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If you’re looking for anyone that’s willing to buy your solution then you’ve actually chosen to target nobody. There’s a high probability your business development is suffering as a result.
Let’s say you sell widgets and you choose to focus on dentists within a 25 km radius of your business. Here are 5 incredible tips for defining your target market and improving your lead conversion:
Targeting Strategy # 1 – Make it Identifiable and Accessible
I always have a chuckle when financial planners tell me their target market is “High Net Worth”. My question is always, “How do you identify the HNW’s in the room at networking events?” The point is, it’s very difficult to figure out unless you ask them some very personal questions. But what’s really easy to figure out is that a person is a dentist, because they’ll tell you. It’s just as easy to build a list of targets, because you can find them in Google. By adding a geographic condition into your target market strategy you can further refine that list.
The more identifiable the target market, the more likely it is that you’re going to reach them!
Targeting Secret # 2 – Targeting Improves Your Ability to Secure Meetings
If you’re calling different types of people or businesses with differing needs it’s tough to secure meetings. On the other hand, once you’ve secured a few meetings with a few dentists you get better at developing your “reason for the meeting”. You get better at managing gatekeepers and sending them information and emails that help them understand the value in arranging the meeting. You can credibly mention that other dentists you’ve been speaking to find a certain discussion around your widgets interesting. The more dentists you meet the easier it becomes to secure meetings.
Targeting Secret # 3 – Focus Develops Better Engagement Skills
Choosing to focus your time and energy around a specific target market makes it significantly easier to develop your sales skills and ability to secure first meetings. First meetings are hard, because other than selling your product you often don’t know what questions to ask to open up a great conversation. If you have a meeting with a dentist you learn about their business and their need for your widgets. In the next meeting with another dentist you take what you learned in the first meeting and ask better questions and find out even more about some of the problems your widgets solve in their business. By the fifth meeting you’re able to ask lots of great questions that really position you as an expert of widgets for dentists.
Targeting Secret # 4 – Targeting Enables You to Learn a New Language
I’m forever reminding my banking clients that other humans don’t speak bank language. By focusing on a specific target market you start to learn their language. Over time it becomes natural for you to use the same terms and describe things in the same way. This is a really effective strategy for presenting yourself as a specialist, enforcing you as the expert when it comes to widgets in the dentistry space.
Targeting Secret # 5 – Targeting Makes You More Referable
Your friends and most of your clients want you to be successful. Yet, so few are probably actively referring you. In my experience one of the key barriers is a lack of understanding about exactly what sort of person or business you can help. Once again I smile when a banker tells me they like to do business with businesses turning over $5M plus with financing needs between $3M and $10M. I generally point out that I probably know plenty of people/ businesses in this market but none of the owners actually engage me around their balance sheet. I do however have a dentist and know anumber of dentists I could refer to our widget salesperson. So when you clearly define your target for business development you make it significantly easier to tell others who you want to be referred to, and much easier for them to identify people and businesses you should be speaking to I’m not suggesting you should say “no” to a doctor that wants to talk to you about buying your widgets.
Choosing a clearly defined target for business development doesn’t mean you have to exclude everyone else. What it means is that you focus your business development efforts into a specific target and reap the rewards of specialising. Take some time out with the team to identify how clearly defined and identifiable/ accessible their target for business development is. You will probably be surprised at how vague your salespeople are, and shouldn’t be surprised that this is the reason they’re not as successful at business development as they could be.
Dean Mannix is a Founding Director and Principal Consultant at SalesITV – Australia’s leading online sales and customer service training company. He has over 20 years of legal, finance, sales and management experience and is regarded as one of Australia’s leading performance consultants. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
