Notes for owners · Sales management
Why buyers buy: reading customer behaviour from your own enquiries
Your last twenty enquiries already show what buyers asked first, what they compared and why some left. A twenty-minute tally and four rules for reading it.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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Your own enquiries are the quickest place to see why people buy. Take the last twenty. For each, note what the buyer asked first, what they compared you with, how long you took to reply, and what they said if they left. Twenty minutes with a pencil can show a pattern or two behind your wins and losses, and it needs no customer to be bothered.
What do you write down in the twenty minutes?
Allow about twenty minutes. Draw a grid on paper or open a sheet, one row per enquiry. Copy only what the buyer wrote or said, never what you think they meant.
| Column | What to write |
|---|---|
| First ask | The first question or request, in their words |
| Comparison | A rival's name, a price they quoted back, something they saw elsewhere |
| Reply gap | Time between their message and your first answer |
| Outcome | Bought, went quiet, said no, still open |
| Reason given | The exact phrase, if they gave one |
Aim for twenty rows. With forty enquiries, take the latest twenty and keep the rest for later. With only eight, do eight and say so in the margin.
What patterns should you look for?
Four readings, each with a rule for what to do about it.
The first ask. If most buyers ask the price first, your listing may hide it, or they may be asking the only question they know how to ask. If most ask "do you deliver to my town", your coverage is unclear. Answer the usual first ask in the first line of your reply and your listing.
The comparison. When buyers keep naming one rival, they are comparing you on something specific. Find out what by asking the next three. If it is price, decide whether to meet it, explain it or let it go. If it is a brand, a certificate or a service, that is where your proof must sit.
The reply gap. Sort the sheet by how long you took. If buyers who heard back within the hour mostly bought and those who waited a day mostly did not, you have a speed problem and not a product problem. Speed is one of the cheapest problems to fix.
The reason given. "Too expensive" is often the polite form of "I did not see why". Read the lines around it. If the rejection followed a reply that was only a price, nothing explained the price.
For example: a sweets and namkeen gift-box seller in Bikaner
Imagine a family business in Bikaner selling gift boxes of sweets and namkeen, with most enquiries on WhatsApp from people ordering for relatives in other cities. The owner's daughter tallies twenty enquiries in a notebook. These figures are illustrative.
Twelve open with "what is the price of the 1 kg box". Four ask "can you send it to Pune by Diwali", which had never been counted as a different question. Three name a large packaged-snacks brand. Seven ordered, and all seven had a reply within the hour containing a photo of the box and a delivery date. Of the thirteen who did not, eight waited longer than a day, and three said "too costly" after receiving the price list as a single image.
The first reading was wrong. The family assumed the price-first buyers were price-led. The first-ask column showed only that price was the one question they knew how to ask, while the reply-gap column showed that a quick answer with a photo and a date counted for more. The answer was to change the first reply, not the price. It now gives the box photo, the price for each size, the earliest delivery date to the buyer's city, and a line asking who the gift is for. The three who named the packaged brand got one follow-up and no more, since a gift from a family shop in Bikaner was never competing on that ground. The result was modest: in the next twenty, nine ordered a ₹850 box (invented figures), and the Pune buyers still said the Diwali delivery date was too tight.
What does this not tell you?
It tells you about people who contacted you. It says nothing about those who saw your shop and walked on, or never found you. If most enquiries come from one source, say a portal or one signboard, the pattern partly describes that source. Do not generalise it to your whole market.
It also cannot say why someone bought if they did not say. Treat the sheet as a list of questions for the next buyers, not as proof. The note on market research methods small businesses can use suggests what to add when twenty enquiries are not enough.
When is it not worth the twenty minutes?
With five enquiries a month, the tally takes longer to fill than to read, and a call to your last five customers does more. If your enquiries come through a portal that strips the buyer's message to a form field, you will see little behaviour at all. Start with how to qualify a directory enquiry in two minutes and record what you learn.
Changing one line after the tally
Pick one finding and change one thing: the first line of your reply, the order in your price message, or the time you take to answer. Then tally the next twenty and see whether the column moved. This reading comes early in the sales process. If your enquiries are scattered across several phones and you want help pulling them into one register, customer research and voice of customer is that work, and you can tell us what you need.
