How to map your sales, marketing and BD workflow in 5 steps

Most process maps start with the org chart, which means they show you how the business is organised, and very little about how a customer actually flows through it. I start with the customer's journey instead and use four stages, which I call the ACCR loop: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion and Retention.

I draw it as a loop rather than a funnel because Retention feeds back into Awareness. Referrals, case studies and reputation all come from customers you've already won. When the journey is drawn as a funnel, the flow ends at the point the sale is made, and nobody feels responsible for what happens next.

You'll end up with: one page showing the four stages, each described in your customer's words.

For each stage, write down who owns it, what actually gets done and which tools or AI agents are involved. Map what really happens day to day, because it's rarely the same as what the process document says.

There are three simple ways to do this, depending on what you want to see. A value stream map follows the work step-by-step and shows where it stalls and where the most value, untapped or otherwise, lies in the system. A swim-lane map splits the same process by team, so you can see exactly where it crosses from one to another. A spaghetti diagram traces the real, often untidy, path the work follows between people, tools and inboxes. A swim-lane on a whiteboard is usually enough for a first pass to shape a conversation.

If you'd like a head start, your own AI assistant can draft a first version. Give it your website, how your team is structured and a CRM export if you have one, then ask it to map what you do at each stage. The download below has the three prompts I've used, in order, as a starting point you can adapt to your business.

Include the brand and reputation work, such as content, PR and case studies, as well as the sales pipeline work. In most businesses I work with, the two are managed on separate calendars and measured in different ways, even though they're serving the same customers.

You'll end up with: a map of who does what at each stage, with every tool placed where it's used.

This is where the value usually leaks. For every point where work passes from one team to another, ask three questions. What gets passed on? What has to be rebuilt from scratch? And who owns the handover itself? I wrote more about why this matters so much for AI in why agentic AI projects fail at the handovers.

These are the four handovers I look at first, because they're where I most often find the biggest gaps.

For a quick first read, rate your own handovers below.

You'll end up with: a list of your handovers, each rated as strong, patchy or missing.

If every team only measures its own part of the journey, nobody is measured on the handovers between them. Choose one number for each stage that bridges this gap, and hold it against the measures each team already has.

These are the starting points I use, and they're worth adapting to your business.

You'll end up with: four shared measures, each with owners from at least two teams.

Salesforce's State of Sales research found that sales reps spend 70% of their time on tasks other than selling (Salesforce, 2024). A good map shows you which of those tasks exist because the work isn't being passed on properly, and those are the ones to fix first.

Once the connections are in place, AI tends to win back the most time in prospect research, outreach that's grounded in what you know about the buyer, call preparation and follow-up written from the actual conversation notes, CRM updates after calls, and live pipeline reporting. Deploy it where your map shows it will help the whole customer journey. That capacity should then go back into where the work really happens, with customers and in the room, often at the point of conversion.

You'll end up with: a short list of fixes in order, starting with your weakest handover.