Understanding how and why customers buy

Understanding how and why customers buy.

Any Successful selling requires understanding of how and why people buy. By understanding each stage of the Buyer’s Cycle, you will be able to influence current and potential customers and increase your sales.

It will also help you in planning your sales, particularity in categorization of your customers

Empathy and seeing situations from a client’s point of view is fundamental. Customers think about three things:

1. The customers current situation
2. How your product will affect that situation
3. Whether it will close a gap and take them closer to their goals.

When selling to an organization, the different people involved can have different views and priorities and this must be taken into account.

How the buyer’s cycle work?

1. Awareness

Catch the customer’s attention – make them curious about and familiar with your product. Create awareness of your product so as to lead the customer to the next stage: wanting to know more.

2. Information

Make information clear, useful, relevant and compelling, with the right amount of detail for the customer. Too much will be irrelevant, tedious and boring for some; too little will lack the necessary detail for others. The information and how you present it will lead the customer towards prioritizing their needs in relation to your product.

3. Prioritization

This is when decisions are made. Understand your customer’s needs, ‘would like to haves’, their situation and financial concerns. Essentially, help them find the product that is right for them. Without this, the advocacy stage will not occur –they will not recommend you to others.

4. Purchase

Make the process of buying as simple, streamlined and efficient as possible. If the process is tedious or complicated, the sale may fall through. This applies to both business-to-business and business-to-consumer selling. Ensure that customers are pleased with their purchases.

5. Consumption and Use

The sale is not the end of the selling process. How customers use products affects repeat business and recommendations. Provide good products, generous guarantees and great after-sales support to move customers to the next two stages: reuse and advocacy.

6. Reuse

Repeat customers are lucrative. They are high-margin customers, requiring little marketing spend to increase revenue. Also, they recommend your product to others through personal and career contacts and social media.

7. Advocacy

It is called the Buyer’s Cycle for a reason: advocacy leads directly back to the awareness stage. Recommendations reduce the cost and difficulty of gaining other customers. To potential customers, a recommendation brings a product to their attention, removes uncertainty and builds a desire to own it.