When To Sell - Establish Your Customer's Buying Window

We know that things that are measured do better. So how is that relevant to your web sales process? Don't you just go as hard as you can calling and emailing everyone you can till you make your million?

No. And in case you missed that NO. Many smaller businesses do this and wonder why their results are not wonderful. This is one of the great dividers between small and large business. Everything we do in our lives has strategy behind it and so should sales.

Know when your customers are most likely to buy and target them then (and only then)

People purchase in what is called a Buying Window. Everything before that window is Research and everything after is Aftermath. Here is a fairly typical Buying Window as a graph.

The Buying Window
The Customer's Buying Window

Please note that this is the customer's 'buying' not your 'selling' window. There is a huge difference. Naieve salesmen never know this but seasoned pros do and only sell when they know their customer is ready, till then they help the customer research. Since customers have all the power then we must know when to actively sell, when to help with research and when to walk away.

The Research phase is about finding the right product at the right price. Because people buy based on the 3 Questions they are emotionally unready to buy till they are satisfied that the product on offer:

Fits the Dream
Brings the dream into Reality
Is an acceptable Trade

The Buying Window is that brief point in time when the person feels that emotional Flow from having their Dream : Reality : Trade all lined up. Because humans think all the time the window is short. If left unable to buy, the person will tend to get thinking again and go into Buyer's Remorse before they even got to the shop. Buyer's Remorse is a form of Research that generally occurs after the actual purchase but it often appears as a form of procrastination that lengthens that research phase. Dealing with Buyers Remorse is a subject for another article.

Calculate your customer's Buying Window

You can actually roughly calculate your customer's average Buying Widow (remember this is buying not selling) by timing all the points of contact. This will differ for each product and delivery method so a book on the internet may sell differently to a book in a store. As of mid-2009 a car will sell in a shop but not on the internet solely because of customer expectations. The car salesman uses a website to expend his reach into the Research phase. Here's how to calculate your customer's Buying Window (per product is best as cheaper models may be different to the gold plated one)

Start by establishing your first point of contact from your customer
From here plot when this person buys (from you or elsewhere)
This time is probably less than half of your Research phase (people exist and think way before you meet them)
Track the time from last interaction with the customer till they a) tell you they are no longer in the market - unlikely, b) usubscribe - maybe, or c) go silent and don't reply - most likely, and you have an idea of time your customers are still active -not quite Buying Window but close enough. If this time is longer than a few days then assume that most of the time belongs in Research and look at your method.
Everything after this time is Aftermath

Handling customers in The Buying Window and Aftermath

From the seller's perspective, you need to focus on attracting people at the research phase and help them to see that your product meets their Dream : Reality : Trade desires. You also need to be there when their Buying Window opens to grab the sale. Whilst the window is open you can still sell with care. If you have an automated* system make sure that it never sends a sales email past the end of the window or the customer makes a purchase. Once the Buying Window closes that person has:

bought from you
bought elsewhere
gone back to research
lost interest

Any further contact after that and you are digging a hole for yourself. Once the person has purchased then they are in Aftermath (where hopefully they don't suffer from Buyer's Remorse and other forms of second-guessing). In the Aftermath phase (which goes on forever) all buying urge for that product should be gone. Any attempts to sell the product again to this owner is referred to as "buying the product back" and can put the person into remorse and perhaps make them want to buy a competing product to replace the first purchase as it suddenly seems inferior. The other great danger is that you are now spamming someone who doesn't want to buy from you, making them like you even less. That window is closed, you need to stop selling. The most contact you should have with people after that window closes is to say something like:

Thanks for the opportunity to show you our product. We notice you didn't buy from us. That is OK. We know we have fine competitors and hope the choice you have made will serve you very well now and in the future.

* be particularly careful of automated systems because while your average person may be in the market for 1 week (a long time) most peope will have purchased within 1-2 days (maybe elsewhere) so the other emails in that week are actually spam and annoying that person.