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The sales process · Customer research

Same trade, same size, same quotation, and one of them was never buying.

Buyer context is the situation a person is in at the moment they contact you. What has just happened, how much time they have, who is watching, and whether anybody has released the money yet. It explains why two companies that match your profile exactly behave nothing alike.

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Scope, fee, reporting and term are agreed in writing after we have read your brief and spoken to you.

A market researcher reviews survey sheets and interview notes

In one paragraph

Buyer context is the situation a person is in at the moment they contact you. What has just happened, how much time they have, who is watching, and whether anybody has released the money yet. It explains why two companies that match your profile exactly behave nothing alike.

Two units in Doddaballapur, the same size, the same machines, both ask for a quotation in the same week. One signs in nine days. The other stops replying, and months later you learn they needed three quotations for a bank loan file.

Nothing in the profile or the persona told you that, because neither is about today. One buyer had a broken machine and a delivery date. The other had a form to fill in.

Be honest about this one. It is a refinement, and a four-person firm that has not yet written down who its customer is should skip it and come back in a year. If you are already turning away more enquiries than you can serve, it becomes the cheapest way to choose between them.

The buyer journey put the stages in order, and this explains the behaviour inside a stage. Primary and secondary customers comes next. That step deals with the fact that the person talking to you is frequently not the one deciding.

Where this sits

Stage 2 of 10, customer research. Who buys, why they buy, and what they are comparing you against while they decide.

The stage before
Strategic plan
The stage after
Prospecting

If you want this done for you

Ask customers directly instead of assuming you already know what they need.

Read the customer research and voice of customer page

The work

What this step is actually like.

  • “Three questions get most of it”

    What made you start looking this month. What happens at your end if nothing is decided for ninety days. Who else has to agree before an order is placed. Asked plainly in the first call, they take two minutes and they change how you spend the next three weeks.

  • “Context goes stale, profiles do not”

    A buyer who was urgent in April is a different buyer in July, and the note in your CRM is now misleading rather than merely old. Anything recorded here needs a date on it and a habit of asking again.

  • “The quote collector is a real situation, not a bad lead”

    Loan files, tender comparisons, insurance claims and board papers all need a third quotation from somebody. Serve it fast, price it properly, and do not put a salesperson on it for six weeks. Some of those firms come back when the project is real.

  • “Write it into the enquiry record, not a research report”

    This is three extra fields on the form your team already fills in. The moment it becomes a separate document, it stops being updated, and a context note that is not updated is worse than none.

What we do

What you end up with.

The artefacts this step produces, what each one is for, and how you know it is finished.

  1. Three fields on the enquiry record

    Why now, what happens if nothing happens, and who else decides. Put them where the enquiry is first written down, whether that is a CRM, a register at the front desk or a shared sheet.

    Result: Finished when you can open five enquiries at random from last week and find all three fields answered.

  2. Your own list of situations

    Four or five labels drawn from your real enquiries: broken and urgent, money already sanctioned, comparing for a file, designing something for next year, unhappy with a current supplier. Yours will differ from anybody else's, which is the sign it is right.

    Result: Finished when every enquiry from the last month falls into one label, with no more than a couple left over.

  3. A rule for each situation

    One line saying what happens next for each label: who calls, how fast, what gets sent, and when the file is closed if nothing moves. A sanctioned budget gets a visit. A file-filler gets a clean quotation by email and a diary note for six months.

    Result: Finished when a new person can read the label on an enquiry and know their next action without asking anyone.

Where this fits

Three pieces of sales work, in this order.

This work sits inside sales process design, at stage 0, foundation. The audit comes before it, and sales management keeps it running.

  1. Step 1

    Sales audit

    Find where deals are being lost and what to fix first.

    Start here if you cannot say where orders are lost.

  2. Step 2 · you are here

    Sales process design

    One written way to sell, from first enquiry to repeat order.

    Start here if every salesperson sells differently.

  3. Step 3

    Sales management

    A target, a review routine and someone who owns the number.

    Start here if the team has targets and no routine.

Tell us what you need Your brief is read before we call. Scope, fee and term in writing.

FAQ

Questions owners ask before they call.

Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.

Tell us what you need
Is this not just lead qualification under a different name?
They overlap and the purpose differs. Qualification decides whether to spend time on an enquiry at all. Context decides how to sell to one you have already accepted, which is why it sits in research rather than in the qualification stage.
How is this different from the buying trigger in a persona?
A persona trigger is the typical event that starts this kind of buyer looking, written once. Context is what is true for the person on the phone right now, recorded per enquiry. One is a pattern, the other is a fact with a date on it.
Should a small business bother with this?
If you are still arguing about who your customer is, no. Do the profile, the persona and the journey first, and leave this alone. It earns its place when you have more enquiries than hours and have to choose between two that look identical on paper.
Who has to agree it?
Whoever takes the first call, because they do the asking, and the owner, because they set the rule about what happens to each situation. Nobody else needs to be in the room, which is unusual for a step in this stage.
How long does it take to put in place?
An hour to add the fields and write the labels, then about a month of reminding people before the answers appear consistently. The habit is the whole cost. The document takes an afternoon.
How much does it cost?
There is no price list, because the work differs by business. The fee is scoped after we have read your brief and spoken to you, and put in writing before anything starts. For sales work it is mostly our time, with production only where scripts, decks or CRM setup need it.
How long is the contract?
The term is agreed in writing after we have spoken, along with the fee and the reporting. It is never a default twelve months, and renewal is decided on the numbers against the baseline recorded at the start.
Who will actually do the work?
The person you speak to before anything starts. We work from one office in Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru, with no account managers in between.
What do you need from us?
To start, last month's enquiries in any format and time with whoever handles them. After that, access to the accounts the work touches, such as the website, Google Business Profile or CRM.
What if we are not happy with the work?
Tell us and the plan changes. Everything is reported against the baseline, so a number that is not moving is visible to both sides. The term is in your written scope, and the refund and cancellation policy sets out the rest.

Where to go next

The work that carries this step further.

Services

The rest of customer research

Or read the whole sales process in order.

Your next practical step

Tell us what you are trying to grow, and we will read it before we call.

Eight short steps, mostly taps. Skip anything you would rather answer on the call.

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