When you listen to the economic prophets one year will always be better or worse than the one before. To me, that’s like saying almost drowning is better than actually drowning, and that’s hardly encouraging news. If you’re one of the many manufacturers who are hoping to simply keep their heads above water in any given year, I’ve got some much better news: by focusing your efforts on highly targeted markets and keeping a close watch on results, you could be setting your own trends.

Grow Bigger by Selling Smaller

The key to beating a weak economic forecast is to reconsider the amount of time you spend with some of your current customers and prospects. Why? Markets that are too big and unfocused are much of the reason for the rough seas you’re experiencing right now. Instead, why not direct the bulk of your efforts toward customers and prospects who are likely to provide the greatest return? Though it’s a counterintuitive idea, narrowing your focus does not diminish profit potential. In fact, a concentrated focus on the customers and prospects that best match your offerings – your ideal target market – is going to boost your profits so much that your only regret will be that you didn’t do it before.

So what is an ideal target market? Let’s start with what it isn’t: your target market is not any company or individual who might be interested in your offerings. I know that, because I used to think that – and it almost got me into some very hot water.

Back in the 90s, I invested in a hearing aid manufacturing company – and I invested in a “broad market” philosophy: we went after Hospitals, ENT offices, VA contracts, private practice audiology, and dispensers. We targeted large metro markets and rural towns. And, boy, were we wrong, but it didn’t look that way at first.

Until an investigative piece – a report that painted a very unflattering portrait of the retail side of our industry – appeared on ABC’s Nightline, we and our staff of eight salespeople were growing 50% a year. After that report, sales dropped 20% industry wide in a single month. In response, our big competitors slashed prices, forcing us to do the same.

It was a game we couldn’t play for as long as our deeper-pocketed competitors could. Soon, shareholders began to question our viability, and we discussed selling the company. But then we hit on the idea of cutting our marketing list from 14,000 to fewer than 4,000 and then customizing our offerings, marketing messages, and services to that select group. In less than a year, we regained our lost sales and grew our business by 30%. By narrowing our focus and consequently establishing niche dominance, we thrived when much the rest of the industry nearly – or actually – drowned.

Target Your Market, Then Market to the Emotional Buyer

While the techniques involved in pinpointing your ideal target market are too involved for a space this short, I can tell you a bit about how we came to dominate the niche we chose: first, we researched our target market until we knew exactly who they were, where they focused their attention, and what messages were likely to slip past their hypercritical intellects and hook the emotional buyer, to whom all sales are ultimately made.

In marketing to our target customers and prospects, we stopped thinking in terms of left-brain features and started concentrating on right-brain, what’s-in-it-for-me benefits that appealed to the emotional decision makers in them. Sure, their intellects were still involved, but mainly to justify the purchase that the emotional buyer had already made.

While we focused our marketing on the real buyers inside our target customers and prospects, we also focused our sales process for maximum ROI. To start, we took a hard look at our then-current process and ditched everything that didn’t serve our target market. We defined precise sales performance metrics and monitored them ruthlessly. To keep us on the right path, we developed a course correction plan and assigned personnel to nudge our sales team in the right direction as their monitoring indicated.

Thanks to this approach, we grew in spite of dismal forecasts. We set the pace for our competitors when the waves threatened to drown us. So, focus on ROI-friendly customers and prospects. Find out exactly who they are, and speak directly to them. Go after them with a streamlined sales process and keep a close watch on results. With a targeted sales plan like ours in place, you might just find yourself swimming the backstroke – even when others struggle to keep their heads above water.

© Copyright 2009, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.

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