Research has shown customers tend to go through four distinct phases when making a purchasing decision. And only three occur before the purchase.

Here’s a short explanation of how to use each to your advantage:

Phase 1: Recognition of needs

The prospect’s most important concern in this phase will be to identify a need that justifies the cost of solving it. Salespeople sometimes lose perspective in this phase, forgetting that their task is to build awareness of the problem, increasing the prospect’s consciousness of the need.

Research shows that the least effective salespeople in this phase do a lot of talking. They neglect to ask probing questions about customer needs. Instead, they press product discussions prematurely. The better salespeople concentrate on listening for needs. A good question they ask themselves in this phase is “What is the prospect thinking?”

Phase 2: Resolution of concerns

There are two dangers in this phase: One is to ignore or downplay the concerns the prospect expresses in the hope they will simply go away. The other is to try to deal with prospect concerns by applying pressure.

It’s typical for customers to get nervous right after they identify a critical need. Clues that indicate prospect anxiety include:

• Giving unjustified postponements to a buying decision
• Reopening closed issues, and
• Getting unrealistically concerned with price when it had not been a factor to this point.

The most dangerous misstep at this phase is for a salesperson to sit back and hope or trust that those fears will resolve themselves.

Phase 3: Evaluation of options

In this phase prospects have recognized they have a need. Now they’re weighing the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses of each solution.

This is the most competitive phase and a good strategy is to stay focused on the need to remind prospects why they need to make a decision. Salespeople can do this by asking questions that make the prospect’s problems more serious. For instance, the salesperson can ask a prospect “What effect does this reject rate have on customer satisfaction?” or “What will this problem do to your delivery schedule?”

Phase 4: Implementation

When a prospect agrees to buy that doesn’t necessarily mean the sale is closed. The overriding danger now is for a salesperson to assume the selling job is done. Every stage of implementation is a sales opportunity. And at any stage of implementation, the sale can be lost or won.

Research shows that many sales are lost in this phase. Good after-sale follow-up and support solidifies sales immediately. At this point effective sales pros shift their emphasis to installation, after-sale support and maintaining contact with customers.

Tags: customer satisfaction, Follow-up, Listening, price, strategy, support