Researching Prospective Customers

When it comes to finding new clients or prospecting potential customers that you already have, it might get a little difficult to fully understand who they are and what they want. Analysing your client’s consumer habits can get tedious and expensive but what if you know exactly what you need to ensure you land that sale? 

Well, there are a few ways to research and get more information about prospective and existing customers that will help you close that deal or make that sale. Here are some of those great ways to get your client’s so excited to work with you. 

Tip 1: Research, Research, Research 

The first and most important tip is to always start with researching your clients. You will need to understand who your target or ideal clients are. The best way to figure that out is to know your product and what problem you’re trying to solve. With that understanding, it becomes easier to know who you need to speak to that have those problems.

Understanding this gives you the power to fix their pain points. Pain points are basically the issues your clients face that can be fixed with your product or service. If you are looking to sell a training service, then you know that your potential clients would be someone that is looking to level up their skills in this particular field because they are not getting enough recognition at work or they are facing issues at work that can be solved once they level up their skill set with your product. 

One of the easiest ways we’ve seen on how to watch and gather information about your prospective clients is to join forums, LinkedIn groups or even Facebook groups that your clients might hang out in and speak to other people with the same issues. 

Some of the things you should be looking at are : 

1. What are their 3 main pain points? 
2. What are they struggling with the most? 
3. Who are the people they are talking to? 
4. What kind of solutions are they hoping to see? 
5. What kind of issues are they facing? 

Having this set of questions will really aid in ensuring you get the full understanding as to how to target your audience, understand their pain points and look for the best way to portray your solution to them. 

In addition to that, if you are a business-to-business solutions provider, you can also look at different questions to help you gauge the best way to speak to your prospective clients. 

These can include : 

1. Company mission and vision 
2. Number of employees 
3. Company products 
4. Company’s main issues 

This way your pitch will always be tailor-made to the client you are speaking to. This will greatly increase your chances because the clients will truly appreciate that you took the time to fully understand their issues and can now present them with the best way to solve their problems.

Tip 2: Gather Contact Details 

Once you’ve got all that information down, you can start looking for contacts of these clients. The best way to do that is to go to their webpage (if you’re trying to close a deal with another business) and look at their about page. Look for the people that make decisions. If you are looking to sell a training course, then the first person you should look for is probably the HR manager or the Chief People Officer. Basically someone who works with the talent and employees of the company directly and has decision making power. 

Another great way to do this is to go on LinkedIn and search for the company. Once you do that, you can easily find the top employees of the company and start your lead prospecting from then onwards. Understand your prospective client’s job title, what they’ve done, their accomplishments, things they’ve solved and how long they’ve been at the company. This way you get even more in-depth knowledge on the person in charge to make the decision to work with you! 

Tip 3: Check Your Competitors 

This might come as a shock to you, but trust us when we say to look at your competitors. The best way to go about this is to look at your competitors who are a bit ahead in their journey. This way you get to see and learn the mistakes they’ve made and learn from them without having to deal with it yourself. 

Businesses who you feel are making the best decisions in finding, targeting and closing their customers are the ones you should be paying attention to. These are the businesses who have done their research and you get to piggyback on their information and reiterate to become better at what you do. 

Look at their social media, their websites, the content and even what the CEO or the top employees are talking about and you might just catch them talking about how they solved the same issues you’re trying to solve on social media! 

Doing this will greatly help you in strategising and putting together your own deck when you go out there and speak to your prospective clients. 

Tip 4: Start Positioning Yourself As A Thought-Leader 

Once you’ve fully understood your customer and you’ve done your research, you can very easily position yourself as a thought-leader in the industry. Doing this will allow you to contact your clients easier and gain their trust faster because they see that you are the go-to person when it comes to solving their issues. 

You can do this by : 

1. Improving your LinkedIn content by writing more about the issue and how you’ve managed to solve it. 
2. Engage in speakerships surrounding your industry. 
3. Publish whitepapers or research papers talking about your solution. 
4. Engage in conversations on local forums.

This way, your name becomes a staple or something that people are used to. This will improve your conversion chances when you finally sit down with your prospective clients. 

In short, the main things you really need to do is to understand your customer and present your answer to their problems in the most personalised manner possible. It doesn’t matter if you have no idea who your customers are or even if they have been your customer for years, keeping up with their pain points and issues will guarantee you a long-lasting relationship with your clients. 

Relationship management is key here and without it, you might be setting yourself up for failure. These tips will greatly help you in ensuring you know who your customers are and what makes them buy or choose your solution over the rest out there.

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