2. LEARN HOW YOUR CUSTOMERS BUY

Your potential customers most likely don’t buy your type of product the same way, but still, there are some processes that are generic.

The first process is what we call the buyer’s journey and a subsegment of that journey is the actual purchase process.

Let me describe a sample buyer’s journey.

This example illustrated below is from what we call a replacement market. It means that your solution replaces an existing solution that the potential customer currently uses.

In this example the potential customer has a 10-year buying cycle.

The actual purchase of a new solution and system takes place in the 10th year. The preparation of the actual purchase runs for one or two years prior to the year of the purchase.

In the remaining seven years they may show interest in your type of product, but they will not consider or make a purchase.

Your situation may be different. You may be in an addon market. That means that you complement something that the customer already has. In this case you may not have to wait 10 years before a customer is ready to buy.

Or you may be in a newbiz market selling something nobody has. If nobody has it, then nobody knows about it either and that is altogether another challenge.