After the sale

After the sale is the stage that starts once the customer has paid: a review, a repeat purchase, a referral. Many small teams stop tracking a customer at payment, and the next sale from that customer is then left to chance. Someone who already bought from you knows your name and your work. They need no advertising to come back.

In a CRM this can be a separate stage, a task or a tag on the won deal. Whichever you pick, it needs dates: when you call to ask how it went, when you ask for a review, and when a repeat purchase makes sense for your product. Log a repeat purchase as a new deal, so each sale and its sales cycle can still be counted.

For example, a month later the customer brought a friend.

In a team of 2 to 10 sellers, the seller who closed the deal usually makes the first contact after it, because the customer knows them. The stage ends when the planned touches are done: feedback asked for, a review or a referral requested, a date for the next purchase noted. Where it usually stalls: sellers jump to new inquiries, and the follow-up task gets pushed back until everyone forgets it.

Once a week the head of sales checks two lists. The first is won deals with no feedback call yet. The second is past customers whose likely repeat date falls this month. For the first list, start with a window of two to four weeks after payment and test it. In a small team both lists are short. They help you decide where a seller’s free hour goes: to a new inquiry or to a past customer.

This stage feeds LTV, the profit a customer brings over the whole time they work with you. It also brings down CAC across the team, because a referral brings in a new customer with no advertising spend. Set up referral as its own channel in the CRM, so you can see how many inquiries come from past customers. Then compare how often those inquiries reach a sale with your other channels.

• Asking for a review on the day of payment, before the customer has used what they bought. Ask once they have had time to see the result.
• Recording a repeat purchase inside the old deal. One sale disappears from the count. Open a new deal for every new purchase.
• Letting referrals vanish into “other.” Add referral to the channel list and fill it in when the inquiry is created.
• Leaving after-sale contact to goodwill, so it happens only when someone remembers. Create a dated task the moment the deal is marked won.

By Friday, the head of sales sets up one rule in the CRM: when a deal is marked won, the seller gets a task with a date for the feedback call. Start with two weeks after payment and test it. Then each seller calls one customer from last month, asks how it went, and asks whether they know someone with the same need. Sellers write the answers into the customer’s record the same day.

Six areas of the job on one map, with a self-assessment and a plan for your first month.