An operator downloads one of your reports. Someone else from the same business visits your website. They see a LinkedIn ad. Another contact opens an email. Then, a few weeks later, someone from sales picks up the phone. 

Does your business recognise that as one buying journey? Or five completely separate interactions? 

To the customer, there is only one brand. Inside many businesses, however, that experience is still being managed as a collection of different campaigns, systems and sales conversations. 

And that matters when B2B buying is becoming increasingly fragmented - buyers now use an average of 10 interaction channels across their buying journey, with 42% using more than 11 different touchpoints.  

Multi-channel doesn't mean connected 

Jasmine Preen, CRM Strategy Lead at Omne explains: “Multi-channel means appearing in several different places, but ‘connected’ means those channels share information so that one interaction can influence what happens in different spaces.” 

In other words, the value isn’t just in being preset across more channels – it's in using what happens in on place to help determine what should happen next. 

One contact rarely represents the whole opportunity 

This becomes particularly important when you're trying to win larger AFH accounts. A national or regional operator rarely has one person making the decision. Procurement, operations, food development and commercial teams can all have different priorities and different reasons for choosing one supplier over another. 

And this isn't unique to the Away From Home channel. Buying groups typically involve 10 or more people. More significantly, 19 in 20 buyers ultimately buy from a vendor already on their Day One shortlist. It reinforces why influence needs to happen across the account, and long before a single contact is labelled as a sales-ready lead. 

So, instead of asking “what has this person done?” brands need to ask “What do we know about this account?”  
Is it commercially valuable? Who are the decision-makers? What are they engaging with? Is that behaviour becoming more significant? And what does sales already know about the opportunity? That account-level view gives individual interactions much more meaning. 

Engagement isn't the same as intent 

Not every interaction signals buying intent. Someone might engage regularly with brand content without being ready to buy, while repeatedly product engagement, event attendance or direct enquiries can indicate something more commercially meaningful. 

This is where scoring and grading help brands separate interest from intent and decide what should happen next – whether that’s further nurture or sales action.  

Marketing shouldn't stop when sales starts 

The traditional handover model suggests marketing nurtures a lead until it becomes sales-ready and then steps away. For complex accounts, that misses an opportunity. 

Sales may be building a relationship with the key decision-maker, while marketing continues influencing the wider buying committee with useful content, relevant proof and reasons to keep the brand front of mind. 

That's increasingly important when buyers are forming preferences before those sales conversations happen. Research has found that buyers first contacted sellers around 61% of the way through their buying journey, yet the vendor ranked first before those conversations still went on to win around eight in ten deals. 

Marketing therefore has a role before, during and after direct sales engagement - it creates continuity around the account, with sales adding the depth of human conversation. The strongest customer journeys connect both. 

Don't let demand disappear when the campaign ends

Campaigns still matter. A webinar, product launch, report or sampling programme might be exactly what starts a conversation. But the more important question is what happens afterwards. 

If the right operators have engaged, do they simply disappear back into your database until the next campaign arrives? Or does what you've learnt influence what they experience next? 

As Jasmine puts it, if you're already generating demand, “don't stop there.” The opportunity is to make that demand visible, understand what's actionable and determine what to say or do next. 

And that doesn't require starting with a huge transformation programme. It starts with clean, structured customer and account data; a clear understanding of commercial opportunity; relevant content; connected CRM journeys; and shared visibility between marketing and sales. 

Technology helps make those decisions at scale, but technology alone isn't the answer. 

“The biggest misconception is that technology is the superpower. Really, it's your content and your strategy that's the superpower”, says Jasmine.

From connected journeys to connected growth 

This is the thinking behind Omne Connect – A customer growth solution for brands in the Away From Home channel. 

We bring together enriched data covering 400,000+ foodservice operators across + 20 sectors, with 70+ outlet-level attributes, alongside CRM, campaigns and customer journeys. And because Omne manages the while ecosytem, brands can connect the activity generating demand with what happens next – and build a clearer line of sight from engagement through to commercial action.  

Great campaigns can start conversations. Connected customer journeys keep them moving towards commercial action. The goal isn't more interactions - it's more intelligent ones. 

On 30 September, we'll explore how brands in the Away From Home channel can better connect customer intelligence, marketing and sales to drive growth in our online webinar, Winning More of the Operators That Matter.  

Register here.