Key Elements of the Sales Process- Define Your Target

There are several steps involved in creating an effective sales process. They are separate pieces that build upon one another. One of these steps is finding who you want to sell to. As a sales person you have to fully understand your product or service’s features and benefits. This will allow you to match them with a current need in the marketplace. Anyone who can benefit by having this need fulfilled becomes a potential customer. If you are selling to a specific industry, your prospect list may be small and highly defined. If your product has wider appeal, your prospect list can be extremely large and thus harder to manage. This is why taking the time initially to identify the best prospects for what you have to sell will pay dividends in the long run.

Your “time to sell”, the actual time in front of a potential customer is the most important part of your job. Developing a properly targeted call list will provide the best use of this time. Before you ever step foot into the door, you will have the confidence that you truly are able to fulfill a need. Once you are in front of a properly targeted prospect, you greatly increase your probability of closing the sale.

Having a targeted call list will also increase your ability to gain quality referrals. If you can relay to other business associates exactly who you are looking to meet, right down to the company name and key contact person, you are much more likely to get a positive response. This is especially important when your other efforts to engage this prospect have not been successful.

Knowing who you want to call on and why will keep you organized as you schedule your time. This allows you to properly plan your selling strategy so your energy is spent on being productive rather than being busy. You can make all the sales calls in the world, but at the end of the day you will still be measured on actual sales.

There are many tools available when trying to define your target accounts. Proper research can identify prospects by such variables as specific industry, number of employees, annual revenue, locations ect… You need to determine what variables define your ideal customer. Sorting your prospects accordingly enables you to create your target list.

Properly developing a target call list can be somewhat time consuming at first. However, once it is in place it will keep you on track in your selling efforts. It can continually evolve as you add new prospects and remove ones that no longer fit. It provides you the best chance to stay focused and remain one step ahead of your competition.