From the course: Social Selling: Reaching Prospects

Define your targets

From the course: Social Selling: Reaching Prospects

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Define your targets

- Before we can even begin to build our social selling strategy, we need to consider who it is we're going to be selling to. And to choose that, we simply need to define our targets. Not only does this process obviously give you the prospects to target, but it also gives you focus. Your time and energy is incredibly valuable. With targets looming, you can't afford to waste a minute on prospects that aren't worth your time. So how do you define them? Firstly, start with what you already have. So who are your best customers? Who are your longest serving customers? Who have you done your best work for? Now look for common themes within those customers. Is it sector? Is it employee count? Is it management structure? Maybe it's their regional location. Then consider what's available to you in your market. Does your local area have a particularly large demographic or sector, or do you have a lot of contacts within one of those demographics or sectors? Again, you're looking for patterns. Maybe there's a lot of manufacturing firms or marketing agencies within both of those lists. Next, check out your competition. Does a local competitor have a strong market share? And if so, do they do particularly well in a particular sector? Once again, you're looking for patterns. You want to highlight the areas to either avoid or target. If you think that you're better than the competitor, then target their sector and steal their customers. If you think you're different to that competitor, than find the gap they're not selling to, and then own that. The final thing to consider is your USP, or unique selling point. Consider what that defining factor of your product or services is, and then consider who that would appeal to. For example, a platform that matches recruiting employers to people looking for jobs, that's one for any digital marketing recruitment firm. A new kind of CRM that improves salespeople's efficiencies, that's one for any sales director of any business. Software that minimizes wastage when cutting shapes out of raw materials, that's one for production managers in manufacturing firms. So if there's a match between the available prospects and the kind of businesses or people your product or service suits, then you have your targets.

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