Exercises for this chapter:
- Map out your customer’s buying timeline. What problem or need are you solving and what process does your customer go through to become aware of their problem? Is it a sudden demand, or does it take them longer to come to this realisation?
- How long does it take your customer to go from being aware of a need to buying your product? Is it longer than you thought? What can you do to influence and speed up that process?
- Where can you get your company visible so that people in their ‘passive research’ phase will see it? Are your customers at the gym, are they browsing a specific website or listening to a certain radio station?
- What makes your customer take action? What is their trigger point? Write down what has to happen before someone will be ready to engage with you and then work out if there’s a way to prompt that to happen earlier.
- What mechanism can you create to capture people during their ‘active research’ phase? Is it a lead magnet or PDF on your website with some really valuable information that a customer needs to make a decision, or is it a social quiz?
David says:
You cannot sell to someone if you don’t understand how they buy.
Take time out to map out your own customer’s buying timeline – draw it out on a big sheet of paper and pin it to the wall. Every time you learn something new about how your customer buys, or you observe a common action they all take, write it down on your customer’s buying timeline.
We keep ours on a flip chart and it’s been updated several times over the years!