The 5 Steps Journey To Turn A Stranger Into A Customer
Written by Davide Scalia on Feb. 28th 2019
For a business to succeed, they need to know about more than just what they are selling.

To effectively sell their product, they need to understand their client’s journey from start to the end. So, what makes someone become your client?

The process of purchasing a good or service is what turns a random individual to a client or consumer, let’s break down all the steps an individual take that turn them into your client/consumer.

An individual must pass through each of these steps before they make the final decision that makes them your customer.

First Contact

This is the first stage an individual passes through that sets up everything that follows. This stage of the process is the most important aspect as it is the first impression they receive of your product.

This stage entails individuals first hearing about your product or coming in contact with it. If they do not hear or see something that does not catch their eye, they will not be converted into a paying customer.

Generating Interest

The product needs to be positioned in a certain way. It should be displayed or explained in such a way that it exactly tells individual “What it can do for them”.

This is the best way for it to not go unnoticed and to generate enough interest so that they move on to the next stage of the process.

Investigation

Now that the individual has developed an interest in your product, they are going to start learning more about it. This could include them researching on the internet or comparing it to similar products available in the market.

This part of the process varies depending on the type of good. For more expensive products, the investigative process can be a long one, but for consumable goods, this process could last for a mere few minutes.

If the product is displayed or explained effectively compared to its competition, it should be more than enough to move them along the process— onto the next stage.
Contact

After investigating the process, they will directly interact with the product to see if it satisfies their need. 

This could involve them physically interacting with the product, seeing, tying or touching.
If the product is a service, it could include them partaking in a free trial or a demonstration. 

The individual will be looking to see if their interaction brings about any positive feelings because people buy with emotion and justify with logic.

Buy

This stage of the process is the part where the individual has developed enough interest, removed any doubt, and made up their mind about purchasing your product.

Even though most think that this is the final step, it is not. However, this is the most important one because without a transaction taking place everything that took place before was a waste.

This entire process entails marketing the product and does not need any other form of marketing from the sales team, I’ll explain why:

Let’s take this scenario to make things clear. 

Throughout the process, the product has been displayed on a physical platform, next to the store window or on social media, with the right messaging.

Interested parties may have been recommended by peers or may have done their research before deciding to buy the product.

The information they had gathered throughout this process should have removed all doubt that may have been there prior to or during the process, allowing them to finally purchase the item.

Once this journey arrives at the buying stage, it is the responsibility of the sales team to ‘close the sell’. 

The potential client is almost ready to buy, but it needs the final touch.

This is an important aspect to remember because quite often there is confusion between sales and marketing. A salesperson or team cannot be the only ones marketing the product for it to be effective.

If everything works according to the way you planned it, then the individual is turned into a customer.

As I mentioned before, the marketing of the product does not end here. There is the after-sale marketing, which is related to the follow-up and the buyer’s remorse.

It could happen right after the sale. Sometimes the customer cannot justify the purchase due to any number of reasons, which creates a sense of doubt.

Here the manufacturers or the sellers need to follow up and reaffirm the consumer’s right decision. This part of marketing deals more with building a brand rather than just selling the product. 

If necessary, the customer needs to be supported and helped at all costs.

You should not leave your customer alone in this process because throughout the journey the client needs a guide that will help them make the final decision.

By making the customer experience focus on the customer itself, it will directly contribute towards the growth of your brand.

Thank you for reading, I would appreciate hearing your thought on this.

Davide Scalia



CEO & Founder of Namaka Consulting, with over 15 years of experience in the Marine Industry and over 10 years experience on Strategic Business Development, helping over 500 businesses to clarify what to do next, new ideas to obtain an exponential Business Growth.
CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML
FB Comments Will Be Here (placeholder)
©2018 NamakaConsulting.com