Take a Customer Journey to Accelerate Your Sales

SCENARIO: You launched a new cloud service a year ago with a big marketing campaign and improvements to your website. You expected the sales to take a few months to ramp up, but they still aren’t where they need to be. What is happening?

One way to find out is to look at your typical customer journey. The cloud services customer journey is complex, so it’s important to focus on the key moments that can help inspire people to buy your product or service.

HOW BUYING TECHNOLOGY IS LIKE BUYING A CAR:
Let’s start by looking at how car dealerships analyze the process. Car dealers know that before a potential customer ever steps into their showroom, they are making decisions and forming opinions by doing their own research online. Then, they’ll make an average of two visits to a dealership before they buy.

It’s essential that they be ready at critical moments in the buying process with the information customers are looking for so they are chosen for one of those two visits and have a chance to close the sale. Here are a car dealer’s five digital moments that matter most:
- Which car is best?
- Is it right for me?
- Can I afford it?
- Where should I buy it?
- Am I getting a deal?

Go to any car shopping website and you will see how they address each of these moments – providing general information, time-sensitive promotions, payment calculators, how to buy guides, and more.

THE FIVE PHASES IN THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY:
Is it any different in the IT world? We typically look at the customer journey in five phases:

• Discover – how does the prospect find out about you or the solution?
• Learn – what is the solution, how does it work, who sells the solution we need?
• Evaluate – will this solution solve our problem, why should we buy from you vs your competition?
• Buy – is there a clear call to action, is it easy to purchase and engage with your sales team?
• Deploy – what are the next steps after purchase, what support services are there for us after purchase? 

Today’s customers expect immediate access to information that aids in their decision making, whether that’s direct product information on your website or a competitor’s, referrals or product reviews, manufacturer’s websites, ROI calculators, and other web tools. Traditional marketing remains important, but once you have them interested, you must also ensure you can influence customers at those critical touch points in the decision making process.

KEEP IN MIND:

• 2/3 of the touch points during the active-evaluation phase involve consumer-drive marketing activities, such as internet reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family.
• 1/3 of the touch-points involve company-driven marketing. 

BE THERE FOR THE CRITICAL MOMENTS:
To accelerate sales, you need to understand the critical moments of your customer’s buying journey, and also ensure you can meet expectations at each point in the journey.

Start with a clear definition of your target audience and walk through your customer journey from beginning to end. What are those critical moments from your customer’s perspective and how do you perform?

Understanding your customer journey will give you a much greater chance of reaching consumers in the right place at the right time with the right message and accelerating your sales process.

If you want more information on measuring and monitoring your customer journey, contact lisa@emminc.com.