Do you know your best customers? Can you easily identify your sweet spot-the vertical markets in which you sell the most or the fastest? Are there other business buyers in your sweet spot that you should be targeting? If you can’t answer these questions but wish you could, follow the five steps below to gain insight into your sales funnel.

Five Steps to Effective Laser-Targeted Lead Generation Using Sales Win Analysis
The following five-step process gives you a roadmap for fast and efficient Sales Wins Analysis. By following this path, you will be able to eliminate false starts and quickly identify top performing vertical markets so that you can execute laser focused programs that produce a higher response rate, more sales conversions and faster pipeline velocity.

Step 1: Review and categorize the opportunities in your Marketing and Sales pipeline.
Effective Sales Wins Analysis begins with a thorough review of your Marketing and Sales pipeline including open opportunities and closed deals from current and previous years. By analyzing both the size of the deals, as well as the velocity of those deals as they move through the pipeline, and categorizing those deals into distinct market sectors, you can begin to identify markets that are producing the most revenue for your organization. To get started, compile customer account data from your CRM system and build a data model that answers the following questions:

• In which vertical market segments am I closing the most deals?
• In which vertical market segments are deals closing the fastest?
• What other vertical market segments share similar characteristics?

Step 2: Build a profile of your top accounts.
After identifying the most lucrative target markets for your product or service, you will want to discover additional prospect accounts in those markets with characteristics that are similar to your best buyers. These prospects will undoubtedly have the highest propensity to buy from you, so target your Lead Generation programs at this group first. Consider the following when building your profile:

Qualification Criteria: Profile your best customers to define a set of three to five common characteristics that will serve as qualifying criteria for identifying new prospects. Look at company revenues, locations, number of employees and other easy to find data. Do most of your customers fall into the Fortune 1000-size range? Are more deals closing faster in the Small and Medium-size business sector? Is the number of employees a critical success factor? Are there key trends you can identify in certain industries that are driving the need for your product? For example, you may find that you close more deals quickly with organizations that have revenue greater than $500,000,000 USD and global operations with a minimum of five locations. If so, use these as minimum qualification criteria for selecting your new prospects in your best vertical markets. Then make sure you capture this type of data for all new leads so that you can better qualify the leads you provide to Sales.

The Customer Buy Cycle: Next, map the buy cycle for your best customers to identify and describe the roles and responsibilities for the decision-maker, economic buyer, end-user, and other key players in the buying process. The number of roles depends upon the number of people typically involved in the buying process. You’ll want to understand their roles both in the buying cycle and within the organization. Make sure you phone screen a sample of these targets to understand the responsibilities for each of your buyers. This will give you the insight to produce high impact Marketing messages and a strong call to action for your multi-modal Marketing campaigns.

Step 3: Identify additional target accounts in your top markets.
You now have a blueprint of the best possible prospects for your business. Apply that blueprint to the universe of buying organizations in your top vertical markets to hand pick the best possible targets for your Direct Marketing campaigns. While these companies have not yet purchased from you, they share many of the same characteristics of your best customers, and therefore will likely have a higher propensity to purchase your products or services.

Step 4: Conduct Contact Discovery to identify the right buyers in your target accounts.
With your target Accounts list compiled, you’ll need to identify prospects in the right roles within these companies. Make sure you verify more than just contact information and titles. To ensure you are getting to the right buyers as quickly as possible, identify your prospective buyers by their role in the organization and more importantly the buying process. Survey a sample of your contacts on their pain points, decision drivers, triggers, and trusted information sources. Gather as much information as you need to capture your prospects’ attention and communicate your value to them.

Step 5: Execute a multi-modal marketing campaign to deliver the right message to the right buyers.
Multi-modal Direct Marketing involves a carefully executed campaign that delivers targeted messages to buyers using their preferred means of communication. Not all buyers like to receive product information in precisely the same way, so it’s best to tailor your messages based on your buyers’ preferences. In fact, a recent Marketing Sherpa research project surveying 3000 IT buyers and vendors demonstrated that B2B Decision-makers or Executive-level buyers prefer to learn more about products via Webinars, whereas Contributors or End-users prefer white papers. Map out and execute your multi-modal campaign focusing on key vertical pain points with messages that appeal to each of your target roles. Start with an offer that requires a low commitment to respond like a white paper download and work your way up to a more involved call to action such as a product demo.

Ongoing Marketing and Sales Pipeline Monitoring
With this five-step process for Sales Win analysis, you’ll be able to laser-target your Lead Generation programs to produce more impressive Marketing metrics, align your demand generation programs with Sales, and improve your funnel efficiency by driving greater revenue faster. Keep in mind, however, that just as customers and markets evolve, your Marketing programs must transform accordingly. This is why it is important to conduct Sales Wins Analysis at least quarterly so that you can monitor your pipeline closely to uncover new opportunities and spot trends. Maintaining visibility into your Marketing and Sales funnel will give you the insight you need to boost Marketing results and revenue.

All of this sound a bit daunting? No worries, check out our Insight Lite product on the salesforce.com AppExchange:
Or Schedule a Demonstration of ReachForce Insight Pro version and analyze not only your customer win data but also in funnel opportunities for trends.