The Science of Marketing

In a recent post, Aaron Ross writes "stop obsessing over the decision maker, and start obsessing over the decision making process." These words are spot on, especially in the high tech world, where it is critical to understand – from the buyer’s perspective – the many stages and stakeholders involved in a purchase decision.

Simply put, the buying cycle defines the steps that specific customer stakeholders must pass through in order to make a purchase. The buying cycle for high tech solutions often spans many months and multiple stages, calling on numerous customer stakeholders who have the power to recommend, authorize or reject a purchase at any time. In order to better understand the buying cycle, step into your customer’s shoes and try answering the following questions.

• Once I identify a problem, what are the steps I need to take to purchase and implement a solution?
• Each step of the way, who is the person I need most as an ally if I am going to be successful?
• What are my chief concerns at each step, and what are those of my allies?
• What information do I most need at each step to make it easy for me to purchase and implement the solution I want?

Once the buying cycle is well understood, it is helpful to diagram the steps, stakeholders and required information to visualize the big picture and decide on your primary goal each step of the way. This buying cycle diagram can take many forms, such as the following example based on the steps to purchase a high-speed backplane connector.

By defining the phases of the buying cycle and identifying the customer stakeholders and their concerns for each phase, a seller can truly begin to think like a buyer. Walking around in the buyer’s shoes enables a keen understanding of the intricacies and barriers to a sale, helping sellers establish goals, craft messages and develop programs that can methodically improve sales success.

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