Create. Increase. Accelerate. tm
Getting Started With Prospect Segmentation
April 6, 2010
With 2010 well underway your sales teams are undoubtedly working hard to target and pursue the right kinds of leads, or are they? Too many companies don’t spend the necessary time determining and then profiling their ideal client. Often they look only at one dimensional elements such as geography or vertical and then attempt to pursue every prospect in the segment.
The first step to experiencing the benefits of segmentation is to create a “sweet spot” matrix specific to your company’s ideal target accounts. Begin by establishing the prospect characteristics important to your company. These are the things that enable you to provide the most client value and deliver your services most successfully, examples include revenue, industry, company size, number of locations, installed technology, etc.
List these elements down the left side of a chart and across the top create three columns: Best Fit, Average Fit, Weak Fit. Now fill in the chart for each variable that you listed down the left. We show an example in our webcast, Building a Pipeline That Never Leaks, slides 9 and 10. You can also download our Sweet Spot template. With your “sweet spot” matrix complete you can now tier your targets into best, good, and worst fit categories.
By investing a modest effort in a basic segmentation process you can improve sales and marketing’s focus on the right opportunities. This can dramatically increase the likelihood for sales success and reduce the time and money wasted chasing prospects that don’t fit your ideal profile.
Comments
One Response to “Getting Started With Prospect Segmentation”
Got something to say?
Great post!
This generic targeting is a mistake I often see sales organizations make in the belief that if they hit as many companies as possible with their sales/marketing message, something’s gotta stick.
The problem with this is two fold:
1) To engage with a decision-maker in today’s crazy busy and crowded business environment, you have to be relevant to the needs and concerns of the executive. If you’ve only segmented at a very high-level, achieving that relevancy is very difficult.
Lilla Sherman has written a book called “42 Rules for Growing Enterprise Revenue”, and she suggests some possible segmentation criteria that we typically don’t think of: customer attitudes (this might include tolerance for risk, for ex), experience with you, and audiences (based on a specific role or responsibility with the decision-making process). You can now customize your sales messaging to this more specific segment of prospects.
2) As you point out, if we don’t target well enough or specific enough, we run the risk of focusing our sales professionals on companies not worth their time. It is through rigorous and specific segmentation that companies determine how best to deploy their limited sales resources, and ultimately how to maximize their sales ROI.
Keep the insights coming!