Identifying prospective clients

"This sells itself," commented one of my board colleagues, as we talked about creating a message about the work of the nonprofit group that we help govern.

"They get me," answered a professional speaker when I asked her why an organization had hired her to speak at a recent event.

"Getting hired by them was so easy," said the graphic designer, "they're such good people."

The truth is… nothing sells itself. It simply seems that way when we preach to the converted. People "get us" when they are the right people for us. All clients are good people when they make our sales job easy.

Selling our products and services is a piece of cake when we're talking with people who innately understand what we bring to them, and who have a need or purpose for what we sell. But that isn't everyone to whom we try to sell.

As sales professionals, our primary task is to seek out new business opportunities. This is a time-consuming and often a frustrating task. Improving effectiveness is probably the most significant improvement most sales professionals can make.

It starts with understanding who the people are and which organizations have a greater propensity to buy the products or services we sell.

All products and services are designed with a particular set of customers in mind. That particular set of customers is often a subset of a much larger group. An example: Cadillac pursues deep-pocketed drivers who can afford luxury cars. They don't pursue all drivers.

As sales professionals, we need to identify the subset that is more likely to have a need or purpose for what we offer and devote our time to pursuing those customers.

When we bring our products and services to those customers for whom they were designed, the customers are more motivated to listen to our message and to engage in the sales process with us.

Selling to those customers is more fun… because our products "sell themselves" or the clients "get us."

The sales cycle is often compressed because the prospects are more decisive. Getting results faster enables us to increase our profits, our commissions and our profile in the company. But this is no silver bullet.

It will take some investment of time to identify the customers that are the best prospects for our products and services. It will take an investment of time to develop a strategy to connect with those customers.

But the time it will take to prove the case for our products or services, versus those the customers currently use, will be much less than the time we spend in trying to persuade people who have no real interest in our products. The rewards will be well worth the investment.

Congratulations to The Sewing Machine Project, Jodi Cohen and Melissa Carlson Creative for preaching to the converted; connecting with people who "get you" and getting hired by "such good people." However you did it, keep doing it. It's more fun that way.

Jacqui Sakowski is president of Sakowski Consulting, a Middleton-based sales coaching, training and consulting company.