Target Market

Dear Readers,

Let me start with apologies for missing last week’s blog post. While I can’t promise it won’t happen again (life is crazy!), I do take these posts very seriously. They are a great way to share some of my knowledge and experiences with you all.

Hopefully you are all enjoying my videos and are looking forward to the next installment of the Sales Plan mini-series. If you have no idea what I’m referring to, check them out here. The next video in the lineup will be “Target Market” – here’s sneak peek into my thoughts on the subject.

Another reason I really like the Hubspot template is that they use “Target” as opposed to “Addressable” market – and yes, there is a small but significant difference between the two. Addressable market is the wide group that would open to your goods or services. In the case of Chicago Sales Strategies, that includes nearly all B-2-B organizations, regardless of their size – even the largest of enterprises may be interested in outside help on a project basis.

Target market, however, is the subset within the addressable market that is most appealing to you as a customer. It’s where you intend to commit your sales resources, and is the most critical segment to the profitable growth of your organization. Again, to use Chicago Sales Strategies as an example, our Target market (where we focus our limited sales resources) is smaller B-2-B companies that do not have dedicated sales leadership. While other businesses may be interested in our services, it is this smaller group where our value proposition will resonate the loudest.

Properly defining Target market tends to be an area most small businesses require growth- it is really difficult to avoid the temptation to ‘cast as wide of a net as possible’. This primarily comes down to properly understanding the difference between ‘target’ and ‘addressable’. I am in no way suggesting that you limit your business solely to your narrowly defined Target market – absolutely not! What I am suggesting is that you have limited sales resources and as a result, you need to focus the efforts of your sales team to your Target market. Keep in mind that on average, most deals aren’t closed until the 5th contact. This requires significant follow-up – follow-up that will be impossible if the team is spread too thin, covering a larger market.

Your addressable market outside of the Target market can still be contacted via email blasts, SEO, direct mailing, etc…just not through your sales organization. Their resources are simply too limited (and important) to be spread so thin. One of Chicago Sales Strategies’ clients is actually from outside our Target market – they have a VP of Sales, are around $40M, and aren’t even located in Chicago. But did we spend any resources to get them? Not really. Our partnership came through networking that we were doing anyway. One of the companies I previously worked for used the term “Blue Birds” to describe these types of opportunities (opportunities that just somehow fall into your lap).

Well, I don’t want to give everything away before the video (which will hopefully be up within the next week or so), so I’ll end things here.

Thanks for tuning in – until next week!

Rick – Your Chicagoland Sales Strategist