Marketing, in recent years, has morphed into a jumbled exercise of costly practices with next to no identifiable result or return on investment. Marketing departments spend lavish amounts on ‘analysts’ and far-flung exhibits and seminars during which untargeted masses float by uninteresting vendors. Gaining new customers should be a more targeted exercise. Step one, find out who your current ones are and keep them.
More customers should mean better profit, better income and job security. That much is obvious, but do you have a method to identify them? It all starts with information.
Gather and go over data for the past two years on all your sales. A longer record may be needed for higher dollar value sales that would limit the quantity of transactions, while a shorter time span might be considered for smaller ticket sales.
Identify the customers’ industry or vertical and map it to their NAICS* (which is replacing SIC), employee count, location/geography, revenue or even their age and gender if appropriate and available. Note all commonalities. Use a public or paid private database to find more customers of similar demographics. http://www.accoona.com is one example. Company websites and government records will also help.
If using software then do not forget to leave space (in CRM, spreadsheets, PIM, etc.) for notes about their particular likes and dislikes and significant milestones so you can input the information into your a calendar for reference. This idea is more valid the bigger the transaction size. Use your reminders to dispatch a call or a card. This is the customer retention side of your effort.
Always ask for referrals from your current customers. They typically know their industry and have contacts therein.
Focus your efforts and pursue business where you have been successful in the past. This approach also allows you to conduct reference selling. It is less difficult and more fruitful to do targeted work than casting a wide and expensive net. Make your existing company data work for you. Never mind the expensive booth, at the expensive conference that modern marketing types prefer. You know better if you are on a budget.
*NAICS is used by business and government to classify and measure economic activity in Canada, Mexico and United States.
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This is great info to know.