How well is your marketing building trust across the buyer journey?
Nine questions. About three minutes. Get your personalised G.R.O.W profile and see where you may be leaving gaps.
Why it matters
Much of the buyer's thinking happens before they contact you
It's not a checklist or a replacement for a good strategy. It's a different way of thinking about your entire marketing approach, built around how your buyers actually make decisions, not how you'd like them to.
By the time a B2B buyer is ready to decide, they have already done much of their evaluation. They have read things, asked people, and often formed a shortlist — before anyone has spoken to them.
The businesses that appear during the earlier, less visible stages of the journey are the ones who hold the advantage. The G.R.O.W framework exists to help you understand where those stages are, what buyers are doing at each one, and where your marketing needs to show up. G.R.O.W was developed by Ralph Risk FCIM, a B2B marketing consultant and fractional CMO based in Chobham, Surrey, drawing on 30 years of marketing experience.
The four stages of the B2B buyer journey
Where are your buyers right now?
G.R.O.W was developed by Ralph Risk FCIM, a B2B marketing consultant and fractional CMO based in Surrey, drawing on 30 years of experience helping B2B businesses build clearer, more effective marketing.
Growing Curious
The buyer notices something isn't working. They're not looking for a supplier yet — they're reading, asking colleagues, processing. Most B2B marketing is completely absent at this stage.
Recognising Needs
They've named the problem and are exploring how to solve it. They're not ready to contact anyone. They're building a picture of what good looks like.
Options Evaluation
They're now looking at who can deliver. Websites, case studies, recommendations. A shortlist is forming — often before they speak to anyone. This is where most B2B marketing starts. By which point, the race is already two stages old.
Working in Partnership
Where most funnels stop and where sustainable growth actually happens. Renewals, referrals and expansion are won here. If your marketing goes quiet after the contract is signed, this stage is unattended.
Frequently asked questions about G.R.O.W
G.R.O.W is a B2B marketing framework developed by Ralph Risk FCIM to help businesses understand how their marketing supports buyers at each stage of a purchasing decision. The four stages are: Growing Curious — helping buyers learn and become interested before they are ready to purchase; Recognising Needs — helping buyers understand their challenges and what may need to change; Options Evaluation — building trust through relevant expertise, evidence and proof; and Working in Partnership — strengthening the relationship after the decision and supporting long-term value.
G.R.O.W was developed by Ralph Risk FCIM, a B2B marketing consultant and fractional CMO based in Chobham, Surrey, drawing on 30 years of marketing experience.
Ralph developed the framework after seeing businesses invest heavily in marketing at the point where buyers were comparing suppliers, while doing far less during the earlier stages when buyers were learning, questioning and forming opinions.
G.R.O.W is designed for founder-led B2B businesses and growing SMEs that want to understand where their marketing is working and where it is not. It is particularly useful for leadership teams that feel their marketing is active but not producing the results they expect.
A sales funnel is built around the seller's process — awareness, consideration, decision. G.R.O.W is built around the buyer's experience. It starts earlier, before the buyer is ready to engage with any supplier, and it continues after the sale. Most B2B marketing focuses on the Options Evaluation stage, when a shortlist is already forming. G.R.O.W encourages businesses to show up much earlier in the buyer journey.
The free G.R.O.W diagnostic consists of nine questions and takes around three minutes to complete.
It gives you a personalised profile indicating where your marketing currently supports the buyer journey and where there may be gaps. It provides a useful starting point rather than a definitive marketing strategy.
Start with the free G.R.O.W diagnostic on this page. It consists of nine questions and takes around three minutes. Your results will indicate where your current marketing supports buyers across the journey and where there may be gaps.
From there, a G.R.O.W Sense-Check can help put the results into the context of your business and identify where to focus first.
A G.R.O.W Sense-Check is a short conversation with Ralph Risk to review your diagnostic results in the context of your business, your ideal customers and your current marketing activity. It is not a sales call. The aim is to give you a clearer picture of where to focus and what is worth doing next.
By the time a buyer is ready to talk, much of their trust in you has already been built — or lost.
Your G.R.O.W profile gives you a starting point. It shows where your marketing is supporting the buyer journey and where you may be leaving gaps.
But knowing where the gap is is only part of the answer. The next step is understanding why it's there — and what you should actually do about it.
That's where a conversation can help. We can look at your results alongside your wider strategy, ideal customers and current marketing, and identify where I'd focus first.