Every Sales Call, Win Or Lose, Is A Learning Opportunity

I closed a big deal!!

Awesome. What's the ARR?

$100,000 per year and they signed up for 5 years.

How long was the sales cycle?

It was only 3 months because it was a warm referral from another customer.

What was similar about the companies?

They both had very progressive IT departments using AWS. Both sold similar types of products.

Anything else?

Yes. They both were in the Boston area. Also the buyer, in each case, was the business unit leader - not purchasing or IT.

Are you using those similarities to target other companies?

May I should be ?

Winning or Losing - Always Be Learning

I love sports analogies. So here is one of my favorites.

"It's often been said that you learn more from losing than you do from winning. I think, if you're wise, you learn from both." Coach Morgan Wootten

This applies to many things - especially selling.

Who to sell to.

Who not to sell to.

And why.

Target Audience Development

Building a solid target audience creates value.

Driving more targeted marketing programs

Aligning product priorities.

Improving sales productivity.

What Is Audience Development?

What's audience development?

• Audience is a marketing term to describe targeted businesses (accounts) or consumers.
• Segmentation is the process of grouping audiences based on like attributes.
• Personas describe individuals within your targets by creating a semi-fictional archetype. There are two types of personas: a) buyer and b) user.

Using 3rd party data (like these) delivers prioritized accounts - your target audience.

Attribute-Based Segmentation

Attribute-based segmentation is not always well understood.

It's NOT picking a few target industries and job titles.

This approach requires discipline.

It requires identifying meaningful attributes. And improving them as you learn.

In my experience, the following areas have proven most valuable.

• Outcomes are the end result. The value achieved by the customer. The prioritized list of tasks they perform. It includes the current status quo. How the status quo impacts them. Finally, based on your solution, it defines the pain elimination and gain creation.
• Firmographics are attributes about the company. This includes industries (SIC, NAIC Codes), number of employees, revenue, and geography. Digging even deeper delivers greater value.
• Technographics are attributes about the users IT and OT environments. Applications and infrastructure that will integrate or impact your solution. It also includes an adoption profile (early adopter, etc.). Recent technology purchases can also be relevant.
• Buyer Personas attributes include demographics and psychographics. It also includes how they measure success (based on the Outcomes from above).
• Purchase Behavior attributes describe how, where, when and why they buy products. It includes how they find information and who (in the market) might influence the decision.
• Value Chain attributes describe the audiences' business environment. It includes the product and services they sell, who they sell to, and how they sell. It also includes business and technology partners.

Some Simple Attribute Examples

Example 1

Company is targeting service providers who provide indoor plant care.

The top-level firmographic attributes are pretty straightforward.

Narrowing initial targets can be more challenging.

What Firmographic attributes can enhance their targeting?

•  # of buildings managed
• # of acres on campus
• # of plants or projects (e.g. Green Walls) managed
• # of gallons of water used per month
• # of field service employees

Example 2

Company provides mentor training services.

They have won a bunch of deals. Others seem to drag on forever.

Mentoring is important, but new for many organizations.

What Purchase Behavior attributes might enhance their targeting?

• Is there a specific person and process for purchasing and deploying mentoring? If yes, who's on the buying committee?
• Do they attend mentoring-related events? If yes, which ones? Who attends?
• Are they engaged in social media mentoring conversations? Which websites? With whom?

Example 3

Company provides outsourced IT and application development services.

One key target is start-up ventures. VC's (part of their Value Chain) were a lead source.

This delivered fewer leads than expected.

What other Outcomes could improve targeting of startup software ventures? In other words, what other process challenges have high potential value outcomes?

• To reduce staffing costs and improve development velocity, provide pre-configured product management infrastructure (Aha!, Jira, Confluence, etc.)
• To reduce staffing costs and improve product reliability, outsource DevOps and cloud management services.
• To reduce staffing, improve product uptime, and minimize security risks (especially given recent events including Alteryx), outsource managed security.

Use Attribute Segmentation To Improve Sales Targeting

Use meaningful attributes.

Validate them.

Use initial market research to start.

As sales are won and loss, learn.

As your value proposition and ROI becomes clearer, learn.

Building clear target audiences, drives top line growth. It also improves marketing effectiveness and sales productivity.

Good luck!!