19 Nov Fish in the Right Pond
Salespeople often ask me to explain the best method of identifying the highest-potential prospects to target. “How can I find these prime prospects so I do not waste my time on companies that will not buy from me (this year)?”
There is no easy answer to this, but there is a strategy that you can use to increase your chances of finding the best prospects. And it is not as difficult as it may seem. The clue is that you need to decrease the universe of all prospects to just those with needs that best fit your company and product.
Consider a fishing analogy: The objective is to catch enough fish for a meal today. Now, you must answer these questions: What kind of fish do you want to catch? Where do you want to go – near or far? Shall you fish from shore or a boat? Have you fished there before? Were you successful? What bait shall you use? What is your budget for renting a boat? If you can answer these questions, the answer to where to fish should be apparent, and your chances of catching a fish today are higher. Success does not come from going to a random body of water, standing on the shore, casting aimlessly with any bait you can find, and expecting to catch a fish that day. That applies to sales as well.
To find the best prospects, you need to determine:
- What is your product or service’s value proposition?
- What are your competitive strengths?
- Which prospects are likely to have needs that you can fulfill?
Your value proposition is the unique positive business value your solution, product, or service brings to the marketplace. Your competitive strengths are your advantages over the other suppliers (and “do nothing”) and can include their weaknesses. There can be overlaps with the value proposition. The prospect’s needs are sometimes disclosed but often must be found during discovery. 1
Review the Venn diagram above, which consists of three intersecting circles for each question.
- The orange circle represents your competitive strengths
- The blue circle represents your prospect’s needs
- The yellow circle represents your value proposition
The red area includes prospects whose needs need to match your value proposition and strengths. These prospects are a waste of time and should be avoided.
The purple area includes prospects with needs that are in your competitive strengths but need to match your value proposition. That can happen if the prospect requires a low price, for example, which may be one of your competitive advantages, but they may need to see value in your solutions. In this example, these prospects should only receive a low priority if your strategy is to be the low-cost provider in the marketplace.
The teal area includes prospects with needs that match your proposition value but are outside your competitive strength. These prospects should be targeted, with the realization that the deals will be highly competitive and that you will need to work harder to establish greater trust with the buyer to be chosen.
The green area in the middle is your “Sweet Spot.” This is where the prospect’s needs, your value proposition, and your competitive strengths are aligned. You want to seek and sell these prospects, as you will have an advantage, and your probability of closing the sale is greater. Among their needs are some that match the value you bring to the prospect and fit your competitive strengths. These are the unique selling propositions that you need to validate during the discovery process and to emphasize during your presentation.
The “Sweet Spot” is more desirable than the “ideal customer profile,” which describes the type of prospect from amongst the universe that best fits your product or service based on functionality or vertical market characteristics. A company could be “ideal” if it meets the criteria; however, that does not mean it has needs for which you can provide the best solution.
Your value proposition should be broader than your “unique sales proposition” or USP. The value proposition should be quantifiable. The USP is a marketing message that relates to your competitive strengths – what do you do that is unique to your company or product?
Finding prospects in the Sweet Spot requires you to master your value proposition and competitive strengths and then identify those companies that would likely need a solution your company offers. Next, list all the titles you would typically purchase from you and then use Linkedin.com, Hoovers, or another source to find the person’s name, telephone number, and email address. You can approach the individuals through cold-calling, direct mail, LinkedIn.com, or all the above.
By initiating conversations that lead to questioning, you will discover their needs and then assess which area the prospect fits in. Once you have contacted all the targeted companies, you will prioritize your calls to follow up with the companies in the green bucket first, then the teal and purple buckets. While questioning the prospects, you will also determine their sense of urgency and the name of their decision-maker.
So, you ask, “How do I find Sweet Spot prospects?” Here is a suggestion:
First, find information on which companies consume much energy that would fit your product well. For example, they have the financial strength to afford it and the infrastructure to install it with little modification. If you are still looking for this information through web searches, choose 25-50 international publicly traded companies and look at the profit and loss (P&L) statement in their annual reports, commonly available online but always available by request. Their energy costs should be shown in the P & L report.2
You should also review your existing customer list and identify which customers receive the most significant benefit and are the most satisfied with your product. What do these customers have in common? Are they in the same or a few industry verticals? If so, that is another clue as to where to find more prospects in the Sweet Spot.
Once you have a working list of companies, you should expand it to at least 100 by including similar companies in the vertical market or geography. For example, you should add similar manufacturers if one or more companies were manufacturing companies.
Secondly, consider your competitive strengths, one of which is that your product is available and is supported globally. Your primary competitors have regional solutions. For example, a significant competitor exists in Europe and another in Asia. All of these products are unique, and that presents several issues. Your marketing messages should emphasize that support for the purchase is available in all the major markets and the advantages of working with a single source globally rather than regional suppliers.
Next, you need to find the appropriate contacts at each company and their email addresses and telephone numbers. LinkedIn.com is an excellent resource. What are the titles of the people that would most likely utilize your product? Perhaps it is the Plant Manager or Operations Vice President. Who do these people typically report to? List the titles. Now, search LinkedIn.com for those titles in your target list of companies. LinkedIn.com will display the names of people who allow their names to be shown. As I described in an earlier blog post, you can connect to these people through your existing connections. You can also try to obtain their contact information from Dun & Bradstreet or other list providers. The result will be a list of people with their contact information.
Your next step is to contact these prospects and qualify them to determine if you want to pursue them. This will include determining if they will reduce their energy costs and sense of urgency as a possible buyer. Based on your conversations with several contacts at each company, you will determine which category or color you will place them in the concentric circles.
If you do not have enough prospects in the green, teal, and purple areas, you need to understand your product’s value and strengths better to identify the companies that would benefit most. Restart and try again.
If you follow the instructions above and concentrate solely on these prospects, you will fish in the Sweet Spot pond.
1 Steven Weinberg, Above Quota Performance, Armin Lear Press (Estes Park, CO), p. 146.
2 Ibid., p. 151.