All marketing and selling efforts (the sales cycle) try to move customers from indifference and inaction to purchase. However, we tend to lose sight of where customers are in their purchase process (the buying cycle).
To help contractors make their sales cycle more efficient I’ve developed a table identifying marketing and selling efforts appropriate for your customers’ buying cycle. This table is best presented as a pdf , rather than laid out in a blog post.
So, the main part of this post is the 3 Stages of the Buying Cycle. A down-loadable pdf you can get by clicking here.
NOTE: When I use the term “customer” it applies both to prospective customers (those you’re not doing business with yet) and current paying customers (where you’re the incumbent).
But before you download 3 Stages of the Buying Cycle, lets define:
- 3 Stages of the Buying Cycle
- 2 States of Customer Contracts: Pre-Bid or Bid
3 Stages of the Buying Cycle
This defines where customers are during THEIR buying process, not what we’re doing trying to sell them.
MOTIVATED
Motivated customers know they have problems AND are motivated to do something about them, i.e. go out to bid AND will be likely to change contractors as the incumbent hasn’t solved their problems.
It’s as if these customers know they have a pebble in their shoe and they take the effort to get rid of that pain.
AWARE
These customers are aware they have a problem or want an improvement. However, they don’t have a compelling reason to take action. At least not yet.
These customers can feel the pebble in their shoe but it doesn’t bother them enough to stop and take off the shoe.
OBLIVIOUS
These customers don’t know if they have service problems, don’t know if they have areas in need of improvement, and aren’t particularly interested in finding out.
It’s as if these customers say “Pebble? What pebble? I didn’t even know I had a shoe?”
2 States of Customer Contracts: Pre-Bid or Bid
In sales, a properly targeted opportunity is one for life, until it becomes a paying customer.
With that said, a customer can only be in 2 states, either pre-bid, or actively in the bid process.
Even an in-house opportunity can be considered in a pre-bid state, just waiting for a contractor to help the customer see the value and benefits of outsourcing.
And lost bid opportunities, ones that were considered in the bid state, fall back into pre-bid as you work towards bidding them next chance.
How do you move customers through the buying cycle?
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Chris Arlen
President, Revenue-IQ
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