Posted on February 12th, 2021 by Greg Steinig, Vice President – Sales
I talk a lot about sales: how to pitch a customer, or make a presentation, or what to say when you’ve only got a few seconds in an elevator. We talk about the features and benefits of 3CX. We talk about how it solves your customers’ problems. But one thing we haven’t spoken about is how do you know who to target when you want more customers?
There’s always someone who’ll tell you everyone is a prospect. I’m not going to get into TAM SAM SOM, but here’s an excellent article on the topic.
Boiling the ocean or freshwater fishing!
Now that we agree you can’t “boil the ocean”, let’s talk about who you want to reach. Like any smart person in business, you want to find clients who get enormous value from your product/service and, in return, provide you with value way beyond just dollars. This is called your Ideal Customer Profile.
Remember the Pareto principle, 20% of your customers provide you with 80% of your revenue. Those with the ideal profile make up that 20%.
The benefits of having an ideal customer profile (ICP):
- You make more money – Because you know who to target, you don’t waste marketing dollars and increase the cost of sales chasing the wrong prospects.
- It increases the customer lifetime value – Knowing your customer’s lifetime value allows you to zero in on your customer acquisition cost. Now you know how much money you can spend per prospect to turn them into customers.
- You get more referrals – Targeting your ideal customer allows you the benefit of bringing them the value they need., They too bring you value in return beyond the dollars they spend with you. Examples of this are referring their peers to you, or allowing you to use their logo on your website.
Creating an ideal customer profile
Make a list of your ten best customers. These are not just the customers that spend the most. They’re also the customers that love your brand. They’re those that receive the most value from your business; the customers that directly impact your bottom line beyond the money they spend.
Tip: If your customer base is still small, try to imagine what type of customers you want.
Questions you might ask:
- Which accounts are most profitable?
- Which accounts have been with you the longest?
- How has using your product/service significantly impacted their bottom line?
Listing key characteristics
Next, you’re going to want to list their characteristics.
- Geography
- Industry
- Number of employees
- Annual revenue
- How do they make decisions?
The interview stage
Finally, you need to interview them. Some questions you can ask are:
- What problems are they facing?
- What do they need to improve or reduce?
Finally, ask how your product or service addresses those needs. Sometimes the answers you receive will blow your mind!
Creating your template
Take all that information and put it into a template. You can find several using google. Using your ICP you can target both your marketing and sales efforts at the same time.
The 3CX ICP
For years now I’ve been advising our partners to “take your eyes off the ground.” There are many companies selling a PBX for the bottom of the market. By bottom I mean 1-10 users and basic functionality. This isn’t where 3CX finds OUR ideal customer!
Our ideal customer has 100-500 employees. This part of the market is practically empty. The larger PBX vendors don’t find it interesting because, while they offer the requisite functionality, their price is too high. On the other hand, those PBX vendors focused on the bottom of the market can’t provide the functionality. If they can, their price becomes astronomical.
These customers need functionality beyond answering the phone and yelling to the back, “Greg, pick up line 1!” Things like call center functionality and IVR are important to them. In many cases, they have complicated call flows where you can use our CFD.
The customers that fit the ICP at 3CX are used to paying tens of thousands for their phone system. You can save them a small fortune while still earning undiscounted service fees. It’s these service fees that reoccur each year. Year after year.
Get out of your comfort zone
If you wanted to be a sales person, you’d never have invested time learning technology to the level you have. I get it. It’s easy to gravitate towards small businesses which are similar to yours. But now you’re an MSP owner/leader, you have to do both.
Fortunately for all of us, a 100 person company has the same problems as a 10 person business. But, the 100 person company has the money to pay to fix those problems. As I previously mentioned, they need the functionality that sets 3CX apart.
So get out of your comfort zone. Start prospecting and marketing to larger companies. Use our feature set and low price to push you towards record profits and a larger 3CX Partner Level.
Join us in the webinar!
This is such a key topic, I’m going to go over this in even greater detail during my monthly webinar for 3CX Partners. As you know, we always end the webinar with a Q&A where you can get straight answers to your questions. You don’t want to miss it – register here to attend.
Note: Only 1 participant per registration, so make sure you have your entire team sign up!
Sourced from: 3CX. View the original article here.