Not all prospects are created equal.

What makes a good customer for your company? Are you sure you know?  Over the past several years, most of us would say that any prospect with a pulse is a good prospect. But the reality is there are a number of other criteria that actually determine who is the best target. The stronger the fit of the prospect, the better chances you have to turn them into a profitable customer. The challenge is that there are usually very different opinions within your own organization on who the best targets are and what key attributes define a good "fit." Given that the most limited resource you have is time - a random approach to working your sales territories has the potential to leave a lot of unclaimed revenue on the table. 

Want to test how much clarity your organization has on this? Ask your CEO/owner, your lead sales person, your lead marketing person, and your lead customer service person to name the top five criteria for a "good fit" customer. Line the answers up side-by-side. You will find a surprising number of differences in response. If it isn't clear internally who and where the best customer prospects are, then penetrating your sales territories will be like wandering around with a blindfold on, hoping to bump into a piñata.  

Create a customer fit index for your organization.
 

Click to read the entire article

 Click here to continue

I read an interesting, if somewhat basic, article by Stephanie Parker recently on SocialMediaToday.com, entitled 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media. 

In this article, Ms Parker lists some guidelines (I think "deadly sins" is a little dramatic in this case, but hey, it got my attention) for newbies on the social media business scene.

She discusses the pitfalls of posting too much, and posting too little, and how doing either can damage your credibility in the social media community.  While there is no general standard for amount of posting one organization should do in any given day/week/month, the old phrase "moderation in all things" applies here.  Posting too much makes you a blabbermouth; posting too little makes you a wallflower.  Neither extreme will help your business.

Along the same lines, Ms Parker addresses the nature of what you share.  You don't have to be, nor should you be, "all business, all the time."  Keep the "social" in social media by posting or commenting on things that you think might interest your followers, but not to the point that you become known as the wacky organization that posts all the cute kitty videos.  But if your personal interest in music / art / literature/ photography / etc. intersects somehow with the nature of your business, by all means, share it with your followers.  This presents your human side, and ultimately, people do business with people they like.  So be likable!

Another part of what makes social media social is the interactivity. Don't just be a facilitator, be a participant.  On your own pages, if you start a conversation that people join, make sure you contribute and respond to other people's posts. 

Click to continue