An essential step in defining a sales strategy for your business is to determine its strategic positioning — the essence of how it competes and serves customers in its markets. At the core is attracting, retaining and satisfying customers. That can be most successfully achieved if you give them what they want.
Profile your prospective customers so you can attract your ideal audience and deliver profitable solutions in three steps:
1. Identify your target audiences
Your primary target audience is the group that will have the highest potential for impacting sales and revenue. You may well have secondary and tertiary audiences too. Do the research, and be specific about who these audiences are. If you are not specific enough you won’t be able to identify customer wants and needs properly, nor will you have the all-important ability to position your products and solutions properly.
2. Understand prospects’ pains and aspirations
Ask yourself the following questions for each of your target audiences:
- What is most frustrating to your primary audience?
- Why is it a problem for them?
- What are the implications of trying to cope with this frustration?
- What do your customers want as a result of having to deal with these issues?
3. Create solutions that meet those wants
Once you have identified your target market and taken the time to understand their problems and desires, you can begin to tweak, and position your products and services according to what customers want.
Go back to your pain analysis and look at each top problem or frustration, and ask the following important question: “Within the scope of my business, what product or service can I create and launch that will specifically address this ‘pain’ for my customer?”
Never assume that you know all there is to know about your prospects. Revisit and really take time to analyse your target audiences and reflect on what they want. Only when you understand that can you truly speak their language, and get them to take a serious look at your products and services.
The fundamental questions
- What are you selling?
- Who are you selling to?
- Who are your contacts?
- Who makes the buying decisions?
- How are you going to price your product?
- Will it be accepted by the market?
- Who are your competitors?
- What are your advantages over the competition?
- What are your sales goals?
- How are they going to achieve those numbers and in what period of time?