When should you involve Sales? Sales is generally one of the most resource (time, effort, financial) intensive departments. Salespeople are (and should be) your highest-paid employees because they’re the lifeblood of your company.
If your solution is less than $300, you shouldn’t need Sales. Marketing should be sufficient and most prospects should be able to decide to purchase without having to first speak to someone. “Sales” in these companies is generally more customer service oriented, primarily to address questions or concerns. It doesn’t need to be in-person and could be in the form of live chat, call center, FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), or email support.
Marketing is where you can still afford to do things at scale, sales are when the details matter, when you need to focus on building a personal relationship. You should aim to have sales only engage when a prospect is qualified.
Here are the two main factors to consider:
1. Fit
Your “ideal” customer, ideal can be in a variety of ways:
- Easiest to work with.
- Potential for future projects.
- Strong reputation for social proofing.
- Converts the quickest.
- Has the problem and is actively considering solutions.
- Most readily see your solution as the right (differentiated) solution for them in the market.
Define the demographics, psychographics, or sociographics markers that characterize your ideal customer.
Demographics
Qualities of a specific group of people
For B2C (Business to Consumer): age, gender, geographic region, race, income, education, etc.
For B2B (Business to Business): years in operation, size of company (# of employees), $ capital raised, industry, etc.
Psychographics
Classification according to attitudes, motivations, aspirations, values, interests, hobbies, and other psychological criteria.
Example values: comfort, safety, sense of belonging
Example aspirations: status, success, recognition
Sociographics
How your market behaves socially.
What solutions are they currently using? Channels they’re on? How do they make decisions? What language do they use to define the problem?
Example: A sustainable soap company I know of found that Tesla users (sociographic marker) were also a good target customer because they share similar psychographic markers as their ideal customers.
2. Intent
Beyond identifying characteristics that help you qualify your ideal customer, are you also capturing data that tells you if they are exhibiting purchase-ready behaviors?
For instance: Researching competitors, looking at your pricing page, asking for a quote, or jumping on a consultation/demo call.
BANT
This previously mentioned acronym is a popular and recommended framework for qualification that captures both fit + intent. It works for both B2B and B2C and stands for
| BUDGET | • Does it fit within their expectations? • Can they afford it? |
| AUTHORITY | • Are they the right decision-maker? • Does this organization/prospect have characteristics (demographics/psychographics/sociographics) of my ideal target customer? |
| NEED | • Do they have the problem or acknowledge they need it right now? • Are they exhibiting behaviors that indicate they are looking for a solution? |
| TIMELINE | • Are they ready to buy? Or are they merely exploring something for the future? • When do they hope to see changes or improvements? When do they hope to accomplish certain results? • Does it match their purchasing cycle? |
It’s equally important to identify red flags and disqualify non-ideal customers so you won’t waste your time and effort pursuing unproductive leads:
During my time managing incubation programs at Spring Activator, the red flags (there are exceptions, but generally these were pretty accurate) I identified in their prospects were:
Students: Even if passionate, would often default to job hunting and abandon their business idea upon graduation. Got debts to pay right?
Lifelong learners: dubbed such not because of their growth mindset, but more so because they would frequent every possible free startup-related event or workshop and never take action on their business. Learning is important but it isn’t everything! Don’t use it as an excuse to procrastinate building your solution or pursuing customers.
ASSIGNMENT
- If you haven’t already, take the time to define Fit and the characteristics of your customer persona.
- How can you identify and capture Intent-related behavior for your prospects?
Having a clearly defined customer persona(s) helps salespeople not only identify who’s a fit to engage with but also how to best tailor their messaging to them. It even helps marketing decide who to target and which channels to focus their efforts on.