Selling today: casting a wide net and “going for the no”

Market segmentation is a very attractive concept. Analyzing a group of customers, comparing it to the capabilities of your product set, and deciding who are the highest-probability targets. Salespeople then focus their efforts on this narrower set of prospects. Sales then follow.

At its worst, though, segmentation allows you to fall in love with a small pipeline. After all, if the prospects are in the target segments, they should be easier to close than an undifferentiated mass.

But these days, negative factors are overwhelming positive factors in buying. In other words, companies’ reluctance to do anything during this downturn means that there are far more automatic “no’s” out there than during boom times.

For the salesperson, as a result, the small pipeline is the kiss of death. No amount of persuasion, reference-sharing, value proposition development, trial closing, etc., will turn around a prospect who’s not ready, willing, and able to do business with you. And today being a “ready, willing and able” prospect means having a business problem that’s so acute that you are willing to surmount all the obstacles to get it approved and funded.

How does the salesperson deal with this? Understanding the business problem her solution addresses is the first step. Then, finding customers suffering acutely from that problem is paramount. This may mean ignoring or de-emphasizing market segments in favor of casting a very wide net, to get lots and lots of suspects. And then, using Jeff Thull’s terminology, “going for the ‘no’”–meaning very quickly assessing whether they prospect has the business problem, and whether its acute enough to take that person’s time, resources and budget to address it right now. If it’s a no, say “thank you” and move on.

Someday, we may be able again to isolate high-potential prospects through market segmentation. At this moment, I’ll put my money on a ton of leads.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: downturn, lead generation, pipeline, segmentation, selling

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 12:35 pm and is filed under sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Denise Lee Yohn

i agree traditional approaches to market segmentation may not be appropriate now (or any time in the future, really) but i do believe there is still a lot of value in targeting.

in fact, i think the process you describe ("Understanding the business problem her solution addresses is the first step. Then, finding customers suffering acutely from that problem is paramount.") is a form of segmentation -- akin to a needs state segmentation, the approach i often recommend in consumer marketing. by grouping people according to their needs states and identifying which ones are best met by your product, you are in essence targeting segments of high-potential prospects.

do you agree?

jmcaddell

Hi, Denise,

I would agree with your comment, though my experience with segmentation is that it tells you where to look for the most probable sales. In my view, right now, narrowing your field of view right away may not be the best thing to do.

The post wasn't intended as an anti-segmentation screed, more an assessment that probabilities of close are going to be low, so you better have lots of leads--and do whatever you need to to get that list as big as possible.