1. Identify Problem
As we saw above – find the problem your product or service solves.
This helps you establish your market or industry.
For instance, telehealth works primarily in healthcare, so that would be the niche market and the problem you solve is connecting remote areas with health service providers.
A service such as Calendly, on the other hand, works in any industry that needs to have meetings. So, all industries. The problem they solve is significantly more far-reaching.
2. Define Target Audience and Ideal Customer Profile
Based on the above, know who your target audience is.
Telehealth serves health providers, and within that, you most likely want patient-focused roles or digital health-focused roles.
Scheduling services such as Calendly benefit salespeople or operations specialists, so those would be your targets.
You then build your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) based on this target audience. It is a refined, more specific idea of your ideal buyer, based on factors such as company size, role, budget, geographic location, and similar.
3. Research Industry and Competition to Understand Demand As we saw above, you need to understand your market and your competitors to understand what the demand for your product is.
A scheduling application is a difficult product to offer, as the market may be oversaturated currently – unless you have a very specific selling point, such as better pricing.
Telehealth may also be difficult, due to the boom that came about during the pandemic for it which is now slowly receding.
On the other hand, sales outsourcing is a hot topic right now, and something that is an attractive expenditure for companies looking to grow and save money doing it.
4. Create Targeted Messaging and Test Based on your understanding of the current market situation and competition, you create messaging for your ICPs that is targeted and specific to the pain point your product or service solves.
You test out a few different examples, before figuring out what works best.
You want to test messaging, audience, and sales channel – most likely different things work best in different scenarios, so you want to have something ready for all.
It is not enough to say cold calling doesn't work without actually trying it out a few times. And even then you might find it might work for some verticals, and not others, and for some roles, and not others.
5. Map Buyer's Journey You know your target audience, the pain points you solve, and how you fit into the industry and have some messaging ready to go.
The next is to spend some time creating
the buyer's journey.
This is the path your buyers take to buy your product or service.
Take your time to do some research on how existing customers: how they found you, how they decided to purchase your product or service, and what steps they took to do so.
Or, talk to clients of your competition to find out how they found them.
Based on that, create a journey for them to buy your product or service instead.
6. Build Brand Awareness and Demand Generation with Inbound Methods Spend some time creating brand awareness.
Build a LinkedIn page for your company, but also establish yourself as a business or company owner with a leading voice in your industry or market.
Start sharing or creating content relevant to your field.
Create a landing page and a blog on your website to further drive interest and demonstrate knowledge.
Use SEO best practices to show up on Google results pages and have others link back to you via link building.
In this way, you'll start to receive
inbound leads, and have material ready for your outbound efforts.
7. Make Use of Outbound to Further Build Brand Awareness and Generate Demand With the above material available, begin outbound efforts to take brand awareness further.
Based on your ICP, start approaching different folks that fit it with the specific types of messaging you tested.
While it's great to have people come to you via inbound methods, outbound helps you explore new verticals and receive instant feedback on your process, product, methodology, and messaging.
8. Utilize an Omnichannel Approach to Target More Leads We've covered before why having
several sales channels is important.
An omnichannel approach, if used correctly as part of a larger
sales cadence, is the best way to ensure your prospects are aware of you and your brand awareness builds.
Not all leads in every industry are as busy on LinkedIn, some respond better to emails, and others better to calls.
So long as you remain flexible and utilize all channels, adapting as needed, you target the most leads and are more likely to sell well.
9. Set Concrete Numerical Goals Without having a concrete numerical goal to aim for, you are going in blind.
You need to know what your company needs to achieve to succeed or, at the very least, stay afloat.
What actually makes you, your plan, and your offer viable to your market?
Set ambitious but achievable KPIs for yourself and your team to work towards.
10. Standardize Processes for Higher Conversion and Retention Rates Finally, you've created a strategy.
You've tried out different things and tested different approaches.
Once you have concrete results, begin to standardize processes that have repeatedly proven successful to increase your conversion and retention rates so that you continue to grow as a company.