Researching and Building a Sales Journey Map of Lowe's B2B Pro Customers

Highlights

• The enterprise sales journey map identified 100 opportunities that could drive business growth across Lowe's US$3B Pro contractor customer segment. 
• The research identified two strategic themes that could significantly boost Lowe's sales revenue and brand reputation if exploited properly. 
  • Theme: Predictive selling material packages to contractors. 
  • Theme: Simplifying the legacy sales quote process internally and externally. 
• Important touchpoints of the sales journey could, for the first time, be acted on in unison across the entire technology organization because of the breadth of this journey map. 

Introduction

The fact that Home Depot (HD) had a massive lead over Lowe's (LOW) when it came to selling building materials to the B2B contractor segment was no secret. Each year, Home Depot generates approximately $54B more sales in the B2B contractor customer segment than Lowe's, and Lowe's leadership wanted that gap closed. 

I wanted to build a generic sales journey map of the Pro B2B customer segment for the Lowe's store technology organization, and I wanted the Pro sales business team to base their business strategy decisions coupled with financial data and future investments on this map. 

The sales journey map would follow a B2B residential contractor looking for residential projects. When they find materials that match their primary business capabilities (build, repair, renovate) and their skill set (trade), contractors purchase those goods for their project and intend to start and finish as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next one.  

I wanted to use this Pro contractor sales journey map to uncover new innovation and growth opportunities  that Lowe's could exploit to benefit the customers and their businesses. 

Business problem

Grow Lowe's Market Share in the Pro B2B Segment 

When your competitor generates $54B more in sales from a customer segment to which you also sell, you need to rethink your business strategy to make significant inroads into that segment.  

Home Depot generated more sales in the Pro B2B contractor segment, and they started their digital transformation initiative much sooner than Lowe's because they realized (much like Lowe's did later) that legacy software tools become a huge hindrance when you’re evolving your customer experience and growing sales in particular customer segments.  

In short, not only was Home Depot generating more sales from their B2B contractor segment, but they also had a head start on Lowe's when it came to eliminating and replacing their legacy back-end tech stack. They started their digital transformation earlier and were laser-focused on the most lucrative customer segment, whereas Lowe's gravitated toward the DIY and do-it-for-me (DIFM) customer segments.  

I knew that to make a considerable dent in Home Depot's sales lead in the B2B contractor segment, cookie-cutter attempts wouldn’t (excuse the pun) cut it. Also, incremental improvements in the customer experience would most likely only yield incremental sales growth. The idea that the typical incremental product-featured improvement cycle would make a difference would also not suffice. 

My role

In early 2020, I was ready to take on my next project in the Pro product portfolio. This project would focus on the residential contractors who purchased building materials from Lowe's.  

The Pro customer group to which Lowe's sold materials included residential and commercial contractors, which also covered colleges, companies with large rental portfolios, and many who serviced, maintained, and developed buildings.  

However, I was focused on the underserved residential contractor customer group within the Lowe's Pro customer group.  

My New Project: Mapping the Residential Contractor Journey 

Journey mapping the B2B residential contractor sales journey was my raison d'être for joining Lowe's CUX design team as its first product designer. 

Before my tech career, I had spent almost a decade in the oil and gas industry working with construction companies. I designed and developed the first health and safety iOS app for Canadian oil and gas industry construction workers, so I was very familiar with the construction industry and the different trades involved. Thus, I was ready to make the shopping experience for the residential contractors as frictionless as possible.  

The Current State of the Residential Contractor Experience  

I met with Pro Sales business team members, who mentioned that they wanted to unlock pro personas across the Pro platform. They hoped to figure out the user journey within Lowe’s across the portfolios—for example, the Pro customer journey mapped across Lowe's store and e-commerce teams, two prominent technology organizations within Lowe's with specific portfolios and strategies. The business team, rightfully so, wanted to ensure that the Pro journey map would show the end-to-end journey across the entirety of Lowe's.  

The business team mentioned The Pro personas’ master journeys. They were particularly interested in the following: 

1. Commercial persona (Property management) 
2. Residential persona (Property management) 
3. Renovator/Remodeler persona 

I had high hopes that I would conduct customer/user research for this project. However, the business team wanted Customer Insights (an in-house research team that reports to the business teams and is not a part of the technology organization) to do it. However, when we had this conversation, the Customer Insights team had only one person supporting the Pro customer research.  

Therefore, the business team explored hiring an outside consulting group to research the Pro customer journey map instead of the Customer Insights team. Two different consulting companies, Slalom and Highland Consulting, were vetted to see if they could execute this journey mapping project.  

The Pro Sales business team selected Slalom to complete the Pro journey mapping project. I was disappointed after hearing that I would not lead this research effort; however, I had many other projects in the CUX design portfolio to lead and manage. In the meantime, I would wait for the research project's completion.  

Slalom Presents Its Research  

In H1 2020, Slalom completed their research. They spent between three and four months visiting different Lowe's stores and speaking with Lowe's Pro associates, who staffed the Pro desks and sold building materials to Pro customers. Their interviews and observations built up several personas profiles, including the Pro department supervisor (PDS) and Pro sales specialists (PSS).  

Most of Slalom's research focused on the Lowe's employee selling experience, not the Pro contractor end-to-end customer experience. I'm not sure why the research primarily focused on the Pro desk associates’ selling experience and not the contractors buying building materials, but that is what the research readout showed. 

Let me be abundantly clear: Slalom is a fine company with great people who know how to conduct research, take those findings, and make them usable.  

However, the sales journey map of their completed research wasn’t actionable. I’m not sure what their specific instructions were, but unfortunately I couldn’t identify clear themes and directions from the research output.  

This is a big lesson for anyone involved in research. If you spend three to four months researching, the results have to be actionable; otherwise, you just wasted a lot of money on something that will collect dust. 

Actionable journey map

I needed to build this customer journey map for many reasons:  

1. We lacked accurate knowledge of our B2B customers’ needs. 
2. We lacked an artifact/living document to connect the different teams working to improve the B2B contractor segment’s purchase journey. 
3. I couldn’t pinpoint precisely where some of the customer frustrations lay. 
4. We lacked a holistic journey map for this strategic customer segment. 
5. I couldn’t influence product roadmaps because I couldn’t articulate where and how the opportunity surfaced.  
6. One-sided purchase journeys were typically displayed in PowerPoint decks, and it was hard to interact and learn from slide decks. 
7. We lacked an opportunity backlog that could inform the product team and our stakeholders.  
8. I couldn’t surface opportunities and pair them with user sessions and cohort data.  
9. I couldn’t synthesize strategic themes for our leadership because I couldn’t tell them where the gaps in the residential contractor experience were.  

Goals of Building a B2B Contractor Sales Journey Map 

I wanted to identify which specific customer tasks would increase sales revenue and improve contractor satisfaction with Lowe's. Ideally, we needed to identify the cruxes early on and target them with a series of investments.  

I hoped the following activities would occur once the B2B contractor sales journey map was created: 

• We’d be able to conduct shared opportunity identification workshops with other teams. 
• We’d write opportunity statements together, and as a product organization we would investigate them collectively.  
• We’d surface opportunities bi-monthly to Lowe's inside and outside sales teams. 
• We’d leverage the sales journey map document so that all teams (beyond product teams) could use it as a springboard for investment decisions. 
• We’d be able to share learnings across the broader B2B organization.  
• We’d be able to drive additional customer research where needed, instead of guessing.  

I Developed My Own End-to-End Sales Journey Map  

In H2 of 2020, I spent my summer visiting different Lowe's stores in Montana, where I frequented four Pro desks and interviewed the Lowe's associates who manned them. I also read every scrap of research Lowe's had previously conducted on the Pro customers.  

My approach was different than Slalom's research approach. I interviewed the following: 

• Lowe's Pro associates (employees working at the Pro desk) 
• Residential contractors (GCs, handymen, all trades, etc.) 
• Clients who had used contractors in the past 

Research

Customer and Lowe's Associate Research 

Before I worked in the tech industry, I worked in the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) on an ambulance. I had the opportunity to question hundreds of people monthly in the back of the ambulance, and I've carried that experience and skill set to the customer interviews I conduct in the tech field.  

As an EMT/paramedic student, you’re taught to always ask open-ended questions when talking with your patient(s), but this skill takes time to learn. Extracting information is an art; once you've spoken to a thousand people, you start to get the hang of it.  

I break down my interviews between global and follow-up questions that get to the heart of a process I want to understand. I want to be able to pivot depending on where I meet the interviewee. I don't run a standard script; I improvise on the fly, depending on the situation.  

Following is a description of the interview questions I asked the residential contractors, so I could understand their work better. 

Global Interview Questions

If the contractors provided good answers, I continued talking with them and asking them follow-up questions. Not all interviewees would give the information I seek, so I've learned to figure out if they’re a "valuable” prospect quickly; if not, I say, “Thanks for your time,” and move on. 

Follow Up Interview Questions

I kept this list of questions handy throughout the research stage of this project. You can ask your interview subjects only so many questions before they run out of steam.

While listening to contractors and Lowe's associates, I kept referencing this list of questions. I am detail-oriented and wanted to make this research as effective as possible. I was plumbing the depths for details and left no stone uncovered.

Interview Examples

I interviewed contractors who built houses, contractors who renovated homes, and contractors who repaired them. I also spoke with many Lowe's associates who worked in the stores and sold supplies to contractors.  

I was an opportunistic interviewer—I spoke with contractors in the Lowe's parking lot and met others at Starbucks and picked their brains. Other contractors required me to take them to a restaurant to get their perspective. 

I love talking to contractors, learning more about how they work, and hearing their thoughts about Lowe's and the competitor stores where they shop. 

Store Observations

I wanted to understand Lowe’s sales journey mechanics, so I visited four different stores in Montana. I also reviewed all the previously completed customer research on Pro customers and was able to merge the old research with my customer research on several occasions.  

• I observed customers as they purchased materials in Lowe's stores.  
• I observed the Lowe's Pro B2B sales teams selling materials to contractors and DIY customers. 

Research synthesis

I captured a lot of data from my interviews with contractors and Lowe's associates. Then, I took that data and worked to turn it into information. I had to start processing the raw data and making sense of what people had shared with me.  

I turned to trusted methods of data dissemination to make meaning out of the data I had collected. 

Affinity Diagramming

I was constantly synthesizing my raw qualitative data. Here is an example of how I would break down data and search for themes early on in my research.

Flow Diagramming

I was very interested in how contractors managed their projects. Most people are familiar with the concept of project management; however, I wanted to go beyond the idea and understand, for example:  

• How was a construction project organized?  
• How does a contractor know when to order his next materials package?  
• What happens when the package is delayed? 
• What happens when excess materials are left over from a completed package? 

I want to understand the LOOPS of activity that occur over and over. Once I understood all the loops, I could start thinking about how Lowe's could invest in capabilities to assist the contractor better.

Organizing My Customer Research

Creating Strategic Themes

After I gathered my customer/user research, I concept-mapped and structured it for further analysis. In this process, you’ll ideally understand what knowledge is valuable. My question was, “What knowledge should I disseminate among product teams, and what could I discard?”  

I uncovered several themes I thought were worthy of further analysis. One was contractors who viewed Lowe's negatively. I tried to dig into why that was. Was it reasonable? Or did Lowe's fail to meet their expectation in a way that we could solve?  

Other themes I surfaced focused on Lowe's competition in geographic markets. How could local suppliers survive a Lowe's and Home Depot in their city or nearby? The answers I heard were fascinating, and I could link them to Lowe's brand reputation among contractors.  

Most importantly, I focused on project management in construction projects and on identifying opportunities to improve Lowe's cash flow from the Pro residential contractor customer group to Lowe's sold materials.  

Sales revenue greases all wheels and can help you mask operational inefficiencies and buy your organization time to sort them out. You need that sales revenue; otherwise, you make many short timeframe investments into a customer group.  

I needed to create these strategic themes to steer future investment discussions in the right direction and help drive the most growth from this pivotal customer group, which spends billions each year buying materials. 

Theme 1: business relationship

The Concept of a Business Relationship

For example, I asked contractors why they didn’t purchase building materials from Lowe's. Some said they had no relationship with the Lowe's Pro desk, which caused me to dig into the concept of a business relationship. 

I wanted to understand what "relationship" meant to a contractor. Why would they trust one supplier over another because of their relationship? Was it because a supplier sells them quality materials? Did pricing play a role? Or was it because the staff at a certain supplier treated them differently?  

I got lots of different answers, but nobody could pin it down for me. So, I tried to draw it out with the help of several contractors. 

How Could Trust Impact the Relationship between the Contractor and Lowe's? 

It took me some time to figure it out.  

The question remained: Which LOOPS (customer & user tasks) required immediate investment from Lowe's to combat and restore trust? Was it more straightforward investments like hiring more cashiers for the Pro checkouts? Or, did we have to solve end-to-end LOOPS that involved many customer tasks across multiple channels? 

Theme 2: Informal contractor network

How Local Building Suppliers Leverage an Informal Network of Contractors  

Boyce Lumber is a locally owned and family operated lumber and design center. They have operated out of Missoula, Montana, since 1937. 

Successful local building suppliers like Boyce operate an informal network of contractors, which draws in new customers and keeps current customers returning for more business. 

An informal network of suppliers is complicated to compete with for big-box retailers like Lowe's, Home Depot, or Menards.  

Benefits of an informal contractor network: 

1. Swap Services: When you're in a pinch and need a trade on your project for a day or a morning, you just call up someone you know and ask for their help. Maybe down the road, you’ll repay that contractor by swinging by his project.  
2. Solve a Pain Point: Sometimes, a contractor comes across something he's never seen before. The easy solution is to pick up the phone and talk to the sales rep at Boyce, and they can refer you to another contractor. Or, you call someone you've met at Boyce and ask for their help.  
3. On-Demand Labor: Need a few laborers to complete an essential part of your project? Call Boyce or contractors you know who have a lot of laborers. Work out a deal, and now you have access to on-demand labor.  
4. Offer Advice: Working on a challenging project? Again, you’ll have access to somebody who has done something like it already. Being able to tap into that kind of knowledge is invaluable.  
5. Bartering System: Swinging by someone else's worksite and looking at their needs is easy. As a contractor, you can help out for a few hours, and maybe in return they’ll give you access to some equipment you need for your project.  
6. Offer Expertise: An informal network is valuable when contractors build out new packages for their construction projects. The salespeople and contractors in the network can be called on to help inspect and review new construction packages that a contractor might be considering. 

Compare that with a "local" Pro desk from Lowe's.

The local pro desk is represented as one generic web page that doesn't convey how it is connected to the local community. Nothing on this page indicates a commitment to local contractors or how Lowe's provides a valuable service for them.

Lowe's could learn a lot from local suppliers on how to brand market their services.

Theme 3: local marketing

Local Building Suppliers Utilized Compelling Marketing 

Contractors had a lot to say when I interviewed them about local suppliers versus a supplier like Lowe's. I compiled this table to capture the recurring themes they raised.  

Contractors felt that a level of independence was removed because Lowe's HQ in North Carolina dictated to the salespeople at the local Lowe's Pro desk, generating a feeling that the salespeople at the Pro desk could only do so much.  

Meanwhile, local or regional building suppliers seemed to have a flexibility contractors were seeking. They felt they had more room to wheel and deal and to be more flexible depending on their project’s needs.  

Lastly, the idea that a building supplier was locally owned produced powerful feelings of loyalty toward that business. For example, Builders First Source (BFS) is a popular supplier of building materials. A lot of contractors spoke highly of them, and to give them credit, they do have well-managed locations. 

Theme 4: materials packages

When you mention project management, many contractors gloss over it and move on quickly from that topic. However, when you start talking about how they source their materials and organize when they get them, they become a lot more animated.  

Perfectly managing and timing materials for their projects is critical to residential contractors. Without a doubt, this theme was the most important one for Lowe's Pro product portfolio team to explore in great detail. 

Material Packages in Construction

I have mentioned the word "loops" in other areas of this post for an important reason: A loop is a series of actions that repeat themselves repeatedly, and when you figure out how to position your company inside a customer loop, you can potentially generate an unlimited amount of revenue.  

Contractors buy hundreds of materials packages throughout the year to complete their projects. In my research, I discovered that Lowe's could insert itself in this loop by investing in services that help contractors complete their projects, particularly through providing comprehensive materials packages. This strategic move would align Lowe's closely with the contractors' objectives, creating a mutually beneficial relationship. 

However, as soon I discovered this opportunity, I realized a huge obstacle that the Pro product portfolio team would need to clear.  

You guessed it—legacy software. 

Theme 5: legacy software

I didn't purposely set out to gather data on what software the Lowe's Pro desk used. Nor did I ask contractors what they thought about Lowe's website and its underlying technology. The only recurring feedback I noted was that the contractors didn’t trust lowes.com and the inventory displayed there.  

Contractors mentioned to me over and over that this lack of trust drove them to call the Pro desk or physically go to the Lowe's store and check the local inventory themselves. This was one area where they felt Home Depot had a competitive advantage over Lowe's. They felt that based on their shopping experience, Home Depot's website displayed more accurate inventory numbers than Lowe's did.  

I didn't pursue this feedback vigorously because I had my eyes on the current sales quoting process that the Pro sales specialists operated when selling materials to contractors. I spent a lot of time talking with members of the Pro desk about how they sold materials, which software they used, and what help they required from the technology organization to make their sales process easier.  

One thing was clear to me: The legacy software product roadmap should be guided to support the contractors’ materials package purchasing experience. Supporting this residential contractor goal would benefit the other customer groups to which Lowe's sold materials, such as DIY and do-it-for-me (DIFM).  

However, this type of thinking requires omnichannel management. It also requires exceptional digital customer experience strategy planning to ensure the right products receive investment to drive business growth. 

Five strategic themes

Now that I had identified five strategic themes from the research, I could group them and think about which ones aligned best with the overall business strategy.  

However, I did want to identify themes that Lowe’s could exploit that would not only increase the company’s revenue but also and create happier, more satisfied customers. This approach would encourage customers to return to Lowe's to shop more frequently.  

Mapping the data

Building the Infrastructure of the Sales Journey Map Canvas 

After completing my research and synthesizing the data, I was ready to start plotting important research data to the journey map template I had picked for this project.  

One of the more challenging aspects of building a journey map is organizing, grouping, and naming the stages. I wanted other team members to understand what they were looking at and find their product in a specific stage of the journey map. 

Another way to look at the journey map is from this perspective.

Visual chronological journey

The sales journey map represented the residential contractor’s chronological journey: 

• Meeting the client. 
• Getting hired to work on a residential construction project. 
• Getting quotes on materials. 
• Buying materials. 
• Working on a residential construction project. 
• Completing the construction project. 
• Starting the process again. 

The contractor interacts with the client and the Lowe's associate throughout this journey. 

The story starts with the homeowner, who contacts a contractor for a job. Then, once the contractor takes on the job, the scene shifts to the Lowe's store. At the Lowe's Pro desk, the contractor talks with the Pro sales specialist to get a quote for his materials. 

Actionable insights

I had to document my opportunities in a Miro board because no one specific software tool could do the job properly.  

Opportunity backlog

I mapped the boosters and blockers in a separate document that displayed the sales journey map’s different stages. 

Opportunity parking lot

Not all opportunities my research generated fit into a nice little checkbox in the journey map. So, I created an opportunity parking lot where I could document opportunities by common theme and grouping. 

An example of a business opportunity

Here is one example. 

Suppose I were to inventory a residential contractor’s customer tasks. One of the core tasks would be project management, whether we were talking about a quick, straightforward project or a massive billion-dollar construction. Project management is a universal task that can be broken down into many smaller tasks.  

A project starts with a need to build, repair, and renovate, and all of those projects require materials.  

Project management is a LOOP of tasks repeating themselves over and over. Investing in these tasks generates more sales revenue because you can process more quotes faster and leverage more software.  

The idea of putting a human in the sales process loop just caused one bottleneck after another.  

• Simplify the sales process tasks by improving how a contractor can build a materials list for a project.  
  • The B2B Pro customer website and how a Pro's account is managed are at the heart of this opportunity.  
  • Introduce project management capabilities for contractors.  

I could list many other tasks; however, this one stood out because it's a transactional task that Lowe's could master and dominate as a retail company.  

The only other opportunity that was a true crux (important and addressable) was that Lowe's should build materials packages for contractors. A construction materials package capability would generate billions in new revenue, set the stage for predictive AI selling, and give Lowe's a chance to catch up to Home Depot. 

Sharing key moments

After creating the customer journey map, I spent the following weeks and months presenting this contractor buyer's experience to many product teams. It was well received and created many opportunities for collaboration between the 20-plus product teams that were a part of this customer journey.  

One of the goals of mapping this B2B contractor buyer's journey was to get all the product and sales teams on the same page and talking about the customer from the same vantage point. So often, teams would come at a problem from their perspective, unaware that other product teams were already scoping the same opportunity and figuring out how to address the experiential deficiency.  

Stating the ROI of aligning product teams is challenging, but it’s fair to say that it’s vast. Without alignment, millions of dollars are quietly wasted every quarter, and you are stuck incrementally improving a customer experience.  

Incremental = Slow Growth! 

I learned that you can only create massive revenue growth when teams are aligned and working from the same page. Good leaders understand that they need to give a team the chance to do good work. However, leaders need to align all teams to execute the mission. As a leader, you need customer experience documentation like customer journey maps to create the foundation for teams' success. 

Summary

I’d had the opportunity to build journey maps before. I found this journey mapping project to be extremely valuable because I studied the following: 

• How was this journey map perceived? 
• What did people find valuable about this journey map? 
• Customer experience is a relatively new concept for many people in tech. They are mostly familiar with user journeys and user experience methods or language. What would be the challenges of introducing a more technical document like a journey map? 
• Could teams act on the knowledge from the journey map?  
• Could I present this information in a way that it would be utilized effectively?  
• Suppose brands operate without customer journey maps. What does that say about the organization?  
• Many businesses operate with legacy mindsets. Does this document help them become more customer-centric? 
• Product-led growth (PLG) versus customer-led growth (CLG): Why do organizations gravitate toward a feature mindset versus a task mindset? 

Reflections and details

• The touchpoints displayed in the journey map proved to be very popular. Product managers tagged their touchpoints to show teams for which parts of a stage they were responsible.  
• I should have created an experience map that showed a simplified journey, which would have acted as a stepping stone for the research journey map. 
• The journey map acted like a neutral artifact that allowed me to invite product teams from other verticals and describe where they were working to improve the Pro’s customer journey.  
• The map connected product teams from the store organization with Lowe’s e-commerce organization.  
• I learned that people struggled with the concepts of customer needs and goals and the difference between the two. Next time, I will prep team members regarding customer experience definitions before I present a journey map.  
• I learned that managing qualitative data is much more complicated than quantitative data. (I take it back; data scrubbing in ML is extremely difficult) People have been trained that quantitative data is (true) and that qualitative data is an opportunity to share a personal opinion or anecdote. Perhaps only when programmatic journey mapping has been created will people take qualitative data at face value and believe it to be (true). 
• People were shocked by the complex customer experience for Pro contractors and how they interacted with Lowe's through various touchpoints.  
• This journey map connected siloed product teams, who became able to transfer knowledge to each other. 

Type: Customer journey mapping project
Date: Summer 2020
Company: Lowe's
Role: Lead Product Designer
What I Did: Problem definition work, customer research, user research, customer interviews, observations, affinity diagramming, flow diagramming, concept mapping, research synthesis, synthesized customer and market data, informed customer experience and business strategy, strategic work, built customer journey map, identifying business opportunities, strategic alignment, and created buyers journey of contractors.
Project team members: A user researcher assisted me with crafting interview questions. The researcher helped with high-level mapping of the stages of the journey map.
Tools: Mural, otter.ai, Notability, Miro, iPad, and iPhone

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Written by Leo Vroegindewey, Principal Product Designer.

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