Nick Powills: Finding the Ideal Prospect Is Actually Fairly Simple

Wouldn’t sales life be easy if prospect hunting was as simple as going to an event big enough to fill a football stadium full of your exact targets?

What if I told you it was? What if it were that simple, you just weren’t looking at it that way?

For us, as an agency, our targets are quite simple. We have sales-focused leaders (chief development officer, VP of sales, director of sales); marketing leaders (CMO, VP of marketing, director of marketing; and the CEO/founder who will decide whether they want to give our business a chance to win for theirs.

With those personas in hand, we would need several stadiums to fill. So, now we narrow.

We know the types and sizes of businesses we want to work with. With that filter in place, the persona gets tighter.

We also know geographic-focused areas – pockets in which we have other customers, so, we could decide to build around those or not.

Now, where are the prospects?

In today’s digital world, chances are they are online. Chances are they could be reading this column right now (if that’s the case, go to www.nolimitagency.com to learn more). But, chances are that’s not even necessary – exact data is even better.

I can take this column, target the personas through Facebook and LinkedIn advertising and place it in front of people I know I am targeting – and only pay when they engage with my click.

Many, however, stop here. And this is the reason people would argue me that finding the right prospect is not actually simple. But wait, Bob, there’s more.

Now comes the storytelling. What information are you putting in front of your audience?

Let’s pretend that you are selling a car to your football stadium. If you say check out this fast car – the audience may say “neat,” but have you given them a why? Definition of the why you and why now is what misses so often. This message is much harder to nail. And sometimes when it is nailed, brands overlook what the data is suggesting and don’t do anything with it.

Your data-pull is easy, so is your testing. You can literally test thousands of different messages targeted to different groups.

How could I convince a sales professional to read this column? Headline: Want to sell more deals, do this; or, the most cost-effective sales strategy. If I post both alongside this column, I will be able to see a few things: performance, action and even time, meaning how many more impressions will I need to create to convince that sales person that we are the right agency for them?

All of this is simple. Laziness and over complication makes this tough.