Are you targeting the right people with the right messages? As the cost of a field sales call climbs higher and higher, it’s never been more important for sales organizations to target well. Nonetheless, many companies struggle with this issue and so fail to maximize the return on their selling efforts. In a recent Webinar, "Targeting: The Best Kept Secret in Selling," three Sales Performance International (SPI) experts examined the top five reasons companies struggle with targeting – and what to do about each one.

Problem #1: Not learning from the early market. Early adopters of a technology tend to be visionaries, often seeing uses and applications for your product that marketing may never have conceived of. When you combine those visions with your marketing information, you’ll have a more complete picture of all the possible uses of your product. Stay close to your early adopters and continue to mine them for information, even as your product shifts to a more mainstream user group.

Problem #2: Waiting for opportunities to find you. A reactive mind-set creates the impression that you don’t need to target. "Don’t sit aggressively by the phone waiting for it to ring," cautions Ed Ryan, principal consultant at SPI. Of course, if you don’t know what your ideal target is, he adds, that’s an inhibitor to getting out there and being proactive about getting to the right people with the right message.

Problem #3: You don’t know what targeting is in the first place. . . The term "targeting" often means different things to different people. The folks at SPI define targeting as, "Applying processes and approaches to identify those candidates who will offer you the maximum return on your selling efforts and resources." Targeting is most valuable from the macro to the micro level: start with a territory and identify the accounts with the highest potential; within those accounts, target the best potential opportunities; and for each opportunity, start targeting specific people – who, by title, should you go after? What issues are they facing?

Problem #4: . . . and as a result, you don’t know how to do it. After all, you can’t apply techniques and processes around something that’s not well defined. The Webinar provided numerous templates and processes to help with effective targeting (visit www.spisales.com). Each tool asks reps to do a thorough evaluation of their territories, business relationships, and more. For instance, in analyzing territories, Bill Reed, SPI’s product manager for planning and sales methodology, says you must expand your traditional targeting criteria (revenue from this account last year, expectations of future revenue, and so on) to include things like customer satisfaction level, account coverage from last year, known executive in account, growth in revenues and/or employees, strategic value to us, urgency of pains, expected profitability, and competitive strength. "Companies tend to get comfortable working with customers with whom they have great relationships at the expense of targeting others with higher potential," warns Reed.

Problem #5: A lack of discipline and commitment to engaging in targeting activities. Targeting is an organizational issue, not an individual issue. Get marketing to weigh in, offer support, and help create ideal customer profiles. Management must be involved to inspect and coach the targeting process. Too often, says Reed, sales management does not participate in and drive targeting and planning sessions. Make it part of your daily calendar.

In conclusion, Jimmy Touchstone, SPI’s product manager for solution selling, points out that targeting not only should be as much a part of your selling strategy as any other sales function, it should lead the way. "Targeting needs to be on the front end of your sales process," he says. "And in order to put it there, you need to provide the tools, templates, and information resources for reps to be able to do it. It’s not rocket science."