Buyer Personas and Ideal Customer Profiles 

An ideal customer profile is a customer or company that would have all the qualities (size, revenue, years in business) that would make them an ideal candidate for the solution your company is offering. For Example, for VA partners our ideal customer profile is start-up companies conducting B2B enterprise sales who currently do not have a person conducting outbound sales or the owner or founder is doing those duties themselves.

When you are outlining your sales process one of the first things you will need to identify is who are the ideal buyers who will directly benefit from your product or service. This is what is called the buyer persona, it is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research. There are certain factors you need to consider when considering your buyer persona, these can include the following: customer demographics, behaviour patterns, motivations, and goals. The main goal in a sales process is determining how to focus your time in the most efficient and effective way possible this can be referred to as time management. For more information on time management consider this article.  You want to ensure that your product or service is aligned properly with the persona you have identified, more specifically you need to be able to offer them a solution to a shared problem they may be experiencing. For more information on buyer personas consider this article.

Define Your Value Proposition 

A value proposition is a short statement that communicates why buyers should consider your product or service.  A value proposition tells a buyer or prospect why they should be interested in learning more about the solution your company is offering. When determining your value proposition, you need to start with defining your ideal customer profile, then you will need to determine what task are your customers trying to complete or the problem they are trying to solve, then you need to identify what expectations your customers are hoping to gain from doing business with you. Your customers will have an expectation of what your product or service will do for them. The best way to demonstrate this can be the use of past experiences of previous clients testimonials from previous customers that ideal buyers can read for themselves.  Customer pain points are areas of difficulty a customer may experience while trying to complete their current job. A great way to learn about customers pain points is to ask them how they are currently dealing with completing their jobs now and explain that process to you. Once you have this information you can highlight how your solution could eliminate specific pain points in their job. For more information on value propositions consider this article. 

Tips for Objection handling 

When you are speaking with prospects eventually they will give certain reasons or reservations why they feel your product or solution might not be a correct fit to solve their problem. These are known more as sales objections, there are some objections you can prepare for in your sales planning and others that come up while you are conducting your outbound efforts. Objection handling is when a prospect has concerns about the product or service you are selling, the sales person then responds in a way that alleviates the concerns and allows the conversation to continue. Common objections from a prospect can include the following: price, time to implement, competitors, lack of buying authority, and reservations about if your solution can achieve the goal of completing their job. The most important thing to remember with objection handling is that you are not trying to pressure your prospect into dismissing their concerns instead your goal is to offer information or an explanation of how your solution addresses their specific concerns.  You can provide further validating information if the prospect requests it.  When handling objections you should always begin your response with empathy for concerns brought forth by prospects. For more information on objection handling consider this article.

Remember the keys to outbound sales starts with how you develop your plan before conducting your outbound sales efforts. If you need help you can reach out to me