5 essential steps for targeting customers
Researching prospects can be a time-consuming activity but is essential to success. Used judiciously, AI can help streamline the process.
- Identify your ideal customer profile. What do your existing customers have in common? What issues have you helped them solve? How did you help the client help their customers? There are many other factors such as company size, financial performance, geography, product line, culture, and so on to consider.
- Research the organisation, its ambitions, strategies, initiatives and goals. Multiple sources are available, including annual reports, blogs, conferences and exhibitions, company websites, industry publications, press releases and social media channels.
- Research the lead contact and potential influencer roles. Alongside annual reports and company websites, social media channels can be invaluable sources of information, especially for ideas on how to engage. Good old telemarketing research may also be useful.
- Research “pain points” and challenges. Match these to your ideal customer profile. Use your industry and wider business knowledge to identify some (credible) challenges on the horizon that the prospect may not be aware of or know how to solve. Blogs, industry events, specialist publications, the wider business media, and social are useful for this.
- Identify and monitor “trigger events”. What are the internal and external trigger events that have caused other similar ideal customers to start their search for a solution? Internal events include new senior appointments, new strategies. External events include new legislation, competitive activity and so on. Set up alerts to monitor these changes.
Then it’s time to make contact… See Sales Tips 101 “Opening a conversation”
