Sales principles, ancient or modern, are essential for businesses seeking sales success. To achieve this, you need to understand the five stages your customers will typically go through as they consider and buy from you.

These stages can be loosely defined as:

1. Traffic,
2. Leads,
3. Prospect,
4. Customers, and
5. Repeat customer.

Here they are in some details.

Stage 1: Traffic

First, draw traffic. This includes visitors to your website and store. Adverts, SEO, social media, content marketing, influencers. These are just some of the tools companies typically use to generate traffic and leads.

Stage 2: Lead

Leads are a percentage of your traffic interested in your content. They generally show this interest by providing you their contact details in exchange for information they need or something of value.

Stage 3: Prospect

Prospects are leads you qualify as having BANT.

–  Budget to spend on your products and services.

–  Authority make a buying decision.

–  Need the product or service you’re offering.

–  Time is of the essence and so has urgency to solve the problem they’re experiencing.

It’s only when you’ve qualified your prospects using a framework like BANT that you can be sure you have a prospect and not just tyre-kicker.

Qualified leads that you evaluate as potential buyers. You’ll need a prospecting process. Once you have your prospects Nurture and build relationships to convert leads to prospects.

Stage 4: Customer

Revenue is next. A customer is a prospect who’s made a purchase. Convert prospects to paying customers by offering them compelling value they cannot refuse and will help them overcome their challenges and\or pursue their opportunities. After they commit to becoming a paying customer, WOW them. Make sure to exceed their expectations.

Stage 5: Repeat Customer

Repeat customers are those who willingly come back to make more purchases and will happily pay more. Continuously provide exceptional experiences to make them loyal to your brand.

Last Words

1.  Even in the digital age, embrace these principles of sales to ensure growth and profitability.

2.  You need specific strategies at each stage to move customers through the sales funnel.

3.  Lastly, constantly analyse and update your sales funnel at each stage. Monitor results and tweak strategies.

This will help you boost the effectiveness of your sales process and to generate even more traffic you can convert over time.

If you need help with this, click the button below to learn more about our Sales Enablement Support services.