Below is an article written by Barbara Weaver Smith on Target Filters.  One of the most important things that a business must do it understand who their customers are, who they want as customers and how to identify them.  Barbara’s article is full of excellent information not only for your sales process but also for your referral process.

Ten Tweaks for Your Target Filter

In a turbulent economy, big companies are changing more rapidly than usual.  Some companies are retrenching to preserve cash and weather this storm:  slashing budgets, closing locations, consolidating departments, laying people off, reducing their scope of products and services. Other companies are taking advantage of a slow economy to seize opportunity:  modifying their business strategy, investing in new products or services, acquiring competitors, hiring from an excellent applicant pool, increasing their marketing and R&D budgets.

Regardless of how the whales are responding, they are likely not the same company they were the last time they made it through your target filter and on to your whale chart.  They may have totally new goals, new rules and reasons around their buying decisions, different expectations, different decision-makers, different time-frames to produce ROI.  Your job, as always, is to know everything you can learn about you targeted whales–to know far more than your competitors know.

Quick review:  Your Target Filter is the set of criteria by which you determine an ideal large customer for your company.  It includes a set of categories that are important to you and metrics for each category.  Categories include things like company size, location, industry, brand, corporate structure (e.g. public, private, government, or nonprofit), You can find an example and a sample Target Filter form on The Whale Hunters website.  Once your team has created a Target Filter, you use those criteria to select specific companies that meet your needs.

Here’s a Target Filter Tune-Up Checklist:

1. With your team, brainstorm the characteristics of your best big customers from the past three years.  Do you still want more customers like those?  If so, be sure those characteristics match up with your Target Filter.
2. Have your products or services changed since you last reviewed your Target Filter?  Do you have plans to enter a new market, a new industry vertical or a new geographic location, for example?  You may need a separate target filter for that industry or that product.
3. What’s new in your industry?  What market trends are you observing?  Test your Target Filter to be certain it is up to date.
4. Ask your Scout to update dossiers on your Whale Chart list.  Do those whales still meet your criteria?  If not, remove them and find new ones that now meet your criteria.
5. Have you implemented Whale Signs?  These are signals of a prospect’s potential readiness to buy.  You should subscribe to RSS feeds or set Google alerts to learn anything new that is going on with the whales on your Whale Chart.  Review your Whale Signs to be certain that you have identified the best ones for you.
6. What are you learning during your sales process?  Are you still well-aligned with what prospects want, or are you finding gaps that you didn’t find before?  The target filter needs to lead you to companies that want what you have to sell.
7. Are you consistently getting bigger sales and bigger customers?  If not, or if your sales process has stalled, your target filter is no longer working for you.
8. Have you involved your entire team in the target filter discussion?  The perspectives from operations, customer service, and the key account management team are very important.  Build consensus among sales and operations about the target filter criteria and metrics.
9. Is your target filter realistic?  If your vision of an “ideal client” never materializes in your sales process, you may have a pipe dream rather than a filter.

10.  Do you allow your target filter to remind you when to say no to an opportunity that comes your way, such as an unsolicited RFP or a customer referral?  Unless these unexpected opportunities are consistent with the Target Filter, you should be confident about saying no.

The Target Filter is a critically important tool for whale hunting companies.  By developing a solid filter, reviewing and tuning up regularly, and sticking to the prospects who meet its criteria, you will close more sales, bigger sales, and better sales, routinely.

Learn more about “charting your waters”–using the tools of scouting (Target Filter, Whale Chart, Whale Signs, Dossiers) in Whale Hunting: Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company, available from amazon.com.

Join Whale Hunters Group on Linked IN !

I teach a program called Referral Dynamic, it is an amazing program, and I love the results that our participants achieve as a result of this program.  One of the topics that we have a very spirited conversation around is competitors.  You see it’s my belief that there are no competitors, just opportunities for collaboration.

Here is a note that one of our students sent us about his experience with competitors after our discussion:

“When I was taking the Referral Dynamics class Denise, our instructor, suggested that I consider working with a company whom I considered a major competitor.  I told her that would be crazy since they were paid to do what I do.  One afternoon I called an old friend of mine who happens to be this company’s top sales person.  I explained to her what I wanted, and asked her if there was any opportunity for us to work together.  To my total surprise, she went on to tell me that there was more than just an opportunity, there was in fact every reason for us to work together.  I turns out, when her company sold a program, they then turned it over to an advisor to manage.  Today, this has become a very profitable relationship for my company.  What I once considered a competitor is now one of my top referring partners.

The moral of the story, “Don’t assume that you know everything that your competitor does or how they do it.”

• Do you know who your competitors are?
• How do you compete?
• Who is their target market?
• How aer you alike?
• How are you different?
• What is their strength?
• What is their weakness?
• Do you know their price points?
• Who are their top sales people?
• Where might there be an opportunity for collaboration?

You might find that whom you thought was a competitor is truly an opportunity.  Spend the time to do the work, you may be very happy that you did.

How many times have you taken a class, you leave with every good intention to implement what you have learned. But you complete the class, go back to work, start doing the day to day activities and soon that class is long gone. You forget 80% of everything you learned and have little time to implement the 20% you do remember.

Signing up to take a class is pretty much a waste of time if you do not stay involved in the conversation with others who are on the same path. We learn by first getting the information and sometimes you may need to get the information several times before it clicks, then it is the consistent practice of that information that gets you to the Mastery level, that time when you can do it automatically.

If you want to really learn something new it is important that you immerse yourself in a program, that you practice with others who want to achieve what you do. The Referral Institute created a program called “Referrals for Life”. They understand that it takes time and practice to learn the skills needed to develop referral partnerships, it is not something that you are going to learn in a one time class. But something that you are going to have to practice with your peers over and over to be good at it.

I have been taking the Sandler Sales Program at Lushin and Associates. I take the classes and I have the opportunity to learn constantly with my peers. I get to practice with them and with the coaches so that I do not have to practice with my prospects. I will continue to be in the program because I understand that even after I Master the sales skills, I will still need to practice to keep my skills sharp.

Often when I am networking I hear small business owners say things like “I really want to have Eli Lilly, AT&T or GE as one of my clients.” Whenever I hear this I cringe, because I know that it is not enough to want one of these giant companies as a client, you have to have a plan. Not just a plan to land the deal, but a plan to find it and then how are you going to maintain that client.

In her book, Whale Hunting, Barbara Weaver Smith and Tom Searcy, uses the analogy of how the Inuit of Alaska hunted Whales to feed their villages to how small companies can land the Whale of their own. This is an easy analogy follow and carries with it a powerful story of perseverance, commitment, strategy and success.

Barbara and Tom layout the strategy for researching which whale you want to hunt, how to research your whale, capturing your whale, and celebrating your whale. This is a book that you must read if you are really interested in landing your own whale.

Networking is great, but you cannot ask for a referral to a whale if you do not have a plan for landing and managing that whale.  There have been several occasions when I knew I could get a person in the door of their whale but I also knew once caught they would not be able to keep the whale.

I cannot recommend this book enough, it is an easy read, and not only will you learn how to land your own whale there is a lot of very interesting history in this book that holds your attention as you read in amazement what the Alaskan Inuit could do with a row boat and harpoon. The planning, the implementing and the celebration are inspiring.

As a bonus, Barbara will be doing a whale hunting women workshop here in Indianapolis. It is a program that you want to take advantage of, not only for the educational aspect but for the ability to network with other women whale hunters. See you there!

]]> http://hazelmwalker.com/whale-hunting-land-big-sales-and-transform-your-company/feed/ 3 http://hazelmwalker.com/investing-in-your-sales-and-referral-education/ http://hazelmwalker.com/investing-in-your-sales-and-referral-education/#comments Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:18:24 +0000 Hazel Walker http://thenetworkingstrategist.wordpress.com/?p=49

Ok, we know that the economy has gone south, credit is practically unavailable, businesses are drawing their spending back and so is the consumer, so what are you going to do as a business owner or sales manager to make sure that your business is not one of those that will be gone tomorrow?

The two places that most business want to cut back are not the wisest choices:

Training - A successful sales team or business owner stays involved with continuous training, keeping their prospecting, and sales skills sharp. This is the one place that the small business owner pinches their pennies, finding no value in quality training. It is important to keep new material in front of both the business owner and the sales teams.  Now is not the time to stop learning more about how to be a more effective sales person, how to implement referral systems that will generate higher referred prospects and how to close more deals.

Memberships -  Business Owners and Sales Managers alike begin to pull back on the networking groups and organizations where their teams have been spending time. A better result would be to diversify the organizations and make sure that you and your team are spending time in the right places with the right people and measure their results. 

After completing our course many of our clients are amazed at how much time they have invested in  networking activities that are not productive or effective.  If you and your people are out there networking then it is impotant that they be trained to do more than create visibility.  They must be able to effectively leverage their networks that become profitable for both parties.

Now is not the time to pull back, now is the time to become more strategic and more effective.