Purchasing Process: The shopping process is the path a customer takes to make a purchase. Learn more about this term and how to create an ideal one for your business.
Understanding consumer behavior is a key step for anyone in sales and customer service. After all, this whole journey has evolved in recent years, and having good planning can be the path to success. Learn more about the Purchasing Process and how to set one up for your company.
What Is The Purchasing Process?
The purchase process is a journey the customer will go through until he buys a product or hires a service. One way to compare is like going up a building, where each floor represents a step until you reach the place you want to make the purchase.
In this way, in each stage of the buying process, it is necessary to provide good service and a good approach. After all, along this path, the potential buyer may become even more fond of your product or simply lose interest. It is to prevent this that the Purchasing Process can be used.
Why Create A Purchasing Process?
Among the reasons for creating a Purchasing Process are to show the potential of your product and make good contact with customers, as consumers are increasingly demanding. Any problem, no matter how small, in any of the stages can ruin everything built.
Therefore, when setting up the Purchasing Process for your company, you need to plan well and leave all the steps very well organized so that nothing goes wrong. Also, you have to know your customer. After all, your process must be built based on its consumption behaviour.
In addition, it is possible to optimize steps over time so that the process is shorter and more objective. This will speed up customer service and improve sales through your contact channels.
Now that you understand the purchasing process and its role well, it’s time to set one up for your business.
Check out our text on Process Flowchart.
How To Create A Purchasing Process – Step By Step
You need to follow a few steps to set up a Purchasing Process. However, evaluating how each of them will fit into your business and your client’s behavior is always important so that the planning goes as expected.
We’ll use an example like if your company offers cooking courses to make it easier. Let’s go step by step.
Discovery
At this stage, the customer often does not want to buy something. Also, he may not even know he has a problem that your business can solve. At this stage, you need to show a small solution to customers without focusing too much on your company.
Imagine that someone is looking for the ideal frying pan to fry meat. That person can fall into some of your content and remove that existing doubt, having the chance to go to other content. Therefore, it is important to have a well-structured blog for these future consumers.
It is necessary to have rich materials, with a well-defined persona and keywords that it will probably use in the search. The customer is immersed in your content and has become a lead in that first moment. And we haven’t even talked about the company since, for now, the focus is on the consumer.
The Recognition Process
At this stage of the Purchasing Process, the person realizes they have a problem. In addition to seeing content about the frying pan, she began to see materials about seasonings, other pans and more gastronomic techniques. And now, she will use your content, either by email, blogs or ebook, to learn more about the subject she is interested in.
This will make her understand that your company is an authority on the subject and that she needs to resolve a certain situation. This will be very important when you make your first offer.
The Consideration
At that moment, the lead considers making a purchase. After learning some of his qualities, the future customer realized he needed to take a cooking course to make even better food. That is, the time has come to show your solution, highlighting your product or service’s differentials.
Be very careful at this stage, as the customer dislikes feeling pressured. The tip is to leave him at ease so he doesn’t give up or go after another company to complete this journey.
The Decision
The customer is already ready to make the purchase, but with that moment of decision, a challenge arises: he can buy from your company or another. A great tip is to create a landing page for your course so that the customer, in addition to having the option to complete the process, can see your highlights and even testimonials from those who have already purchased and learned from you.
Post-Purchase Service
With the completed purchase, a fundamental step arrives: loyalty. Post-purchase service is essential for the customer to remain in their base and to be able to make referrals to other future buyers.
A satisfaction survey or even offering new courses, more advanced or confectionery, for example. For this, your service team must be prepared to receive the demands and leave all consumers with the greatest possible satisfaction.
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