Defining Your Market
The most important question you can answer is, "Who do we want to be a hero to?" Without a clear answer to this question, you’re aiming in the dark and your sales and marketing efforts will be monumentally hampered.
What's the best way to navigate this trap? Narrow your focus, then narrow it some more. Once you are completely, totally clear on who your best clients are – and you are experiencing success in the market with that focus – it is safe to begin thinking of ways to expand your markets. If you narrow your focus, you will expand your yield. That’s right, focus on attracting fewer opportunities and you’ll end up attracting more good ones.
Creating Your Ideal Client Profile (ICP)
You can think of your ICP as a company persona. Your job is to clearly define the types of companies/accounts you want to be doing business with (note: this is not always the same as the companies you are doing business with). The purpose of this is to create a focal point that enables the effective alignment of all demand generation and product/services resources.
While the process and criteria used to create buyer personas is pretty consistent across the vast majority of business types, defining the criteria for your ICP is unique to your company.
Define Your Headpin Profile: In bowling, if you want a strike you don't focus on all ten pins; you focus on only one or two. In business, if you want growth you do the same thing.
Before you can identify potential buyers, you need to define which buyers you can help and which you can’t. The ideal buyer profile defines which companies are a good fit for your offering and which ones are not. If you are a B2B company, the definition should be at the company level, not the contact level -- that is, even if your point of contact doesn’t typically make the purchasing decision, they’re still valuable to speak with if their company matches your ideal buyer profile.
- Are there company sizes that are ideal or not ideal who would buy your product?
- Do you define size as employees, revenue, customers, or another metric?
- Are there industries or verticals that are ideal or not ideal?
- Are there geographic locations that are ideal or not ideal?
- Are there other attributes that make the buyer ideal or not ideal?
Defining Your Buyer Personas
Whoever coined the phrase “familiarity breeds contempt” was certainly not a growth executive. In today’s über-competitive landscape, the uninformed sales pitch will likely be stillborn, and with good reason.
The single greatest competitive advantage comes when a company knows and understands their customers better than their customers know and understand themselves. Before you can fully understand the value of knowing your customer, consider the dangers when you don’t.
The failure to understand your customer deeply enough:
- Forces you to focus on your product or solution, throwing you into the middle of the commoditization trap.
- Creates confusion and increases the risk you take in all aspects of your business.
- Stifles your ability to create real value in the sales process, as you’re limited to only what your customer can understand.
- Eliminates predictability, as you’re forced into a reactive position with your customers.
- Makes your marketing and sales pitch sound like everybody else’s.
- Lengthens the sales cycle and lowers your probability of success as you’re prone to make critical mistakes in the sales process.
With Lift we’ll lead you through the process to gain the understanding you need about your customers so that you can design messaging and actions that stand out, influence and drive measurable results.
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Developing Your Point-of-View Messaging
An effective Point-of-View Message will:
- Demonstrate your company's capabilities and understanding of your prospect's world.
- Immediately set you apart from your competition.
- Highlight the true value you deliver, and sets the stage for a "What's it worth" conversation, instead of a "What's it cost" conversation.
Your primary challenge today is being heard. Unlike the proverbial tree falling in the empty forest, you’re competing in a marketplace that makes Times Square seem tranquil and quiet.
A Point-of-View Message is crucial to win the attention and engagement of prospects at any stage of the buying or selling journey. A Point-of-View Message is rooted in knowledge and application, defining:
- The problem you solve
- The best way to solve the problem
- Why you’re the best choice
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