Acquiring a new client is an exciting time as a business development and marketing consultant. It is an opportunity to bring your expertise to a new business problem and perhaps implement some new tactics you have recently learned. At the same time, acquiring a new client raises a lot of questions: “Where do I start?”, “Which marketing tactics will be successful for the client’s business model?” and/or “How do I fill their sales pipeline with their ideal leads?”. Before you get ahead of yourself, let’s go back to the basics. As you onboard a new client and learn about their business, start your sales and marketing strategy by defining your client’s ideal customer profile. A staple of any sales and marketing strategy is building customer profiles.
Customer profiles are detailed descriptions of your current client, which includes purchasing behaviors, pain points, psychographic and demographic information. The goal of creating a customer profile is to develop a deep understanding of your current customer so that you can target and acquire other, similarly minded customers. Without a customer profile, your lead generation efforts may be futile, targeting leads that don’t align with your business.
To assist your team in developing an accurate customer profile for your new client, consider the following:
1. Speak with your Client
The best place to get information about your client’s target customer is by asking your client directly! Arrange a meeting early on in your engagement with your client to gain insight into their past marketing. You can also ask if the client can share any useful information they have observed with their customer such as behaviors, patterns, and demographics. That way you can utilize this insight for future marketing and sales tactics. During your meeting, take notes and create buyer personas for your client. As a quick refresher, a buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer, making it easier for your client to picture who they are marketing to by understanding their customers’ goals and challenges. The Endurance Group has a great article about developing your own B2B buyer personas that can assist your team with this process. ‘
2. Analyze the data
Sometimes clients need a little extra help in understanding their customers. Aside from speaking to your client, ask to review their existing sales and marketing data. Evaluate their CRM analytics and other means of reporting. Even if your client cannot articulate their target customer, oftentimes their data will tell you another story. Review this data with your client so they understand which customers are generating the most revenue for their business.
3. Research Customer Profiles
Armed with the information from your client, conduct some research on your own. What industries would be a good match for your client’s products or services? Does the client have a minimum amount of revenue expected per year from your outreach? What are quantifiable goals? Who are your clients competitors? What job titles should be targeted?
At The Endurance Group, we collect all of our discovery information in one engagement outline that we share with each of our clients. All consultants on our team are required to complete this outline after we first acquire a new client to help with targeting, setting the foundation, and developing campaigns. This process is a great starting point for any engagement because it consolidates all of the qualitative and quantitative information collected about the client’s sales and marketing strategy. If your team wants to develop their own version, be sure to include your client’s value proposition, their pain points and opportunities for success, as well as any ideal projects they have specified to you.
This is also an opportunity for you and your team to discuss the target company or customer profile with your client. Typically, at The Endurance Group, in our engagement outline, we also conduct an audit of our client’s social media channels, company website, marketing collateral, and CRM. Our recommendations based on this audit serve as a starting point for work, client discovery and buyer persona discovery.
4. Know the Industry
Finally, as your engagement gets underway, remember to always put yourself in the buyers’ shoes. Keep close tabs on what your client’s competitors are doing. What platforms or marketing tactics seem to be consistent in the industry? What is the competition’s sales pitch? While you want your client to stand out, you also want to be aware of industry trends and how your client is positioned compared to their competitors. Straying too far out of bounds may put off your target customer, while playing it safe may cause your client’s brand to get lost in the noise. By staying informed about industry news and trends, your team could generate some new, relevant sales and marketing ideas for your client that they had not previously considered.
Once you’ve onboarded your new client and developed their target customer profile, you and your team can ultimately move on to the next step of your engagement, by applying the right marketing strategies. This includes both inbound and outbound in order to generate buzz for your client.
If you still need help defining your target market then let us help! Here at The Endurance Group, we don’t just create ideal customer profiles, we ensure that time is not wasted, by applying the correct marketing strategies and making sure each qualified lead is handled with the utmost precision, and care throughout each step of the sales process. Improve the results of your sales pipeline today. Contact us now!