When people first start selling and marketing, it’s common to think, “We can sell to everyone.” While it might be true, it makes sales and marketing less effective.
In prospect planning, the more specific you can be the better. Narrowing your focus is critical if you want to speak directly to your client’s needs.
We’ll start by helping you narrow your focus. How we do it depends on what you’re selling. The process usually involves a combination of logic, demographics, geographics, psychographics, behaviorgraphics, search patterns and sales history data.
The goal is to narrow your focus to a shortlist of idealized clients. These ideal clients are then developed into a set of persona descriptions with corresponding purchase use cases. Your sales and marketing program get built around these people’s purchase process.
The point is to shift your focus away from what you offer, and onto how to speak directly to your target client’s needs and their decision process. Rather than pitching your offering, you’re helping clients see how ideally suited your offering is for addressing their needs. This increase in relevance increases conversion rates and sales effectiveness.
Once you know who you’re looking for, the second half of prospect planning is about determining the most direct way to reach your target audience and to help them find you.