I am presently working on defining a buying process and as always when I am working on projects I like to write posts as they help to structure my ideas and put them to the test. To start with; a buying process is the process (series of steps / actions) that a buyer follows to purchase a product or service.

The general misunderstanding in most companies is that the sales process is the buying process. Unfortunately this is seldom the case. The selling process is how your sales teams sell the product (create interest (telemarketing e.g), do a demo (live e.g), negotiate price etc. However that does not mean that the sales process coincides with how YOUR customer actually buys the products (buying process) unless you have investigated it and mapped your sales process with the buying process. So your customers maybe do not like telemarketing and prefer to go to straight to your website, they prefer to try the product before seeing a demo etc.

Get to know your buying personas, the selection process is their’s!

What generally happens in the majority of companies is they create a sales process generally based around the experience of it’s sales force, sales directors, from the previous companies they worked in etc. In a lot of cases these sales process have very little to do with how YOUR customers actual buy the product.

To be able to understand the buying process you need to know who engages in the buying process, when they engage and how they engage. For example, you may have the economic persona, who runs the numbers; ROI etc and also a Technical persona who ensures the product is aligned with company policies, process etc and so on and so forth. You also need to identify the barriers they encounter in the various stages during the selection process.

Once you have that (and a lot of other) information quantified and qualified you need to then make sales actions to respond to the buying steps and create tools which enable the sales team to help the prospect in each step of HER / HIS selection process.