Improve your Sales Lead Generation -by Qualifying your Sales Targets

Danita Bye

Tips on Developing Your Own Round Peg Prospect List

More than a few grownup business leaders were once the children always trying to bang square pegs into round holes in their toy workbenches. If you were that kid, you’re part of a select group who looks beyond what is to what’s possible with a little effort – or, in some cases, a lot. That’s the good part.

The bad part is that you – and the salespeople you lead – probably exert way too much effort forcing prospects to fit the solutions your company offers instead of finding customers who are round pegs in the first place.

Want to Improve Sales? Good Customers Are Found, Not Made

Of course, you can put a square peg in a round hole – if you don’t mind splinters, broken hammers, stuck-forever pegs, bruised knuckles, and lots of wasted time that could have been spent torturing your little sister with a super-sized toad. In the business world – your current playground – failure to correctly qualify sales targets means splintered salesperson morale, broken sales pipelines, impossible-to-budge prospects, bruised egos, and lots of wasted time that could have been spent torturing your competition with your superior market share.

Sales Lead Generation: How do you find those round pegs, otherwise known as your ideal customers?

First, you find out all you can about your worst customers. What makes them square? One could be the special-needs customer, the one who always needs “just one more” concession before she buys. Another could be the guy who makes you drag what he really wants out of him with a log chain. Whatever these unfortunate characteristics are, list them on paper. Beside them, write the opposite characteristic. In the case of Log Chain Guy, for example, you might say, “open and honest about current and future business needs.”

Now, for your best customers, write down what makes them the best, whether it’s decisiveness, loyalty, a propensity to trust your salespeople, or any of hundreds of other qualities.

Finally, take all the good characteristics you’ve listed and winnow them down to, say, 10 or so of the most important to a smooth-running sales process for your business. Write them on a separate sheet of paper or a spreadsheet and give it to all your salespeople because this hypothetical list of qualities is a snapshot of your ideal customer, the round peg who’s going to save your team time, hair-pulling, and metaphorical splinters lodged in the thumbs.

Round Up Easier Sales, Happier Customers, and Frustrated Competition

Round peg list in hand, your salespeople can now ask themselves how well a prospect lines up with an ideal sales target before wasting a lot of effort on those who can’t be jammed into your sales pipeline no matter how big a hammer they use. Do prospects need to match quality for quality on your list? No – your list is just a tool, albeit a much better one than a sledgehammer.

Simply by being conscious of the qualities of a customer who fits well with your offerings, your salespeople will find that sales become easier and more profitable. Customer relationships deepen and revenues build. Last and best, your competition will be left with all the square pegs.

To gain deeper insight into identifying your ideal target market, get Danita’s e-book called Target Sales Focus.

Bio: Danita Bye

Nationally recognized sales management and leadership expert Danita Bye built her reputation on building and inspiring process-oriented, no excuse, high-performance sales teams that deliver bottom line results. With her unique Fortune-100-turned-entrepreneur perspective, Danita helps CEOs and company presidents take their businesses to the next level. Her practical, no-nonsense approach to sales management, combined with her leadership acumen, enables sales leadership to increase sales, creating predictable revenue streams.

As a 10-year veteran of the Xerox Corporation, Danita consistently achieved award winning sales performance before leaving to become an equity partner and national sales manager for a Minneapolis-based medical device company. In this capacity, she increased annual revenues from $300,000 to a run rate of $20 million in just ten years.

Danita has authored numerous articles on sales management and leadership. In addition, she was a featured as a sales development expert on the TV show, “The Ruthless Entrepreneur,” which is currently airing on the Oxygen Network. Leadership Shift, Management Acceleration and a library of eBooks on critical sales management issues are available on the Sales Growth Specialists’ website.

Danita can be reached at Danita@SalesGrowthSpecialists.com, 612-267-3320 or 800-256-2799.

For more insights on Sales Strategy and Sales Process, visit www.SalesGrowthSpecialists.com.