| Tactical Approach: Identifying the Client Target |
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The process of identifying the client target involves four important decisions. You must:
Once you're sure that the marketing plan and goals of your organization are understood, it's time to identify the specific targets. In most cases, you already know which organizations are your best prospects. Your previous experience with them should give you a sense of the ones with whom you'll have the best chance of achieving the goals you outlined in your marketing plan. Nonetheless, in dynamic markets, you might benefit from doing (or hiring) some market research to identify prospects of which you may be unaware. Identifying Your Best People Once you've identified the specific organizations that are good target organizations, you need to work on a marketing project to infiltrate the prospects and learn more about how you might be able to help them. That's where the next decision comes in. You now need to determine who from your organization is best suited to participate in the marketing effort for each target organization. Staff members who already have a relationship with the target organization are obvious candidates. But don't overlook relationships developed during previous employment either. Once you have the right people, you can form a team and charge them with collecting intelligence and helping to fill in the Black Holes. Identifying the Right Level At what level do you need to establish your relationships in order to be successful? Is your goal a large project? (I mean large in the eyes of the target organization, not yours.) If so, you'll need to meet at a higher level in the organization. On the other hand, if your proposal is for work that is not in the main business area for that organization, your "Boss Buyer" may be in the middle of the organization's structure rather than at the top. Identifying the Right Match of Levels This is the last step. Always try to match the levels of people in your organization with people of the same level within the target organization. Sending a junior staff person to meet with a Vice President is likely to make both parties uncomfortable. You would do better to enlist the help of a Vice President within your organization when your buyer target is a Vice President of the target organization. Next page in the Magic of Winning Proposals | Marketing Manager |
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