The Six Phases of the Buying Timeline
Meet buyers where they are on their timeline instead of forcing them onto yours.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 92%
Every purchase moves through six phases as a person transforms through a struggling moment. Sellers usually impose their own timeline (demo then close), but the buyer may be at a different phase and need something else entirely. Mapping where the customer actually is, and serving that phase, shortens the sales cycle and lifts conversion.
Origin
Bob Moesta's demand-side sales model, built on JTBD and on W. Edwards Deming's influence toward faster, smaller processes. Detailed in his book 'Demand-Side Sales.'
Core principles
- 01Buyers pass through six phases: first thought, passive looking, active looking, deciding, first use, ongoing use.
- 02In passive looking people are problem-aware but solution-unaware; in active looking they're both and are framing a solution; deciding is about trade-offs.
- 03Sellers build on probability ('leads convert at X%'); what matters is whether a person is actually ready for your product.
- 04Design the sales process on how customers want to buy, not how you want to sell.
- 05The goal is to enable people to buy, not to convince or sell them.
How to run it
- 1
Locate the customer on their timeline
Before pitching, ask where the person is in their own buying process rather than assuming they're ready to close.
Pro tip A demo request in passive looking means 'help me learn,' not 'help me decide.'
Watch out Assuming everyone who takes a demo is ready to close mismatches most buyers.
- 2
Break the offer apart by phase
Split a monolithic demo into phase-specific experiences: one that tells stories and background, one that shows alternatives, one that presents choices for moving forward.
- 3
Serve the phase the buyer is in
Give passive-lookers education, active-lookers comparison, and deciders trade-off choices, so each interaction advances their actual progress.
- 4
Design for first and ongoing use
Extend past the sale into first use and building the new habit, since the switch isn't complete until the new behavior sticks.
In the wild
Autobooks pushed every prospect toward a demo then tried to close. Moesta had them ask where the buyer was in the process and split the demo into three phase-specific versions (stories, alternatives, choices).
→ The sales process was cut almost in half and conversion increased 4X by meeting buyers where they were.
Common mistakes
Running one demo-then-close motion for everyone
Forcing every prospect through the same close-focused demo ignores that many are still passively learning, which lengthens the cycle and loses deals.
Basing the funnel on probability instead of readiness
Treating conversion as a statistical leads-in/deals-out ratio hides whether a person is genuinely ready, which is what actually predicts the sale.
Is it for you?
Best for
B2B and considered-purchase sales teams whose demo-to-close motion is long and low-converting.
Not ideal for
Impulse or no-choice purchases where there's no meaningful multi-phase deliberation to map.
From the transcript
“there's a first thought there's something called passive looking where they're problem aware and solution unaware”
“I call them six phases first thought passiv looking active looking deciding first use and then ongoing use”
“we actually then found out a way in which to give them three different demos”
“it actually made the sales process almost half and it 4X basically conversion because now we meet them where they are as opposed to where…”
From the episode
The ultimate guide to JTBD
Bob Moesta (co-creator of the framework)