If you've read our article on
customer profiling, which discusses
lifetime customer value and other key profiling characteristics, then you know that researching customer prospects to understand how your prospect compares to your ideal customer can significantly improve overall selling effectiveness. Through proper profiling, you identified key attributes of an account that determine whether they are a good target for you.
Profiling alone, however, will only tell you whether or not the account in question is 'relevant' to your business. It will not automatically make you relevant to the account. To successfully make initial contact, you must be able to offer relevant value; so you must thoroughly understand the value drivers of the account.
Classical sales training focuses on the process of understanding customer needs through questions-based consultative selling. However important this process is, it assumes that you have already made contact with your prospect, and that (s)he has given you the opportunity to ask the questions necessary for identifying potential opportunities to add value. Unfortunately, business leaders are extremely busy, and your first chance is your only chance to impress upon your target the value that your organization can create.
However you intend to make first contact, if you don't make the immediate impression that you will either make your contact's life easier or that you will make hiim or her more successful, then your chances of getting to the next step are slim. So go slow to go fast. Don't jump into the prospecting phase without first creating a high-level value proposition.
Investigate your prospect thoroughly BEFORE making initial contact. Thorough investigation will allow you to identify key decision influencers and their hot buttons, and will enable you to understand the general business value drivers of the account necessary to formulate your value-oriented prospecting strategy.
The following types of information will provide an excellent foundation for your prospecting strategy:
- What is their product?
- What is their overall business strategy?
- What are your prospect's core values, mission, vision?
- What are your prospect's primary target markets?
- Who are your prospect's primary customers?
- What is their buying cycle?
- How does your prospect help their customers to make money?
- Is their business growing?
- What market challenges is the prospect and/or its customers facing?
- What 'hot' initiatives are underway?
- Who are the key business influencers, and what are their hot buttons?
There are a multitude of research sources to help you find valuable prospect information, but we find the most relevant source to be the 'Press Releases' and newsletter sections of the prospect's website. Press releases, by their very nature, are important and highly relevant to the prospect, and frequently name the prospect contact with the highest level of accountability for the referenced issue. Other excellent sources of prospect research we recommend:
There are too many valuable areas of research for us to include in this short article, but the information above will provide an excellent starting point to develop a relevant value-oriented entry strategy.
Contact Sales RaceHorses to help you to develop a customized and comprehensive
customer prospecting strategy. We can assist in defining key search criteria, identifying appropriate contact points of entry, developing
value-oriented messages for cold calling, warm calling and
voicemails, appropriate follow up questioning strategies, and other prospecting processes to improve overall selling effectiveness.
Happy Hunting! 
