Sales Targeting: Supercharge Your Sales Funnels and Boost Close Rates

​​Another day, another cold email. As a sales professional, you understand cold emailing is part and parcel of the job. But not getting even a single response can feel disheartening. You want results and are ready to change your current strategy. Allow us to suggest a third possibility: targeted selling. Not many sales professionals realize that all their business can come from the same group of customers. You can use this approach to make sure you're targeting the right people—people with a genuine interest in what you have to offer. What Is Sales Targeting? Sales targeting is the process of identifying prospects more likely to buy your product or service, followed by building a sales process that appeals to them. You determine the ideal fit for your offering and then create a pitch based on their interests and priorities. You also identify people unlikely to buy your product, which lets you dedicate your attention to only those sales targets who matter the most to your business. 5 Steps To Create an Effective Sales Targeting Strategy Targeted sales involve more than applying tried-and-tested sales targeting techniques. You need to build a solid strategy and clearly understand your ideal customer persona. Sounds too much? Don't worry; here's a detailed step-by-step run down. Step 1: Map Your Sales Territory When it comes to creating awareness and narrowing down forecasts, less is more. You need customers, even if smaller in number, that are likely to find your product or service valuable. A good starting point is to determine the benefit through the receiver's eyes. You can also use the 80-20 rule, where 80% of output will come from the top 20% of input. When mapping out your territory, consider the following questions: * Who are the top 20% of your targets that are responsible for 80% of your sales? * What 20% of your actions drive 80% of results? * Which prospects or customers will find value in what you have to offer? * Which of these prospects are willing and able to make a change? Step 2: Categorize Your Prospects Into Different Segments One of the key components of effective sales targeting is “bucketing your business. ” Bucking your business is the process of categorizing your customers into various segments (“buckets”). You can create buckets based on: * the types of products your target audience buys * when they last purchased from your business * their business size or industry, * or any other grouping that makes sense to you. This will help you understand where you're getting your business from and from whom, as well as uncover new opportunities or threats. You can also create benchmarks for what's working and what isn't and determine who you should be targeting to drive revenue. Think of it as creating a better-diversified stock portfolio for your business. But the question is how to bucket your business successfully? Here's how: * Prepare a list of all your customers. * Analyze their buying patterns and then group them into different segments based on what percent of your business comes from each. * Decide which group of customers provide consistent and sustainable revenue. Call this group your “why “bucket as you're likely already aligned on value. * Identify customers who purchase from your business frequently but are still inconsistent. Call them the “how “bucket as they are filled with potential. * The remaining customers are a part of your “what “bucket. These are customers who have already tried and ordered a few times from your business but are either early in development or don't trust your brand enough. Make sure to do this regularly if you want to master targeted selling.