Marketing is much more than advertising and communications –it is strategic. Real impact comes from understanding the customer journey and sales cycle to designing initiatives to connect and add value to customers and prospects.

A great way to upgrade your marketing plan and figure out the right mix of tactics and channels is to perform a quick breakdown of your sales cycle. At its most basic, every funnel follows five essential stages: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty, and Advocacy. The first three stages represent the sales cycle, which we will further discuss in this post.

At the beginning of the sales cycle, you have people who are completely unaware of your brand’s existence, also known as cold leads, and you need to figure out how to get their attention. Once you gain awareness, you will need to formulate ways to turn these cold leads into hot leads by generating a sense of desire and consideration for what it is that you’re offering. Finally, you’ll capitalize on that desire by asking your audience to perform a specific action: purchasing a product or service.

You want to break down your customer’s journey through your sales cycle and map out each channel you’ve chosen to focus on in your marketing strategy. By breaking down their journey, you can find out the weakest points of your strategy and identify the improvements and adjustments necessary to optimize the marketing plan. In addition, it helps to identify anything more you should be doing to ensure you’re moving enough leads through to the purchase stage.

CASE STUDY: Breaking Down the Sales Cycle

We designed a go-to-market strategy for a client to enter a new and larger market. When this case study was conducted, this company had very low awareness. Our team worked on a plan focused on obtaining third-party validation to develop a good brand reputation while at the same time increasing brand awareness. The results: Within the first year, the Client began announcing new clients in the larger market, with a healthy pipeline of new business opportunities for the future.

In short, breaking down your sales cycle using the customer journey can be a beneficial exercise when trying to figure out what marketing tactics you want to use and where to implement them. This understanding can significantly improve your business performance, lower customer acquisition cost (CAC), and provide revenue predictability, among other benefits.

Are you breaking down your sales cycle for optimized business growth? If you need help creating, documenting, and improving your sales process for increased sales and revenue, one of our expert advisors can guide you through the process and design a marketing plan that best fits the needs of your business.

DuartePino is a management advisory firm that combines in-depth customer knowledge with practical expertise in marketing to help clients create sustainable business growth. We can provide your organization with a fresh perspective, a proven process that invests in the outcome, and the tools for successful execution. From Fractional CMOs to business advisory services, contact us to learn how our team can help with growth strategies for your organization.