When I was in my late teens I took a job, cold calling, for a company in Romsey.
This is how it went:
1. I dialled a domestic property from a pre-printed list, asking to speak to the allotted name I had been given.
2. I told them they had won a holiday!
3. They had to meet three key criteria to be able to take up the holiday, so I had to ask them:
- Are you the homeowner?
- Are you over 21 years old?
- Do you have a combined income of over £x? (I think it was about £15,000 at the time)
If they met that criteria, then yipppeeeeee…. They won the holiday!
I would then pass the details over to the supervisor to deal with.
I’m sure you can guess – this was a timeshare sales opportunity for the company.
They would get the customer overseas under false pretences, and then try and flog them a holiday home as a timeshare. Hmmmm.
So this week, I told our Marketing Director (Claire) about this and she told me about being on the receiving end. Her and her husband had been given this same opportunity in their early 20s… ended up in a resort at a sales meeting to be sold a timeshare…. when they had no intention to buy, and actually didn’t have the means to either.
What a waste of time for all concerned!
The thing is, with better targeting, better questioning, better information and a better understanding all round, this could have been a much more successful process.
What’s the lesson here?
Such high level and generic profiling means you are not focused on those that are totally right for you, so they are unlikely to buy. In fact, if you can be razor sharp on your SUPER NICHE ideal customer and how you can help them, this will be so much better in the long term.
Selling to everyone, is after all, like selling to no one at all.
So how can you get under the skin of the customers you want, and go after more of them – instead of appealing to everyone?
Victoria ????
