Firstly, let me draw your attention to a very good article in the Globe & Mail entitled Top 10 Ways to Expand Your Customer Base penned by Barbara Grant. I fully admit that my “top 11 ” list includes the above article so I give it complete credit herein.
Please, read her article. Its great. And then come on back here for #11.
So basically, I want to briefly talk about one more way to identify and gain new customers …the 11th way, if you will. Barabra touches on the concept when she suggest to know your audience first. I will amp that up by saying:
11. Create a profile of your best customers. Get more that look just like them.
This is all about rolling up your sleeves and doing the necessary research and analysis to model your best customers. I’m going to briefly highlight the process below but I invite you read a white paper that I wrote on this very topic that goes into all the details of this process. The white paper is called Determining B2B Market Size and Market Share and can be downloaded for free.
Here’s what you do:
- Create a list of your current customers. With additional filtering and qualification, you will narrow this list to represent your better customers; ones you’d feel good having more of.
- Identify the industries in which your better customers belong. I recommend using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). You will have to engage a 3rd party to do this. But its not difficult nor expensive.
- Identify the dominant firmographics for your better customers. Think 80/20 here. What are the firmographics (NAICS code, sales volume, number of employees and State) that would apply to the vast majority of your customers. This is now your best customer profile.
- Apply best customer profile to get all companies that match it. Go to any business data provider (like Experian, D&B, Hoovers) and give them your profile data and they will quickly get all or any slice of their database that matches that profile.
These four bullet points really just scratch the surface of the 2500+ word white paper so please download the paper.
Note: In the same white paper I also offer a “cheap & cheerful” approach to identifying best customers that you may want to try out before embarking on a more costly methodology.
Thanks for reading my blog and please visit again.
Vincent out
