Skip links

The 5 C’s of the Digital Sales Cycle

When we talk about your digital presence, I often like to refer to the 5 C’s.  Similar to a diamond’s four C’s (which every groom-to-be is forced to learn when ring shopping and promptly forgets immediately after), understanding the 5 C’s of your digital sales cycle make all the difference in the world between a successful sales cycle and a low conversion rate or miserable digital presence.  Take a look at our 5 C’s to see which parts of your digital cycle need work and if you’re giving attention to every step in the process.

  • Customer – Everything starts and ends with your customer.  Everything.  Every business has a customer – whether they are business to business or business to consumer.  Think about your customer – their values, their goals, their pain points, their preferred method of contact – everything.  By understanding your customer you are establishing up-front, who your site needs to appeal to and how.
  • Concentration – The concentration is your goal.  What do you want your customer to do? Buy? Signup for an email? Fill out a form? What are you goals, metrics, and mechanisms for measuring a conversion.  Whether you’re looking to tracking phone numbers or completed lead forms, you need to understand what your goal is and how to get your target customer to complete their conversion.
  • Content – The content is the real meat of your site.  The actual sales process occurs through the content, whether it’s through product descriptions in your store, blog or email content that is read or shared.  The content is the mechanism of action through which you interact with your customers.
  • Contact – The contact is the mechanism of contact with your customer – email, phone call, in-store visit, forms, etc. Once you determine your concentration and content, you can establish contact with your customer.
  • Connectivity – The connectivity is what happens after conversion and contact with your customer.  It includes customer service, recurring contact with your client or customer, upsells or resales, and more.  Social media is a wonderful tool for initiating and stimulating connectivity.

Have you thought about your sales cycle recently? As products change, customers change, services change, and companies evolve, so do the 5 C’s of your sales cycle.  While these all make sense for offline channels, all of this is applicable to digital content.