Sales Targeting: Your Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide

Sales targeting is the process of identifying prospects most likely to buy your product and focusing your sales efforts exclusively on them. It reduces wasted time, improves close rates, and helps you capture the 20% of customers who generate 80% of your revenue.

Your success in sales isn’t just about closing deals. You might have a great product, an amazing pitch (see our sales pitch examples), and counterpoints to every objection—but your odds of success depend on who you’re pitching to. If you’re presenting to someone who doesn’t need your product, it doesn’t matter how eloquent you are, how many open-ended sales questions you ask, or how many sales statistics you cite. They won’t buy.

By contrast, if you’re talking to someone who desperately needs your product, you’ll have an easy time persuading them to finalize the deal. This is the power of sales targeting. For more on influence, see our guide to persuasion techniques.

What Is Sales Targeting?

Short answer: Sales targeting is choosing prospects most likely to buy, then orchestrating a strategy to appeal to them directly while filtering out unlikely buyers.

Think of sales targeting as using a bow and arrow rather than a shotgun. The shotgun approach—older sales and marketing efforts—tried to reach as many people as possible with little regard for who they were or how likely they were to buy.

The bow and arrow approach is more precise. With correct aim, you pinpoint your target exactly. You’re less likely to waste resources on incorrect targets, and you focus attention on the people who matter most to your business.

Why Is Sales Targeting Important?

Short answer: Sales targeting reduces wasted time, improves close rates, and helps you identify the 20% of customers who generate 80% of your revenue.

Reducing wasted time. In many sales teams, productivity is a major consideration. When salespeople chase bad leads, they’re not applying effort where it’s needed most. Better sales targeting greatly reduces wasted time across your organization.

Improving close rates. Improved sales targeting improves close rates with little additional effort. You’ll talk almost exclusively to people most likely to buy, so you’ll win more deals.

Taking advantage of the Pareto principle. The Pareto principle suggests that 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. In your business, 80% of revenue will come from 20% of customers. Sales targeting helps you identify that most-important 20% and appeal to them directly.

What Are the 6 Steps to Creating a Sales Targeting Strategy?

Short answer: Choose targets, segment them, build in variables, establish lead flow, filter and prioritize, then measure and adapt.

Step 1: Choose the Right Targets

Your first step is choosing the right targets. This is often the most difficult step—you’ll need to determine which demographics and personal qualities are most likely to result in a sale or return the most revenue.

Consider factors like age, gender, location, education, income, family status, and occupation. If you’re starting from scratch or questioning past models, look in these areas:

Existing customers. Research your current customer base. Which customers generate the most revenue? What qualities do they share? Which leads were easiest to close? Document these qualities and look for them in future targeting.

Competitors. Study what kinds of customers your competitors target. You may not copy these exactly—it may be more advantageous to serve an underserved niche. But competitor research helps you understand appropriate targets for your industry.

Surveys and archived data. Learn more through direct research. Study statistics from organizations like Census.gov, or conduct surveys with current and prospective customers. Be open to changing your targets as you learn.

Step 2: Segment Your Targets

If you’ve identified multiple audience targets, or if your primary target is broad, segment them into discrete subsections. This lets you set up multiple marketing channels or assign different team members to different subsets.

For example, segment your target demographic by buying cycle phase: research phase, consideration phase, or decision phase. Your approach varies depending on which phase they’re in.

You can also build buyer personas—characteristic sketches of typical customers in each category. These help your sales team better understand and target the right people.

Step 3: Build in Variables

Within the same target demographic, individuals differ considerably. One person who meets your ideal criteria may have a tight budget; another may have much more flexibility.

Sketch out variables likely to determine success. Are there common sales objections that halt promising opportunities? How can you detect them early? What approaches overcome these objections?

Step 4: Establish a Lead Flow

For your sales targeting strategy to work, you need to attract the right people from the outset. This means establishing marketing and advertising strategies that selectively bring qualified prospects to you.

Choose the right social media channels. Different demographics favor different platforms. LinkedIn attracts business executives. Pinterest attracts young mothers. Understanding each platform’s demographic makeup lets you target the most appropriate channels. See our guide to social selling for more.

Write targeted content. If you use content marketing, filter audiences by writing more targeted topics. If you’re appealing to inexperienced franchise buyers, write a “beginner’s guide to buying a franchise.”

Pay for targeted ads. Modern advertising platforms offer exhaustive targeting options. Target people based on demographics, online behavior, sites visited, or keywords searched.

Nurture leads via email. Use your drip email campaign to push early-stage prospects further into the buying cycle. Relevant, targeted content is your best friend here.

Step 5: Filter and Prioritize

Once you attract prospects, you need a way to identify, filter, and prioritize them. Some channels do this automatically—email marketing campaigns collect subscriber names and information.

Based on the content prospects engage with, you can glean additional information. If they click a link about starting an online marketing campaign, categorize them as a beginner marketer. Collect additional details via online forms.

Consolidate prospect and lead information using CRM software. Prioritize leads based on the variables you’ve outlined. At this point, you should be well positioned to close more sales and generate more revenue.

Step 6: Measure, Analyze, and Adapt

The final step is recurring: measure, analyze, and adapt to new information. What is your close rate for each target segment? How much revenue does each lead type generate? How effectively does your lead scoring system predict success?

Use sales metrics to analyze overall performance and identify improvement areas. Do this consistently and indefinitely to remain on a path of constant improvement. This is one of many essential sales skills.

How Do You Track Sales Targeting Performance?

Short answer: Use email analytics tools to track metrics like emails sent/received, response times, and thread length to measure sales strategy effectiveness.

Want to learn more about the customers and leads you interact with daily? Struggling to reach sales targets without knowing what’s holding you back?

Consider using EmailAnalytics to understand your approach. Dig into metrics like number of emails sent and received, average email response time, and average thread length to determine strategy effectiveness. Sign up for a free trial today and tap into the power of email as a sales channel.