{"id":2945,"date":"2021-03-02T12:18:51","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T20:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salesfolk.com\/blog\/?p=2945"},"modified":"2021-03-11T07:51:21","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T15:51:21","slug":"effective-sales-prospecting-requires-specificity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salesfolk.com\/blog\/effective-sales-prospecting-requires-specificity\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Effective Sales Prospecting Requires Specificity"},"content":{"rendered":"

How specific is your \u201cbuyer persona,\u201d or \u201cIdeal Customer Profile\u201d (ICP)?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, how do you define your target audience or ideal customer when doing sales outreach?<\/span><\/p>\n

Too often I see sales and marketing leaders defining their buyer personas as \u201cMarketing\u201d or \u201cC-Suite.\u201d However, a CEO and a CTO are very different people with extremely different responsibilities and priorities. Even more commonly, I see \u201cOperations\u201d getting lumped together with marketing and extremely different departments that manage different aspects of the business.<\/span><\/p>\n

How to build solid \u201cBuyer Personas\u201d for more effective sales campaigns<\/span><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s so important to think carefully about your audience, and try to be as specific as possible when defining your ideal customer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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On average companies who generically define their buyer personas as \u201cMarketing\u201d or \u201cTechnical decision-maker\u201d tend to get <\/span>10-30x worse results<\/b> from their sales prospecting efforts<\/b> than those with detailed ICPs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Whenever possible, try to define:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Which role or roles you\u2019re trying to target (<\/span>if they have different priorities they should be <\/span><\/i>DIFFERENT PERSONAS!<\/i><\/b>)\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  • The company size (<\/span>roles at a 20-person startup are very different than a 2000 person company; a VP Marketing at a 10-person startup probably has less authority and budget than a Director of Marketing at a 300-person company<\/span><\/i>.)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Industry –you don\u2019t always have to segment by this if your business use case is generally the same, but it\u2019s worth thinking about in terms of <\/span>what customer examples you reference<\/b>.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Other firmographic information<\/b> that determines how qualified a prospective customer is to buy or not (<\/span>are they hiring, are they growing or shrinking, did they raise money recently, what software they\u2019re using\u2026?<\/span><\/i>)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Example of redefining a Buyer Persona & copyediting a real Cold Email \ud83d\udcdd<\/span><\/h2>\n