Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Don't waste your time- Target Your Customers (Real Case)



 This is a real case that I was involved with this week. It is a mailing thread with a company I work with. The intro: I offered to help connecting them with companies in NY. In order to do so I asked the company who their customers are. This was the answer: 

 


The email I received.


The answer supplied was very detailed and fits the Other side of Business Blog's values. The answer is below: 

Hi,
It took me a while to answer this mail because I think you didn't dedicate the time to fully and truthfully answer the questions. Answering "Who are we looking for?" you answered all companies with over 100 employees and internet access. From what you are saying there are almost 130,000 companies in the US that you can address (source). 

Let's say it takes me 20 minutes to find the company contact and 10 minutes of logistics (either call or mail). From here it can either be: 
  1. No thank you ( 0 minutes)- Total of 30 minutes per company- 20 companies a day- 6500 days to contact all companies.  
  2. Follow up (20 minutes) - Total of 50 minutes- 12 companies a day- 10,833 days to contact all companies. 
  3. Sale (20 minutes) - You get the point.
Wouldn't you like to prioritize and target the companies most likely to buy? Invest your time on the customers that have the highest probability of buying? 

 It's like when I had DeveloPic and you would ask me who my customers are? I would answer anyone who owns a smart phone. That is wrong! My customers are 25-40 yr. old moms with income above $5,000 a month. That is targeting. That is knowing who to contact. This gives me information on who the customers are. So if I know who they are, how will I get to them? 
 They are women at a certain age with certain income- targeted ads, magazines, blogs, websites, partnerships etc. 

This way I am not wasting my time on telling a 74 yr old person I met on the bus about the application, or not wasting my time on a tech savvy person because he is the last one that will print pictures. 

Now let's look at these 130K companies- do you think they are all the same? Can it possibly be that there are some conservative companies that don't like change opposed to some that have innovation as their core value. Which one would you approach? 

Do you agree that there are some companies that will probably be loosing money at the end of this year? Will they invest in new products? Not sure. Do you want to waste your time pitching them? 

I think that because companies are our customers they should be treated the same. We should target the exact companies that fall into our profile. 

In order to know this, there is preparing to be done. It's hard work but it will help you prioritize what companies to contact. I think the best step from here is building the profile of our customers. Once we have that we will think about the correct ways to approach them. Email, LinkedIn, referrals and websites don't promise anything. We have to be efficient and accurate using the email and other methods to approach the right companies. 

What do you think? Is it worth the time? 

Best,

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