Many businesses believe any customer is a good customer. While that sounds great, it's not true. Growth starts with knowing your Ideal Customer Profile, then tailoring your business to meet their needs. Not sure who your ideal customers are?
It's probably easier to tell you how not to reach these new ideal customers — cold calls. We've developed a number of techniques to not only identify your ideal customers, but also reach out, warm up and deliver leads ready to do business with you.
First, take a deep breath. Losing a key customer sucks, but it's rarely fatal. As a leader you need to act with urgency while keeping your team calm, engaged and focused on what needs to be done to stabilize the situation. To drive short term revenue look at opportunities already in your sales pipeline that are closest to closing. Need help sorting things out in a high-stress situation?
Wow. Loaded question. Increasing inbound leads is an orchestrated dance between your brand, your ideal customer profile, your differentiated value proposition and your sales & marketing efforts. When these areas are working in sync you earn the initial trust of a prospect and they contact you. If you don't gain their trust their search for a viable partner continues. Need more quality inbound leads?
Close rate with ideal customers is one of the most important sales metrics to track. The reality is most companies don't know the answer to this question. In complex B2B sales with a long sales cycle (>3 months) a close rate north 0f 30% is solid target. Winning more than 50% is in the rock star range. Don't know the answer to this question?
New customer acquisition goals should be focused on engaging and closing new customers that meet your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Start with forecasting sales for existing customers that meet your ICP. Subtract that number from your revenue target to identify your growth gap. Ok, this gets a little complicated. We've put together a quick goal setting calculator you can download here. Need help setting sales goals and hitting them?
