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Prospecting for future business opportunities is one of the most difficult challenges for sales departments. The risk of wasting time and resources increases exponentially with the uncertainty about the true potential of some prospects. Given this situation, the challenge is great: generating quality leads .
In this context, it is necessary to apply a tool that uses the data we can obtain from prospects and helps us navigate the probabilities of closing a new client.
A Prospect Fit Matrix, also known as a Prospect Fit Matrix, helps qualify each lead so that sales executives can prioritize and stay focused on the best opportunities based on the fit that the contact has with the business.
The matrix is designed to be used shareholder database package at all stages of the process: from capturing contacts to converting them into customers.
Why align marketing and sales teams
There is no one way to make a good Prospect Matching Matrix. The general idea is to cross-reference as much data as we can to determine the prospect's compatibility with the service or product being offered.
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Of course, this matrix must be built jointly by the Sales and Marketing areas within the framework of a Smarketing strategy.
In the case of the Marketing team, it sets out the guidelines that they should take into account when creating their marketing strategy to capture quality leads . In the case of Sales, it is to prioritise those leads that fit the business and are potential customers.
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This matrix works particularly well for high-profile prospects, especially if you consider these three sections:
1. Business characteristics
If you are a company that sells to other companies, you probably have your “ideal company” defined . Start detailing the characteristics of this business by emphasizing generic areas such as: industry, company size, business model, sales cycle and number of employees.
Your ideal company description should be in a “high priority” column.
Take the time to do this same exercise thinking about other companies that represent a sales opportunity, but that may not necessarily be the ideal company you have defined. Categorize these companies into “medium priority” and “low priority.”
By assigning priorities, your sales reps will know exactly where to focus when prioritizing. Here is an example of what this section of the matrix should look like.
Prospect-Fit
2. Contact characteristics
Depending on the business you are in, the characteristics of your buyer persona vary .
In the same way as we did the exercise for a B2B business, the contact characteristics matrix is applied to the socio-demographic profile of the decision-maker, that is, the potential client.
For example, if you are in the postgraduate education sector, one characteristic of a potential client is that this person has completed university studies, or is close to completing them.
A lead who is just finishing high school would be a low priority in the case of this business, since we know that they do not meet the required characteristics.
In this way, the sales department focuses on leads who have completed university studies, and not on high school students.
3. Online behavior
By doing a good research on the prospect's Internet habits, you can have important and useful sales information.
Based on your digital presence, it is determined whether there is a space that fits the product or service offered.
Some examples of online behavior to analyze are: opening emails, blog visits, interaction on social networks, among others. How to track these behaviors? With a marketing automation tool like the Hubpsot Marketing module.
Following the example of a university that offers post-graduate education, if the Sales area detects that those contacts that ultimately become clients have a tendency to visit a landing page of a specific educational program more than 3 times, this ratio should be included within the online behavior of the prospect fit as a “high priority”, since there is historical information that this behavior could determine the interest of a contact.
Once all the information has been collected and categorized, the level of interest that the prospect may have is determined and compared with the compatibility that he or she has with the product or service offered. In this way, we obtain the following matrix:
Prospect-Fit-MatrixSource: HubSpot
When you look at it this way, it's clear where your Marketing and Sales teams should focus their efforts.
Prospect Fit is a solid practice that has yielded results in sales processes. It involves taking advantage, even before the first contact, of the vast amount of information that can be obtained about the specific needs of prospects from what we know about them a priori or from the traces they leave online.
By completing the Prospect Adjustment Matrix on a regular basis, the Sales team becomes familiar with the various factors that determine in advance which prospects are worth their time and effort. It also enhances the role of advisor, which is vital to converting prospects into clients.
Our experience
We have applied prospect fit in all our Inbound campaigns. One of the most successful was the one we did with the Graduate School of the Universidad Continental. We invite you to learn about this Success Story.
