I’m confronted by the challenge of marketing a software product to a finite audience of business buyers. Yes, I suppose in the final analysis, all marketing audiences are finite.  But in this case, I’m talking about 4,000 potential buyers – and that’s it.

Most marketing models are premised on an assumption of a nearly unlimited supply of prospects.  Sure, we have to invest dollars and work hard to turn these prospects into leads, but the assumption is generally that there are an ample number of prospects to cultivate.

How many times have you heard someone say that sales is a numbers game? The idea of course is that you have to burn through some number of prospects in order to unearth a single sale. 

While I disagree almost entirely with this way of thinking, I simply call your attention to the assumption that there are a nearly unlimited number of prospects to sift through in order to find those sales.

Just about any time someone uses the funnel metaphor to describe the progression of sales from initial interest to closure, the underlying assumption is near infinite prospects to dump into the top.

So what happens when the prospect universe really is finite – and small, and in order to be successful, you need to achieve a high (10%+) market penetration?

This is a problem more commonly seen in complex business to business (B2B) selling than in consumer marketing. And when confronted with the issue, you quickly realize that the old funnel doesn’t quite depict the ideal approach.

Here’s the problem.  When you have a truly finite prospect universe, you really can’t afford to force your prospects to a yes/no decision point where a “no” represents the end of the conversation. The reason - if they say no and ask you to stop contacting them, your market just shrunk.

So marketers in this situation have to think differently about “soliciting” their prospects. Rather than bombarding prospects with offers (to which a prospect explicitly or implicitly says yes or no), marketers should strive to create a conversation – sometimes a monologue, but ideally a dialogue that has no particular end point.

Sometimes this conversation may need to extend over a period of years, but the goals are very clear:

1. To teach the prospect about the need for what you are selling
2. To show the prospect that you are a credible resource to solve the need
3. To demonstrate to the prospect that you care about their business, their success, and their industry, and you want to help them
4. To be liked by the prospect (remembering that even in B2B sales, decisions are ultimately made emotionally and back-filled with logic)

I’m finding that there are only a few ways to accomplish this, and they all require significant effort, solid tracking with a good CRM tool, and access to genuine subject matter expertise for the purpose of creating noteworthy value-added (educational) content.

In this scenario, the two most powerful tools for nurturing your finite pool of prospects may be the provision of content and connectivity to your audience.

Providing good, original, relevant content to your prospects is pretty easy to understand. I’m not talking about slick brochures and sales literature.  I’m talking about content that is relevant to the prospect’s business and helpful… white papers, how-to guides, latest industry news, original articles from thought leaders….

Providing this type of content shows you understand their issues (maybe even a thought leader), and you are a valuable (and with time – trustworthy) resource.

Connectivity is a less obvious tool.  As a general rule, business people like to connect with their peers in the context of what they share in common (provided that competitive issues don’t get in the way).  We learn from these interactions and create new and useful relationships that may serve us well for years. 

To create even one lasting peer connection for a prospect is an act of service that will be remembered and valued, and often it is the outsider – the vendor – that is in the best position to engineer mass connectivity within a particular population of business people.

How do you offer connectivity among your prospects?

Host a seminar – or a series of them – paying careful attention to inviting people who would benefit from knowing one another. 

Host a monthly webinar offering invitees the opportunity to interact. 

Host a monthly moderated conference call by invitation only – “Coffee With XYZ Inc.” introduce an issue and let the players discuss their thoughts. 

Or the old fashioned connectivity – simply introduce people that would benefit from knowing one another.

What do these connection tactics all share in common?  The focus is the needs of the prospects – not your desire to overtly broadcast your sales message.

Can you get closer to your prospects without showering them with your latest sales pitch?  Absolutely. I would argue that in these prolonged courtships, this is the ONLY way to continue the marketing conversation and truly build a relationship.

This is a large topic and deserves (and will get) more attention in coming weeks.  I’d love your thoughts…

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Infinite Return Marketing, Real-Time Case Studies, Sales & Business Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.