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Sales Marketing
Bringing sales marketing news from around Berkshire |
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Creating a Customer Profile
More about – The Art & Science of Selling
Generating leads is an important sales activity that plants the seeds of growth for sustainable business development. A lead is purely a name that you could refer to as a SUSPECT because their potential to buy is unknown. Before you can qualify leads to determine whether they have the money, authority and desire to buy your product or service you need to generate them! When deciding upon which lead generation methods work best for you and your organisation, it helps to have clarity on the types of customers you’d like to attract. This means creating an Ideal Customer Profile to bring direction to your lead generation activities.
The following questions will stimulate your thinking when it comes to developing your ideal customer profile.
• What size of organisation would you prefer to deal with?
• Typically, how many people will they employ?
• What market sector/s do these organisations operate within?
• Who specifically will be buying your product/services and what are their business titles?
• Where geographically would you like these organisations to be located?
• What does your organisation offer that is unique?
• What organisations will be attracted by your uniqueness?
• What do your best customers possess that you would like to replicate in others?
• Which of your existing customers were the easiest and quickest to convert?
• What similarities do these customers possess?
• Are there any specific criteria that prospective organisations should have in place, so that your product/services can be optimised?
Having a well defined profile of your ideal customer can prove to be invaluable when determining which methods to use for lead generation, and improves the effectiveness of marketing initiatives. You may also discover that the process for asking for referrals becomes easier and generates a better response, because you are providing the person with a tight specification of what you are looking for – this concentrates their thinking towards the direction you have defined.
Team Exercise
Ask your team to review your organisation’s top 20 customers and identify what areas of commonality they share. Then discuss and agree their answers to the questions above before creating an Ideal customer Profile. Finally, suggest that your team brainstorm ideas for generating leads that will attract the type of prospects defined in their ideal customer profile.
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