Many businesses aim to engage their target customers more effectively, but the key question is: How detailed are your customer profiles, and do you have efficient processes in place to capitalize on this knowledge?
These are the fundamental questions that sales targeting addresses, and for organizations looking to optimize their sales operations, it can have a profound impact.
Every potential customer is unique, and tailoring your approach to offer the best service while optimizing your available resources can be a challenge. This is where sales persona targeting comes into play.
What Is Sales Targeting?
No two prospects are identical. Some may find their way into your sales funnel by chance, while others have a genuine need for your service. This means that prospects have varying values to your business.
Sales targeting involves identifying the most promising prospects and creating strategies to attract them into your sales funnel and guide them through the buyer journey. The process includes:
- Understanding your target audience in greater detail
- Identifying the most promising leads
- Developing strategies to attract these leads into your sales funnel
- Focusing your efforts on closing the most valuable deals
- Measuring and analyzing your efforts for continuous improvement
Refining your sales targeting strategy may take time, but when executed correctly, it allows you to make much more efficient use of your resources. Instead of allocating equal resources to promising and unproductive leads, you can concentrate your time and effort on prospects who can make a substantial difference to your business.
Why Is Sales Targeting Important?
In the past, sales strategies focused on quantity. The goal was to engage as many people as possible, assuming that among them, you would find both high-value and low-value customers.
Today, the sales landscape has evolved considerably. With the influence of the Pareto Principle, which suggests that 80% of outcomes result from 20% of efforts, modern sales strategies prioritize focusing on the most promising leads. Advanced technology enables highly targeted outreach, allowing businesses to concentrate on the most promising 20% of potential customers.
Given the availability of sales prospecting tools and various methods to reach your audience, sales targeting has become a necessity. A small percentage of the population will become your leads, a fraction of those leads will convert into customers, and a select few customers will generate the majority of your revenue. To thrive, you must identify and engage these valuable prospects.
If you fail to reach these prospects, your competitors likely will. This is why establishing a robust focus on sales targeting is imperative. The most promising 20% of your potential customer base may be hidden in plain sight, but it’s your responsibility to figure out how to reach them.
Employing a shotgun approach, indiscriminately reaching out in all directions, is no longer efficient. You have the tools to pinpoint the right targets and use highly effective methods to secure sales.
Sales Targeting Strategy and Process
Sales targeting is not overly complex, but it demands clearly defined strategies and processes. Once you have these in place, you can start optimizing your sales targeting efforts and ensure that your resources are channeled effectively.
1. Define Your Targets
While you may be generating a large number of leads, most of them may drop off at an early stage. Identifying the prospects who successfully traverse your sales funnel to become customers is crucial. Your inbound leads can provide valuable insights into your outbound targeting efforts.
Even more critical is understanding what your most valuable customers look like. Without an answer to this question, effective sales targeting is challenging. Consider a range of factors:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Occupation
- Income
- Education
- Family Status
Delve deeper by considering what makes these individuals your ideal customers. For instance, if your ideal target is a male aged 40-60 in an office job, what specific pain points make them an ideal customer? Understanding the answers to these questions provides the foundation for making a sale.
Review your data to determine the common characteristics of your most valuable customers. Examine the demographics that your competitors target. By amalgamating your data, you can create a detailed profile of your ideal target.
2. Segment Your Targets
While every customer is unique, they often share commonalities. Effectively building prospect lists requires the ability to personalize outreach, and this necessitates segmenting your targets.
If you are already collecting leads through your website, you can gain valuable insights into different segments. Analyze the pages from which people sign up and categorize them accordingly. For example, someone who signs up from a page about content marketing should be placed in a different segment from someone who signed up from a page about PPC.
There are numerous ways to approach segmentation, such as by interest, stage in the buyer journey, business size, potential growth opportunities, and more. The better you segment your targets, the easier it becomes to develop a customized sales cadence to guide each prospect through your sales funnel.
3. Develop Strategies
The essence of defining and segmenting your targets is to create tailored sales targeting strategies. You leverage data to optimize your approach to each target, increasing your chances of conversion.
For each segment, determine specific variables that you believe will influence a prospect’s decision to take action. Factors may include “purchasing power,” “readiness,” and “multiple stakeholders.” Rank these factors based on their potential impact on a prospect becoming a customer.
If you identify a prospect with high revenue potential and favorable scores on these variables, they are prime candidates for sales targeting. Similarly, existing customers with growth potential and positive variable scores warrant more resource allocation.
Ensure your variables are data-driven. Consult with your sales team to identify common objections that cause prospects to drop out of your sales funnel. Identifying the most critical variables enables you to pinpoint the most promising targets.
With a comprehensive understanding of each prospect’s potential objections, you can develop tailored strategies to address their pain points and overcome objections.
4. Lead Flow
Now is the time to start generating leads, but not just any leads—targeted prospects. Modern sales targeting is exceptionally valuable because of its precision. Various methods allow you to target your audience with pinpoint accuracy, reaching them where they spend their time.
Once you have a clear picture of your target audience, their segments, and the variables that influence their purchasing decisions, you can begin creating content that attracts them into your sales funnel. This content should answer their pain points and objections, pushing them further down your sales funnel.
It’s not just about creating a single piece of content and hoping it works for every lead. By understanding your audience, you can create multiple content pieces tailored to each segment. Ensure that this content is valuable and engaging, offering insights that the audience cannot obtain elsewhere.
Many companies use the following methods to generate leads:
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Webinars
- Trade shows and events
- Referral programs
Each method comes with its own set of best practices and considerations, and you should tailor your outreach to match the characteristics of your audience. Never rush to start your lead flow. Your goal is to generate high-quality leads, not just large quantities of them.
5. Close the Sale
Your approach to closing sales depends on the sales stage and your prospect’s readiness. If a prospect is at the top of the funnel, their readiness is relatively low, and your goal should be to educate them further on your product or service.
As prospects move down the funnel, their readiness increases. You can gauge their readiness by their actions, such as engaging with more in-depth content or requesting a demo. Use these actions as triggers for more personalized outreach. Your strategy for closing the sale should evolve with your prospects.
For closing sales with highly qualified leads, consider personalized email outreach, webinars, or direct calls. Understand the role that your product or service plays in solving the prospect’s problems, and demonstrate this to them.
It’s important to develop a system for measuring and analyzing your sales targeting process. Monitor the results of your strategies. Take note of what worked and what didn’t, and iterate your approach accordingly.
In conclusion
Sales targeting is a critical process for any organization that wishes to make efficient use of its resources and capitalize on valuable prospects. The process involves:
- Defining your target audience in detail
- Segmenting your targets based on common characteristics and behaviors
- Developing tailored sales targeting strategies for each segment
- Generating targeted leads through precision methods
- Adapting your approach based on the prospect’s sales readiness and stage
- Measuring and analyzing results for continuous improvement
By focusing your efforts on the most promising leads and using data to refine your approach, you can make your sales efforts more efficient and effective, ultimately driving greater revenue for your business.
Remember that sales targeting is an ongoing process, and your ability to refine your strategy and adapt to the changing needs of your target audience will be key to its success.