What makes customers buy — and buy again?
Orders can change because fewer people hear about the business, buyers are less ready to proceed, existing customers have no new requirement or the work being won is costly to serve. Those are different situations. Start by finding out which one you are dealing with.
Start with the wider business problem →Four different reasons why orders may change
Look at the source of opportunities, repeat purchasing, buyer progression and commercial fit separately. Their effects can overlap, so they should not be treated as four mutually exclusive sources of sales.
Why are referral-led sales hard to reproduce?
An introduction may bring trust and a defined need that a new channel has to establish itself.
Investigate the change → 02 · Existing relationshipsWhy aren’t existing customers buying more?
Find evidence of another buying decision before setting account-expansion targets.
Explore existing account growth → 03 · Buyer progressionWhy has generating work become harder?
Separate demand, conversion, repeat orders and the scale of the business.
Follow the commercial flow → 04 · Customer fit and economicsWhich new customers are worth winning?
Industry and company size may be proxies for the buying situation that matters.
Examine customer fit →A purchase record cannot explain why the buyer decided to proceed
Company size, industry, source and deal value are easy to report. The decisive factors may have been a new manager, a contract ending, an operational failure or a recommendation made at the right moment.
If those circumstances were never recorded, segmenting the available fields may only produce proxies. An enquiry history can be a useful starting point, but it does not independently establish what made someone ready to buy.
The investigation may need a small sample of won, lost and deferred opportunities, historical records and conversations with the people involved.
Why functions see customers differently →