Of course, what I mean is to categorize them.  There are all kinds of potential markets and customers for your business out there.  You need to know which ones are the most profitable for you.  I call them “buckets”.

You can only carry 2 or 3 real buckets at a time.  Its the same in marketing your business.  You have to divide and conquer.  Each bucket has certain needs.

If you’re not sure which buckets are most profitable, then identifying the buckets and who’s in which one is the first step.

The pay off is that you can then create touch marketing campaigns that are extremely effective and affordable.  Of course you can target your sales approach to each bucket also.  The bucket analogy has to do with the touch marketing part though….  Your marketing campaigns pour leads into each bucket and then your sales efforts pour money out of the buckets!

Bottom line, if you better understand who you’re dealing with, you can better serve them. So keeping detailed notes and files on each customer is a way to “know” everything about them but, its hard to quickly use that information.

If you identify objective facts that define each bucket, you’ll be able to quickly ask a customer a few simple questions and know a LOT about them.

So, how do we know what the key facts are?

Some things are obvious – industry, size (employees, revenue, locations, etc.), title, income, etc.

Pick one of the most obvious and easily identifiable things you need to know about a prospect and make a list of all the possible categories – if its industry, then your list might be Real Estate, Financial Services, Residential Construction, etc.

Now, imagine that you’re at a cocktail party and a friend is telling you about his uncle who he thinks might be a prospect for you.  What would you ask your friend about him?  The key here is not to focus on what you ask your prospects.  That’s because you often can’t ask them questions as directly as you would like to.  So, imagine your asking a 3rd party who knows them and trusts you.  There’s nothing you can’t ask.

You’d ask your friend things directed at understanding whether you should spend your time pursuing his uncle right?

What is the problem or desire your product or service addresses? What can you ask your friend to know if the prospect has that problem or desire?

These are the questions you need to get written down.

Now keep the answers to these questions front and center for everyone on your staff.  Your receptionist should know exactly which bucket a customer is in immediately when the call comes in.

Happy selling!

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Change the dynamics of the relationship – Customers expect the sales person to “chase” them and they take advantage of that fact.  They don’t return your calls because they know you’ll call again.  This Firing technique takes sales person out of that situation.

Get the prospect to return your call – Understand, we’re taking advantage of the fact that emotionally, your prospects derive a sense of importance and power from the fact that you’re chasing them.  They don’t want to be taken off your list.  That makes them feel less important.  If you “fire” them and they don’t call back, then they are telling you that they are not sufficiently interested/qualified for your services right now.  The best news is that many WILL call back and there will be a new relationship in place.  You’ll be in control!

Technique -

1. Decide on a series of steps that are the limit of outbound calling that are sufficient for most of your prospects.  For instance -
2. Call on day 1, leave message if not in
3. Call on day 2, don’t leave message
4. Send email on day 3
5. Call on day 5, leave message if not in
6. Call on day 6, leave message “firing the prospect” if not in.

All the steps can follow your normal “script” or approach.  The last one, where you “fire” them is the key.  For a look at a good system to manage this kind of calling campaign, click here.

So, when you make that last call, if you do not reach them, you leave a voice mail to this effect – “Bob, this is Bill with Maximum Potential, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve called and left a few voice mails and sent an email or two in order to discuss our Human Resource solutions with you.  Since you have not responded to my messages, I’m going to assume that improving employee retention and reducing hiring costs are not a priority for you at this time and I’m going to take you off of my calling list.  If I can be of service to you, just call 888-???-????.”

This last message in which you actually fire the customer, rely on two components, without which it won’t work:

• It must be firmly and clearly worded – they have to know you’re not going to call anymore.  The next move is theirs.
• You have to be sure you don’t want to call them anymore.  You loose credibility if you leave a message like this and then call them again in a few days.

When they do call back, stay in control.  Suggest a next step but, be sure to confirm that they’ll take your call when you call back – best of all, set an actual appointment.

Good selling!

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