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3 Key Stages of the Customer Life Cycle

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Sales is more than just closing a deal. Great salespeople build entire relationships with their customers that span decades. Like any relationship, customers will be loyal to companies that are willing to nurture them.

Customer Life cycles vary for every company depending on the nature of their business, their products, and their services. There are three key stages that every prospective customer in every industry goes through before they become customers.

The Three Key Stages of a Customer Life cycle

Attract

The Attraction stage of the Customer Life cycle is a joint effort by the marketing and sales departments. In this stage, companies either reach out to their customers through campaigns or create avenues by which interested customers can find them.

It’s a combination of education on what their business can do for their customers and how it fits their individual needs. Besides having a great product, it’s also about how comfortable a customer is associating with their brand and directing customers towards physical or online channels where they can avail of the product or service. It also utilizes social proofs such as endorsers, reviews, or testimonials.

Engage

Once customers know about your products and services and where to find them, the next step is making the purchase. Ideally, companies should always follow up with customers afterward to make sure the purchasing processing is up to standard – quick, easy, and painless.

The engagement period is also when customers give their verdict on whether or not your company’s products or services are worth the value you are charging. Should your customers have any issues, this should be reported back to teams in charge to improve the experience.

Retain

After the initial happy purchase, the next step is keeping them happy. Companies spend a lot of resources convincing customers that their product or service is worth it. Nurture your existing relationships encourage repeat purchases that will cost less than you find new customers.

How To Nurture Your Customers In Every Stage

Before you can reach the stage where you can expect customers to be loyal to you, you need to earn your customer’s respect and trust. But how do you that? You should be consistent. Each stage requires a seamless passing of hands between various departments within an organization. Customers should always feel like companies are speaking to them in a singular voice through each stage of a cycle.

Making Sure Your Brand Is Consistent

Having a clean, updated, and accurate data in your CRM system will mean the difference before loyal customers and those who will jump ship the moment a better offer comes along. Sales enablement platforms like Hey DAN help make that consistent voice a reality. Hey DAN makes sure that your data is not only clean through their data clean up and management services, but also analyze opportunities and follow-up for you.

Never miss important moments. Always be there for your customer.

How to Spot a Rising Sales Star

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How To Spot a Rising Sales Star

 

Great salespeople don’t just happen. They are a combination of natural affinity to sales and the right environment to succeed. In a sea of job hunters and aspiring salespeople, how do you spot a rising star that will take your team to the next level?

Active Listener & Empath

Everyone knows how to listen, but to listen effectively? That’s a rare skill. Most people listen with the intent of replying. Because they have a goal to close deals quickly, many salespeople fall into this trap and make it hard to form a genuine relationship and connection with your lead.

Outstanding sales representatives will know how to read the conversation. They’ll be able to hear what customers want from your product or services. They’ll know how it will fit into their lives. Empathetic salespersons can also give valuable feedback to your product teams about how to improve it.

Great Communicator

Sales require meeting various kinds of people, one after the other. Salespeople need to blend in when meeting their prospective clients. From coffee shops to board rooms, they have to know how to adjust their situation.

You can tell when a person knows their stuff when they can easily explain complicated things. Excellent communicators can adjust their language, tone, and energy with what the conversation demands. Great salespeople can speak to everyone from the staff to the CEO without losing their attention.

Networker

Sales go beyond just closing a deal. It’s a process that requires relationship management that sometimes lasts a lifetime. After meeting a client for the first time, salespeople need to remember little details that show they care – birthdays, anniversaries, coffee preferences.

Trust takes time and consistency to build. Salespeople know that it’s not just about who you know, but who you continue to have a relationship with.

Resilient

Anyone who comes from sales knows that everyone goes through difficult times. Dry spells are part of every seasoned salesperson’s book of experiences. During periods of uncertainty, exceptional salespeople view it as an opportunity. They’ll look hard times as drivers to do and be better.

Great salespeople can see the silver lining in every situation. They know that tough times don’t last, but tough people do. No matter what happens, their next sale is on the verge of happening.

Once you find these traits in a sales team member, you’ll know that this is a person who will be an essential part of your team. After hiring the best possible people, the next challenge for every company is to give them everything they need to succeed.

Salespeople spend 66% of their time working that isn’t related to their primary function. Sales enablement platforms like Hey DAN rid them of time-consuming responsibilities such as data entry, expense tracking, and note-taking – leaving room for the things that matter.

Don’t waste their talent and their time doing tedious administrative work that someone else can do. Make sure that your salespeople stay at the top of their game and focus on what they do best – selling.