where there are gaps in your broader digital or in-person presence. You need to be where the buyers are and aligned with the people they turn to for recommendations and reassurance. 
• ‍For Sales: The map reveals what's happening before prospects ever talk to you. Use it to ask better discovery questions and understand where buyers are in their process. It also helps you pre-emptively predict where there will be friction in your sales process so you can manage it proactively. ‍
• For Customer Success: It highlights where there may be gaps in your onboarding or post-sales process. Retaining and expanding revenue with existing customers is equally important as acquiring new customers. ‍
• For the Whole Team: Review and update the map 1-2 times a year. Your customers' journey will evolve as your product and market evolve. 

Get the Template

I've included the exact template I use when running these workshops with startups. Download it, make a copy for each ICP/persona you're mapping, and use it to guide your session.

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Make it into the 5% and Make it Count

Your go-to-market strategy is only as good as your understanding of how customers actually buy. A customer journey map forces you to document that understanding, pressure-test your assumptions, and identify the gaps in your current approach.

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The companies that win aren't necessarily the ones with the best product. They're the ones who show up at the right moment, with the right message, because they've done the work to understand their customer's journey.

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That 5% of time you get with buyers? Make it count.

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