The Ideal Prospect Profile
Maximizing ROI is a constant struggle for Marketers and, as much as we’d hate to admit it, the number of leads aren’t as important as the quality of leads being passed over to Sales. At the end of the day, the only number that really matters is how many opportunities came from your marketing campaigns rather than the number of leads. If that bottom line number isn’t telling you how many potential customers you have waiting to get scooped up by your Sales team, then you may want to take a look at how you can clean up your sales pipeline so that Sales can spend less time following up on uninterested leads and more time on closing deals.
If you were to ask one of your sales people their idea of a perfect prospect, would it match the profile of who you’ve been targeting in your campaigns? Hopefully the answer is yes, but if it’s not then we’ve identified your first step to cleaning the pipeline. Knowing exactly what you’re looking for in a prospect is the key to finding more opportunities, more deals, more revenue and better ROI. Since you already have customers using your product, you already have an idea of what that perfect prospect looks like. So let’s put together a profile for that ideal prospect.
Take a look at your favorite customers and what it took to close them. Start to put together a list of basic information such as company size, industry, job titles and decision makers. Then, take a close look at what problems your product solves for them. Collaborate with your sales team to learn what got their attention. After all, Sales knows the exact solution to solve your customers’ problems, wouldn’t it make sense to provide that information from the get-go? It’s important to regularly evaluate your customers’ needs because the economy is shifting so rapidly that who you may not sell to today, may be exactly who needs you tomorrow.
Once you and your sales team have put together the ideal customer profile, compare that against the type of contacts and leads you already have in your system. Are you on the right track? If you see similarities, great! You’re next step is to qualify those leads. If not, then you will want to reevaluate your lead generation activities. Perhaps that newsletter you sponsored wasn’t to the right audience, or maybe your surveys and landing pages are asking the wrong questions. Take a look at what you’re sending out; it may affect what you’re bringing in.