With the end of the year approaching, many businesses begin to think about goals for the coming year. Many business resolutions we hear have some element of one or all of these three objectives:

  • Growth of sales or skills
  • Improved Operational Efficiency
  • More disciplined budgeting

Related to sales growth, especially when customers are hard to find, there is a rush to pursue or accept any prospect that comes along. It has been our experience that careful client screening is fundamental to profitable sales growth, efficient operations, and rational budgeting. When you add a new client who is a “good fit”, there’s incremental revenue with little disruption to operation, no aggravation to staff and rational resource allocation. So, what constitutes a good client? It centers around clarity.

We have found in evaluating prospects, a successful engagement is highly likely when:

  • Clarity about objectives or criteria for success is well understood by both parties
  • Sequence of activity or the critical path of tasks are agreed to by both parties
  • Adequate resources are allocated in a timely manner by both parties

CLEAR OBJECTIVES

As digital marketers, our projects center on any one or any combination of:

  • Branding
  • Lead Generation
  • Research
  • (Customer) Communications

So, for a lead-generation engagement, metrics that make sense and are quantifiable include:

  • Increased traffic
  • Higher Conversions
  • Repeat Engagements
  • Testimonials
  • Referrals

When prospects focus on metrics where it is not clear how it furthers their objectives, brace for the worst. If a client (who is not a comedian) says “I want my visitors to find me funny and likable,” it is a red flag. We had a financial advisor who came to us for lead generation and asked us to post his provided content to his Facebook to get him more likes. He could not translate how likes resulted in more sales. Worse still, his content was along the lines of family weekend activities – like fishing – and not solving customers’ problems.  It was clear to us that if we posted his ill-suited content for his fuzzy objectives, success was unlikely.  The result of him wasting money and our reputation being diminished was lose-lose so we declined.

CRITICAL PATH

We worked with a mid-sized corporation that previously had a 1-page website and wanted to aggressively expand their direct sales outreach via LinkedIn. When we asked who they would contact and what they would talk about, it was less than clear. We suggested they first invest in building a better website, develop content that addresses their customers’ pain points, improve the branding of all digital assets, and then deploy direct sales tactics on social media. It took a while to build consensus.

This project is only mid-cycle now. However, we have made progress and there is a good chance at generating a steady stream of inbound traffic via inbound marketing and hybrid direct marketing. The client’s previous “ready, fire, aim” tactic, by comparison, was more “miss” than “hit.” That process was neither optimal nor standard; as a result, prospecting was uneven and unpredictable.

RESOURCE ALLOCATION

For most individuals and companies, resources are limited. Whether it is time, talent, or money, investment in one area limits bandwidth in another area. Among avoidable disappointments experienced in group activities is seeing a project fail due to a lack of resources. If a popular restaurant needs seven waiters to work during a busy lunch hour, but there is only one, it is a problem. No matter how interesting the menu, talented the cook, or beautiful the venue, getting adequate service in this scenario is unlikely for most patrons. If this happens too frequently, how likely is it that this business will flourish?

If you are going to need your client’s participation to round out a task and they never make it a priority, the probability of your project’s success diminishes. Examples of client input include setting aside time for meetings, providing case studies, taking job-site photos, asking their customers for reviews after a job completion, approving a content calendar, informing about the competition, etc. If you need to spend $2,000 on a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign to generate sufficient leads, but the client only allocates $500, you will not meet your target and you should expect failure.

If the nature of your services is delivering value over an extended period and you would like to become a “trusted advisor,” try to qualify your prospects early when you can. Consider a potential couple where there is an initial mutual attraction. If each party brings a different energy level, has different goals, divergent values, and lacks mutual activities to share, how likely is this relationship to be sustainable? It is easy to identify prospects who are unethical, unrealistic, or not coachable as bad fits.

The more subtle risk assessment is identifying customers who are good fits. There are other articles that share multiple step templates to screen potential clients that others will find useful. There are useful acronyms like BANT – budget, authority, need, time – which serve as guidelines for qualifying prospects.

I would submit that having consensus about objectives, agreement about the sequencing of tasks, and understanding of the resources required is a simpler rubric to deploy to identify those clients you can grow with, contribute to, and learn from, while reinforcing culture and minimizing friction with your other team members or your own values.

In life, and in business, few things are as valuable as clarity.

At WSI Vital Marketing, we are in the business of helping our customers grow. We help our clients connect with their online prospects. Book a strategy session to see if our services can help you achieve your goals.