Keep Your Sales Targets Narrow

Although the pandemic isn’t over, 2022 is looking more positive than the beginning of 2021 as far as sales go.

Sales is what we’re focusing on in this post.

The good news is that some normalcy has set in, and event planners have learned how to deal with the limits of in-person events. Events are back on the calendar.

The pent-up demand we’ve been waiting for is now on the horizon. It looks like 2022 will have lots of activity, new buyers, and more requests than you have capacity for.

What happens if you say Yes to all this new demand? You’ll burn through your capacity, but you won’t necessarily make the most profit.

When demand rises, businesses can start to behave like those contestants on the old game show, Dialing for Dollars. A fan starts blowing dollar bills inside a booth, and the player flails around to grab as much money out of the air as they can.

This is not efficient or strategic.

Just because more events are finding their way back onto the schedule doesn’t mean you should to overextend yourself in the excitement.

Remember, not all revenue is good revenue. You need to know when to exercise your No muscles so you can reserve some of your capacity to say Yes to the best customers.

If you want to avoid undermining your hard-won efforts to be more profitable, more scalable, and more efficient, you need to keep your sales strategy focused. Don’t take on business that’s counterproductive.

To succeed in 2022 and beyond, you need to identify your ideal customer, the one you want to say Yes to every time.

You can make sure that you only respond to the most worthwhile, best-fit sales targets by filtering prospective clients. There are three filters that, when used in order, will help you to gauge whether to say Yes or No to potential customers.

I call it the PFP Customer Filtering Process.

1. Profile Filter
2. Focus Filter
3. Price Filter

The PFP Customer Filtering Process

Follow me on a tour through the PFP Process to learn how to narrow your sales target. You can use the filters to ensure that the work you put into surviving the pandemic isn’t wasted.

Profile Filter

The first filter is qualitative and gauges whether the prospective client is a good fit for your business.

If you haven’t created a customer profile before, you can run through my Perfect Customer Profiler. You can also answer the following questions:

1. Does the client seem like they’d be easy to work with?
2. Does the client seem to be upfront and transparent in what they are trying to achieve by working with you?
3. Is the client buying what you’re selling? Are they onboard with your approach and thought process?

If you answer Yes to all these questions, the client is probably a good fit for your business.

Though these questions are qualitative — human questions based on your own experience and intuitions — they’re a necessary first step.

I’ve found that some of the best customer profiles incorporate the traits of the company’s worst clients.

You know the clients you dread working with. For example, maybe you have a client who is argumentative, slow to pay, constantly asking you to cut corners, and treats your people poorly. Incorporate those traits into your profile to help you say No to this kind of customer from the get-go and save yourself some future grief.

If the prospective customer makes it through the first filter, you can most likely have a healthy working relationship with them.

Working with difficult people can cost you more than money. The psychological stress it causes is a high price to pay.

Failing to apply this filter can have a negative impact on team morale — not to mention your own. This, in turn, will have a negative impact on your efficiency.

Focus Filter

The second filter focuses on whether the prospective client is a good strategic fit. The first filter looked at the customer. The second filter looks at the work the customer wants you to do and weighs that against your own business goals.

What do I mean by this?

Take, for example, a client that has passed the profile filter with flying colors. You get along splendidly, they’re transparent in their approach, and they’re buying what you’re selling.

The next step is to measure the client against your strategic goals. Maybe you’re trying to specialize in a certain aspect of the business and want to phase out some of the things you’ve done in the past. If a good profile client doesn’t fit your strategic goals, then you can politely decline taking on their project.

Don’t get lulled into taking on clients that don’t help you get your business where you want to go — no matter how much you’d enjoy working with them.

Sometimes you have to say No even to people you like. If you don’t, you’ll put a strain on your already limited capacity. This, in turn, will negatively impact the scalability you’ve been working hard to achieve.

Price Filter

The price filter comes last for a reason. There’s no point testing prices and margins on prospective clients who aren’t a good fit for your business.

Pricing is qualitative, and there is no value in crunching numbers for someone you won’t do business with.

So now that a prospective client has passed through the profile and focus filters, you can apply the price filter. Even if they’re a perfect fit in both other categories — in that they’re easy to work with and they fit into your strategic business plan — you still have to make money.

If someone gets through the first two filters but isn’t willing to pay top dollar for your product, you make less in the short term.

You also end up missing out on another client who would have been willing to pay you what you’re worth. This hurts your long-term profitability as well.

It all boils down to reserving capacity for your best customers or for the prospective clients who will become your best customers.

If you fail to reserve some of your capacity for the best customers, it will have a negative impact on both short- and long-term profitability.

Bottom Line

Memorize this: Not all revenue is good revenue.

You need to know when to exercise your No muscles to reserve some of your capacity. Then you can say Yes to the best customers.

The PFP Customer Filtering Process will help you do just that.