The Fenemore Group

Summer 2005

Taking Charge of Your Client Selection Process

To Make Sure You Get The Most Valuable Ones

By Laurie Webster-Saft, President, Get Knowledge

I'm a big marble collector. It started when I was a kid and I won some really cool old marbles from Cheryl. Cheryl had gotten these from her grandmother, so I knew they were old. Unlike other treasures from my childhood that I had discarded, these I kept. I started adding to my collection as an adult. Many other people love to collect marbles too. Why there was even a marble show near my house a couple of months ago! Imagine that, a whole show just for marbles.

We collectors know a lot about our marbles like the condition, their age, their value. We classify them and group them. If we buy a marble for our collection, we track its cost. While later if we sell it, we evaluate our return. We know which marbles we want to add to our collection!

Know Your Clients
I find it amazing when people in companies don't know their own clients as well as I know my marble collection. Luckily, I get to work for folks who also like to formulate, classify, and track value.

One company that we worked with was a division of a large professional services firm. They had lots of data, but in many instances did not target or know the true value of their current clients. The Senior Vice President of Marketing wanted to move from the ad hoc relationship marketing to targeting a set of clients with a better fit and meeting higher revenue goals. Just like with my marble collection, he understood they could be more selective and realize the results.

Create A Framework To Build Growth
Together we discussed the desire to create a systematic framework to match this growth strategy. To transition to this new framework, the Partners needed a compelling story based on client data and desired goals. And, just like my target of cat eye glass marbles as a desirable acquisition, we analyzed their client data and listed out their "cat eye" clients for acquisition. Of course, we had many other categories detailing out the revenue potential along with how these prospects or clients matched the firm's desired criteria.

I love happy endings. The SVP got his framework and details to take action. A Leadership Network was established where desired clients and targeted prospects were invited to join. The LN round-table addresses pertinent issues to the group. It's not a sales or marketing venue, but gives the Partners a sophisticated forum for relationship marketing. This sounds like the marble show where experts gave "free" seminars on topics of interest to me, the marble collector. I now have those experts in my network and will be more likely to buy from them.

About the Author

Laurie Webster-Saft is President of Get Knowledge, a management consulting firm based in Boston that focuses on sales and marketing research,process, and systems. You can reach her at lauriews@getknowledge.com.

Productivity Pointers

7 Steps You Must Take To Create A Winning Client Prospecting Methodology

Write down your goals for better understanding who you want for clients. Be as specific as possible. Factors could include: improved profitability, knowing who your high value clients are, targeting specific geographic segments, targeting specific kinds of companies. The list is endless!
Segment your current clients. This is the first step to developing your targeting methodology. Segmentation can include many different variables such as your clients' industry, size, revenue they generate, etc. Make sure you document the process.
Conduct business intelligence. What data do you currently keep on your clients and what data might you need to flesh out? Do you have at least a year of client revenues broken out by product/service lines? What do you know about your clients, such as their revenues, location, size, industry? Who do you want to target as new clients? Can you name them or extract a list matching your criteria?
The next step is best done by a business analyst, using an outside firm, or software package. We analyze the combined data using statistical analysis, modeling and market research to develop best customer profiling predictive models.
This analytical result gives you a first level analysis to review, refine, and apply to your marketing and to focus your sales activities.
Building a methodology like this lets you track its effectiveness. You can go back and replicate your approach over time. You can make changes to your methodology so everyone can see and understand your approach.
Target your activities. The bottom line is more targeted activities where you may spend the same marketing and sales dollars, but revenues will rise.