Once you’ve identified the buyers you want to connect with and attracted their attention, these buyers have to answer three crucial questions before they can become a customer. These decisions have to be made in order. The length of time it takes to make these decisions is the length of your sales cycle.
1. The first question buyers have to answer is: “Do I have a problem that I must do something about?” The buyer and the “problem” exist in a system that is in balance and is working. You may have identified a problem in the buyer’s organization. But that organization is working in spite of the problem and has figured out ways to work around the problem. Until buyers are convinced that the problem is one that they MUST solve, it’s unlikely that the buyer will continue to the next step in the journey.
One of the best results that Marketing can produce for its Sales group is to convince buyers that the pain of inaction is greater than the pain of taking action. Doing nothing seems like the easy choice until you spell out what may happen if they procrastinate.
2. The second question the buyer’s organization must answer is: “Do we need to go outside the organization to solve this problem?” Maybe the organization has internal resources that could solve the problem. If they’re not sure, what will they have to know to decide whether they have the resources or not?
3. And the final question is: “If we decide to go outside the company to solve this problem, how will we know which solution to purchase?”
Product Marketing and Sales generally focus on the third question. But as you can see, buyers aren’t ready to ask that question, let alone answer it, until they have addressed the first two questions.
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