Ten Tweaks for Your Target Filter

Posted on by on March 2nd, 2010 | 0 Comments »

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 !

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