Targeting
In the first of a new series, Bob Apollo outlines some five things to bear in mind when researching, targeting and prioritising your most valuable prospects:
- Basic demographics such as organisation size, sector or location can only ever establish the outer boundaries of our target market. We need to get into what Gartner refers to as their “firmographics”.
- We should start by identifying the significant urgent business issues that our offerings are really good at addressing – preferably better than the other widely available options.
- What are the common characteristics of the organisations that are most likely to need to address these issues – such as market position, attitude to innovation, and so on?
- What are the key roles within those target organisations likely to care about the issues and be responsible for addressing them – and who are the people in those positions?
- What are the catalysts or trigger events that cause our target roles in our target organisations to realise that it is now urgent that they deal with the targeted issues?
If we do the research and use it to inform our prospecting priorities and programmes, we will inevitably generate much better qualified opportunities and convert them more effectively into satisfied customers.
