Use of ‘Pareto Thinking’ is highly relevant and important when applied to sales people. For example, 20% of sales people’s activities will create 80% of sales achieved, which has enormous consequences on how to optimise and manage lead generation activities.
Generating leads is an important sales activity that plants the seeds of growth for sustainable business development. A lead is purely a name that you could refer to as a SUSPECT because their potential to buy is unknown. Before you can qualify leads to determine whether they have the money, authority and desire to buy your products/services you need to generate them! When deciding upon which lead generation methods work best for you and your organisation, it helps to have clarity on the type of customers that you’d like to attract. This means creating an Ideal Customer Profile that can begin to provide direction to your lead generation activities.
The following questions will stimulate your thinking when it comes to developing an Ideal Customer Profile:
- What size of organisation would you prefer to deal with?
- Typically, how many people will they employ?
- What market sector(s) do these organisations operate within?
- Who specifically will be buying your products/services and what are their titles?
- Where geographically would you like these organisations to be located?
- What does your organisation offer that is unique?
- What types of organisations will be attracted by this uniqueness?
- What do your best customers possess that you would like to replicate in others?
- Which of your existing customers were the easiest and quickest to convert?
- What similarities do these customers possess?
- Are there any specific criteria that prospective organisations should have in place, so that your products/services can be optimised?
Having a well-defined profile of your ‘ideal customer’ can prove to be invaluable when determining which methods to use for lead generation and improves the effectiveness of marketing initiatives. You may also discover that the process for asking for referrals becomes easier and generates a better response, because you are providing the person with a tighter specification of what you are looking for – this concentrates their thinking towards the direction you have defined.
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