Who are YOU selling to? … Anyone with a pulse and money!

Sadly, this is a far too common approach 

Often, when I examine a company’s approach to sales, they want to dive right into fixing the symptoms. They want to discuss MQL, SQL, Conversion ratios, average contract value, and so on. Where I want to start is with strategy: 

How have you defined your perfect prospect? What are the problems that you might solve for them? What are the alternatives they might consider in lieu of your offering? 

These are not tactical issues they are the heart of your go-to-market strategy. So, when your sales team is hammering away but getting poor results, it’s likely not a problem with sales, it’s your strategy that’s deficient. The first two things to check:

• Clearly defining for whom your product is designed - the tighter you can define this the better. 
• Which of them are most likely to buy from you - while it may be designed for everyone in this segment, you need to determine where you will get the most efficient uptake. 

If you know these two things, you can create better content, generate better leads, and increase conversions.Identifying the perfect customer type is not always easy. Years ago, I ran sales for Telesat Mobile. Our mobile satellite communications systems were large and expensive and provided  2-way mobile communications anywhere in North America.  We identified the trucking industry as our target market.  But them realized we needed to narrow it down. Here’s how we did it:

• Trucks – they're mobile and big enough to carry our technology 
• Long distance trucks – they were often out of cell coverage
• Truck load (vs Line haul or LTL) - they had irregular multi-day routes
• Vans - unlike flat-bed or tankers, they needed return loads
• Company owned fleets - not brokers
• Private firms (not publicly traded) - high risk innovative investment
• Owner less than 40 years old (digital awareness)

Working with these insights, we focused on Long distance, truckload, vans, in private fleets with owners under 40 with company drivers we were able to close 80% of the firms we approached. 

Who do YOU sell to? 

See you next time,

Andrew