How I Filter My Target Market to Sell Better
I have built many different disruptive online businesses over the course of several years. I put in long hours of research, market study, strategy, and finetuning for each company I built.
One thing I realized in doing so is how important filtering my target market is to sell better. Because at the end of the day, regardless of how much time you allotted in development or how much of a killer your product or service is, it isn’t worth anything if no one pays for it.
Introducing my offering to people is a lot more than the number of reach and impression I get. It will only matter if I’m reaching the right people.
Pains and gains are a big factor in doing this. The Vitamins and Painkillers Sales Tool is a great start to becoming a high-performing salesperson. Narrowing my target market makes it easier for me to tighten my messaging. Suppose I try to communicate with multiple audiences, in that case, it will dilute the message because the language I use and the angle I take may not apply to all. For example, how you talk to the Products lead will be very different from talking to the Chief Operating Officer. Their problems and priorities are different from one another.
Refining your filters by challenging
It’s easy to say that my target markets are Fortune 500 companies or CXOs. But there’s a lot more to know what kind of profile I want to sell to. You want to refine your filters by challenging your filters until you can’t challenge them anymore.
Pick apart your logic or bounce it off someone you trust to help you dissect your target audience further. Instead of letting yourself think that your target market are just technology companies, you narrow it down further so you know exactly how you should communicate with your intended prospect.
You can’t be lazy when filtering your target market. And many salespeople and entrepreneurs get this wrong and get them into trouble.
Don’t let others simply tell you that you did right, instead make it your purpose to do it the right way the first time before you run into missed opportunities and failed pitches because you didn’t.
Filtering my target lets me think about the tiniest details that can get me closer to my goals. Some questions I typically ask myself include:
- What pain am I helping them solve?
- Who am I going to talk to within the target company?
- How long will it take to engage them?
- How easy will it be to find prospects that fit who I am looking for?
- Who are my competitors?
- How do I position my services against these competitors?
Taking the time to filter my targets gives me two immediate benefits: one because it forces me to think through who my actual targets are— people who are living the problem, not just near the problem. It prevents me from wandering off pitching to the wrong people who won’t be affecting the decision-making process. It helps me think concretely about the ultimate pains and gains they can get and makes the whole process faster. Second, it allows me to test my messaging to the same people. When you think of the specific pains you want to eliminate for them or the gains you want to help with for a group of people, it allows you to tighten your messaging. Instead of testing different messaging to different people with different needs and not making sense to any of them, this is the chance to make the messaging more concrete, telling them exactly what they need to hear.
“All things to all people” is one of the biggest mistakes made by salespeople and businessmen. Instead of sending generic details about my services and hope it’s what someone needs, I gain the ability to let them see the value I can do for them better.
Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, says, “Cast a narrow net and really concentrate on serving those customers… Once you’ve monopolized your own, small market, you can gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets”. And that’s exactly what filtering your target is about.
Selling to customer type
Another common sales territory is through customer type. Say you are selling software that uses artificial intelligence to determine when machines can break down. The pain eliminated by your service is removing the guesswork of finding out when. For gains, you make the processes more efficient and help companies ensure uptime.
Here’s how you may be able to filter it:
- Filter based on the type of business you want to first sell to.
The industry you may want to tap first is likely companies that rely on machines for their sales. Such as manufacturing companies who will incur losses when production halts. - Filter based on manufacturers running on high volumes.
Companies that produce high volumes require high uptime reliability. - Filter based on high uptime need and high volume.
This can be Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) such as food and beverage companies. - Filter based on the team responsible for those requirements.
In this scenario, this will be the operations or the production department. - Filter based on the people responsible within those teams.
Within the operations or productions department, there will be the reliability or quality assurance responsible in making sure the manufacturing process is uninterrupted. - Filter based on specific people who feel the pain of downtime caused by unanticipated failures.
These can be the people who are responsible in checking those machines regularly.
Filtering targets when selling to established companies
When filtering based on specific companies, you usually stretch your reach too wide. Suppose I were to market to established companies. In that case, I want to focus on the very people who can influence a decision. For example, if I were to sell a payroll service software and want to target a big manufacturing company, here’s how my filtering can look like:
- Filter specific to the team involved.
This can be the human resource division of the company. - Filter to the specific team.
With thousands of employees, the company likely has a specific the department in charge of payroll. - Filter to the specific unit.
Who are the people involved in payroll services who may need this software? - Filter to the specific group.
There may be a task force responsible for handling payroll for the different levels of the company. - Filter to the specific person.
Who am I going to call and sell to? The payroll director or manager.
Filtering targets when selling yourself
Selling yourself is another common thing we all need to do in sales. But when you’re looking for a place to get hired, you filter out opportunities just as much as when you are selling products or services to others.
You know the role you want to go for, maybe a marketing manager or a sales lead. You know why you’re a great fit in the role because you’re a great communicator or a great manager. Your experience and interest are in the technology industry. You want to stay within the general location of New York because you don’t want to transfer to another region. And you want to be in the big league by targeting to join Facebook or Google.
Filtering your targets when selling yourself can go more than that, and here are examples:
- Filter companies with a specific pain or gain that you can help on.
Are you the type who gets constant feedback about your communication skills and bridging teams to create harmony? Then it makes sense to look for companies who have this challenge that hinder them from expanding their portfolio. - Filter based on which department you want to join.
If you want to be the marketing manager then it likely belongs to the operations or sale and marketing team. By this point, you still don’t know who to talk to, and that’s what you need. - Filter based on the specific unit under that department.
That may be under the sales team or the marketing operations team. - Filter based on the exact role.
This may include the sales director or the marketing lead who currently feels the pain of miscommunications and the HR manager who wants to gain credibility by hiring a great marketing manager. From this, you can engage with them in the proper messaging, pain or gain to build your case for hiring.
Takeaways
Filtering your targets lets you become more specific in how you engage with your prospects. The more specific you are, the tighter and more concrete your messaging is, because you can show the exact value you can give to them by helping them eliminate pains or reach gains.
If you fail, then it may be a message problem, in which case you can tweak it to be more concrete. Or it can also be a product-market fit problem, where the industry may just not be ready for you yet. That’s when you can pivot to a different set of targets to filter, craft your message, and try again because another industry may benefit from it.
Not sure how to move forward? Let’s talk about how you can do the same for your business.
About Jeev
A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.