Unless you're very lucky, you probably have more competitors now than you've ever had. Yes, companies fold in recessions, and even more fold during recovery, but even more enter your market every day, often without your knowing. So how do you stay ahead of the game? Let's take another look at a tool that helps you differentiate with every customer while providing them with value they can't get anywhere else.
Buyers travel through four phases in their relationship with a product or service, as described by Barbara Bund in Winning and Keeping Industrial Customers, and taught by Wilson Learning in Differentiating Business Solutions. The buyer determines their own behavior, either by following a plan or following their nose. These phases are called, simply enough, SHOP-BUY-USE-DISPOSE. Each phase means exactly what it says, and each has distinct characteristics and many, sometimes hundreds of steps.
Shop is all the steps a customer takes before selecting a vendor and making a buying decision. It starts with either a vague or concrete problem recognition and includes all shopping and evaluation steps.
Buy is all the steps between selecting a vendor and taking delivery. This includes procurement and payment.
Use is what most people think of as the life cycle of a product or service. This includes upgrading and servicing a product.
Dispose is what a customer does when they
have either used up the product or service, or decided it no longer
works for them.
All customers are in
one of these phases at all times. When you are in-phase with the buyer, selling is easy; you know where
they are and you know what to do. When you are out of phase, you have
either missed your opportunity or the buyer’s momentum has rolled right
past you. Then you leave it all to chance, what's left of your luck, or whatever charm you can muster. Of course, you can disrupt their momentum too, if you’re very
clever.
The action for you is to document each individual step a buyer
and/or customer takes in each of these phases. It doesn't take long to
recognize where they spend their energy and time (it's different for
everybody) and what you can do to help make the experience easier or
more valuable for them - and different from your competitors.
For your sales organization, this is a vital part of Outside-In selling. For a salesperson, this is the heart of
differentiation.