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The sales process · Customer research

Nothing changed about your offer, and the enquiries stopped in June anyway.

Customer behaviour is the study of what actually moves a buyer to act, split into what is going on inside their company and what is going on around it. The internal half covers budget cycles, reporting lines and old mistakes. The external half covers seasons, rules and rivals.

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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

Customer behaviour is the study of what actually moves a buyer to act, split into what is going on inside their company and what is going on around it. The internal half covers budget cycles, reporting lines and old mistakes. The external half covers seasons, rules and rivals.

March is not a normal month. A factory that has ignored your quotation for six weeks will sign it before the thirty-first, because the budget dies with the financial year. Nothing about your pitch improved.

Internal factors sit inside the buyer's own walls: when money is released, who they answer to, what the last supplier did to them. A purchase manager who was once left with a machine nobody would service will ask about your service engineer before asking your price.

External factors sit outside everybody. The monsoon that stops site work for eight weeks. A rule change that sends every trader in Chickpet to their accountant. A competitor opening two roads away. You cannot argue with these. You can plan a year around them.

Buyer persona named the person. This explains what moves them, and the buyer journey after it puts those movements into a sequence you can count.

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.

  • “A twelve-box calendar is the cheapest research you will ever do”

    Draw twelve boxes and fill in what happens to your buyer in each month: audit season, admission season, the Diwali shutdown, the monsoon, the March rush to spend. Then put your own campaign spend on the same sheet and look at the mismatch.

  • “Ask what went wrong last time”

    Almost every buyer has a scar from a previous supplier, and it decides what they check first. One question in the first meeting gets it: what did the last vendor do that you are watching out for now.

  • “A rule change is a selling season”

    A fire safety notice, a pollution board deadline, an e-invoicing threshold coming down a slab. None of it is your doing and all of it makes a buyer who was comfortable last month suddenly urgent. Watch the notices your customers read, not the ones you read.

  • “Separate what you can influence from what you can only time”

    You can change a buyer's view of your service record. You cannot move the financial year. Putting both on one list and treating them the same is how a business ends up running a discount in the deadest week of its own season.

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. The two-column sheet

    Internal factors on the left, external on the right. Against each one, write who told you about it and what it changes in the sale. A factor with nobody's name against it is a guess and should be marked as one.

    Result: Finished when every line names a customer, a staff member or a document as its source.

  2. The buying calendar

    Twelve rows, one per month, showing what your buyer is dealing with and what you will be doing that month. Keep it on one page and print it, because the point is that somebody looks at it in February.

    Result: Finished when the quiet months on the calendar match the quiet months in your own sales records.

  3. The watch list

    Three or four external events worth tracking by hand: a tender cycle, a licence renewal window, a deadline your buyers' accountants care about. Put a date and an owner against each.

    Result: Finished when somebody is named against every item and has a reminder set for it.

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.

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Tell us what you need
How is this different from market research?
Market research asks how big the market is and who else is in it. This asks why a buyer you have already identified moves in March and not in July. It is narrower, it is about timing, and you can do it from your own order book.
How do we find the internal factors if the buyer will not tell us?
Look at your own history instead of asking. Pull the dates on last year's closed orders and see which weeks they cluster in, then ring two of those customers and ask what made that week the right one. The answer is rarely anything you did.
Our sales are steady all year. Does this still apply?
Steady annual totals often hide two seasons cancelling each other out. Split last year's orders by customer type before you decide. If they really are flat, the internal half of this work still pays, because budget approval and old grievances have nothing to do with the season.
Who in the office should keep this sheet up to date?
Whoever writes the quotations, with the owner signing off on the calendar. Keep it away from whoever buys the advertising, because the temptation is to build the calendar around when the agency wants to spend.
How long does it take, and how often does it need redoing?
An afternoon for the first version if your order book is open in front of you, and a few more days of asking customers before it is trustworthy. After that, add to it whenever somebody tells you something new. Read the whole sheet once a year, before you set the next plan.
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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