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Making a sale can be a long and complex process, involving many different activities. Each of these activities belongs to a phase or stage in the ‘selling cycle’, and it’s important to keep track of what stage you are at with each customer.

Although they might not take weeks or even hours, but just minutes, even short, quick sales will still follow this cycle.

1 Suspects. These are brand new leads or opportunities which you have identified but not yet contacted. You suspect they may fit your profile of a potential customer.

2 Prospects. These are potential customers with which you have made contact, perhaps by telephone, and established a basis for further discussion, because there is a Need or Want. By this stage, you have discovered a problem that you can help them with.

3 Opportunities. At this stage you will be working with the customer to uncover the value to them of solving their problems. You will be building your relationship and finding out more about their Needs and Wants.

one minute wonder Don’t imagine that just because a potential customer calls you and asks you how much your product or service costs, that you are already miraculously at the Negotiating stage! Often, this is just an expression of mild interest and means you are really only at the Suspect stage with them.

4 Proposing. You will have reached the stage with these customers at which you have enough information and a good enough relationship to be able to put forward your proposal: this is the part of the process where you have the chance to tell the customer about your product and why it’s the right choice for them.

5 Negotiating. Only when the customer has accepted in principle the proposal you have made will they begin to want to agree the terms on which they may buy. This is the Negotiating stage.

6 Closing. Closing is the stage of the Selling Cycle at which you seek firm commitment from the customer to buy.

After Closing, the work hasn’t finished, because you will need to think about how you can repeat the cycle and find more business with your customer. That second and third sale ought to become easier too, because the customer now knows what you can do for them!

Use the Selling Cycle to identify your progress with potential customers.