Finding Your Opportunity Zone: 3 Ideas to Create A Sustainable Customer Pipeline

Creating a realistic and sustainable client or partner pipeline remains one of the most difficult challenges within the sales and business development cycle. No one is immune as the challenge affects the individual, the team, and the broader organization. Even those organizations equipped with the proper tools and information still struggle mainly due to an inability to understand their strengths and close other gaps that constrain the ability to create value. 

In our prior article, "Understanding Your Pie: 3 Simple Rules to Capture Your Market", we introduced the Opportunity Zone. Opportunity Zones are sub-segments within a broader market that align with your personal value proposition and specific product attributes. While many markets are quite targeted, there are those markets where products or services benefit a ubiquitous customer set. These markets can include consumer goods or financial services. Applying a random approach to customer acquisition leads to a short-term mindset. Although wins do occur, these wins may be short-lived. A ceiling (mainly mental) develops along with the false belief that a limited number of potential customers for the product or service exists.

The often-heard refrain “I Can’t Find Any Customers!!” echoes loudly for some new to the game.

The limited customer perception usually comes from the misplaced belief of lack of customer interest, lack of need for the product, or just not knowing where to look. Whatever the reason, over time, the lack of momentum on pipeline acquisition creates the spiral of declining interest, lack of motivation, and further lack of interest, ultimately leading to washout and failure.

Building opportunity zones offers many benefits, including a robust and less random pipeline, better time and resource allocation, and most importantly, a better bottom line. As you consider this approach, we offer three ideas to build these zones and begin the path to value creation.

#1: Optimize Your Soft and Hard Skills

Cross-cultural collaboration, dedication, resourcefulness are examples of soft skills. These are the personal traits and habits that shape you and, in particular, how you deal with others.

According to research from Harvard University, Stanford and the Carnegie Mellon Foundation, between 75-85% of job success is attributed to soft skills.

Other soft skills can include integrity, dependability/reliability, and empathy, etc. I attribute most of my career success to collaboration, dedication, and resourcefulness. These skills have served me well, whether in music, mergers & acquisition, or global strategic partnerships. Conversely, hard skills are those skills that are more technical. Product knowledge or specific technical proficiencies, etc., are the hard skills.

Personal and career success comes from optimizing the mix of hard and soft skills, yet finding the right balance remains elusive for many. A 2016 LinkedIn survey noted that 59% of hiring managers struggle to find candidates with strong, soft skills. Organizations must spend the time and resources strengthening these skills and creating the right balance. Prioritizing activities to promote soft skills must be done at the individual, team, and organization levels.

#2: Merge Your Personality with the Market Opportunity

What are your strengths? Is there something you enjoy doing? Can you articulate in a simple phrase what you do daily? Sometimes these questions can be challenging to answer. Some of us enjoy teaching or finance. Many of us bring a great deal of passion to the task at hand. Understanding these strengths and interest is the first start. Think carefully about what motivates you.

As you strengthen your self-reflection process, deconstruct your broader market opportunity into sub-segments that align more closely with your personality. 

Strength in policy analysis may lead you to target government clients, or an interest in entrepreneurship may allow you to find success targeting startups or small and medium-sized businesses. These sub-segments contain underlying characteristics that align well with your personality, capabilities, and product attributes. In many markets, numerous opportunities to execute and benefit from this approach.

#3: Connect the Dots: Link Your Internal Knowledge Silos

In a recent presentation to a group of young and aspiring financial advisors in Asia, one of the audience members asked: what does my profession as a teacher have to do with financial services? My short answer was: Everything. The confusion begs the question, where is the disconnect? We are discovering that there are numerous silos of information and knowledge within each of us. These knowledge silos maybe include specific hard and soft skills, personal contacts, or experiences, etc.

For many individuals understanding their internal knowledge silos and connecting them can be difficult but shouldn’t be.

Unlocking and connecting these internal silos is necessary to identifying and developing your Opportunity Zone. Prioritize finding a catalyst to assist you and your team in identifying, opening, and linking these internal knowledge silos.

Some Final Thoughts…

We can, at times, become consumed chasing opportunities without proper thought resulting in limited success. We suggest focusing on relevance, not randomness. Recognizing that time pressures and targets are constant, a minimal amount of time allocated upfront can go a long way. Raise your self-awareness, focus on developing your soft skills and leverage your knowledge networks. These steps will allow you to find your Opportunity Zones and achieve success.