The Sales Strategy You’ve Been Looking For (Dream 100)
I’m certainly no expert in sales, but this is a strategy that I came across while doing research into the development of my own marketing strategy for Kudu Advisory.
I don’t count myself as an anti-social person, but there is something about picking up a phone and cold calling someone that does not make me comfortable.
Hence, my marketing plan and strategy has steered well clear of any form of medium that can provide the short sharp rejection of a cold call.
The Dream 100 strategy eases you into developing a relationship with potential clients and customers. It’s a long-term strategy that helps you obtain the clients that you want to work with and that will significantly help your businesses bottom line, as well as notoriety.
The gist of the strategy is that you define a list of 100 dream prospects and target them over a period of time with the goal of having them sign on to your services or products. This is counter to most marketing messaging which encourages one to market to a very wide un-targeted audience.
Background
This is not a new strategy. It’s been around since Chet Holmes developed it in the 1990’s. Chet Holmes was an entrepreneur, speaker, and business advisor. A successful one at that.
The strategy was designed to help companies target large businesses that would be most beneficial for them to partner with.
Chet was working for Charlie Munger as a salesman. Charlie Munger is one of the worlds most famous investors. He’s Waren Buffet’s long-time business partner.
Chet had to make 100’s of calls a day, however he wasn’t happy with the results he was achieving. He noticed the tope salesperson, a lady, was making three times as many sales as the runner up. Chet asked for her help.
She agreed to teach him her ways. Her secret was to only focus on ideal clients.
On Chet went with his new found strategy. He combed through his list of 2,000 leads and chose 167 of the most promising. Six months later, he still hadn’t closed a deal with any of these clients.
However, five minutes later and Chet had his first deal. In the next six months, Chet closed 11 more, some of which were the largest orders in the company’s history.
Chet states “The goal of the Dream 100 is to take your ideal buyers from “I’ve never heard of this company” to “What is this company I keep hearing about?” to “I think I’ve heard of that company” to “Yes, I’ve heard of that company” to “Yes, I do business with that company.”
The Strategy
The Dream 100 strategy is powerful and focused.
The goal is to determine your dream clients first, and then and only then, come up with an approach that meets their needs.
This involves researching dream customers. You’ll need to understand their buying or decision-making process and then create a sales strategy specific to them.
The dream client could be a large corporate or an individual, regardless, the idea is that they would make a significant impact to your bottom line if they became a client of yours.
This makes sense when you think about it. Why focus on clients that you don’t want to work with?
These dream clients will also increase the brand recognition of your business.
A deeper dive
There are two types of ideal clients in this world – great clients and dream clients.
You will likely always have many more great clients than dream clients, but it’s the dream clients that will make up 60-80% of your revenue. That’s the 80/20 rule or the Pareto principle in action.
Now the Dream 100 strategy attempts to strike a balance between attracting both great AND dream clients. Perhaps some of those prospects on your list weren’t all that you thought they might be.
The Dream 100 strategy involves seven essential steps;
Develop a strategic plan for your Dream 100
Determine your Dream 100 client profile
Create your Dream 100 list
Design Dream 100 marketing collateral
Design your Dream 100 marketing plan
Train your sales staff on the Dream 100 strategy
Launch your dream 100
1. Develop a strategic plan for your Dream 100
Develop your personal strategic approach to finding your ideal clients. Keep things simple and avoid complex strategies.
This plan will be a running document that you will tweak as you test out various approaches.
If you run a building company, you could attend government or council-led infrastructure seminars as the first step in your plan.
2. Determine your dream 100 client profile
Be as specific as possible.
If you sell chocolate; where do your prospective clients eat lunch on a Sunday? What are their eating habits throughout the week?
Don’t just focus on broad strokes like the revenue they could generate for your business, their title, or the industry they operate in. Focus in on their buying habits, frustrations and stresses, how do they solve their problems, and what are their ultimate goals?
How can your business uniquely serve them? What chocolate would they specifically enjoy? Caramel or cookies and cream?
3. Create your Dream 100 list
The ideal number for you may not be 100. IT could be 10, 20, or 60. It’s the details of each that matter, rather than the quantity.
Carry out due diligence to find out info like; contact person, title, phone number, email, mailing address, and social media handles.
Try and learn as much as possible about the prospect. Read professional bios, articles they’re mentioned in, books they’ve published etc.
This will inform you of who you are talking to. And along with step 2, you should be pretty well versed by now in your prospects.
Some will turn out to not be worth your time and will drop off your list. That’s good, as they are not worth your time and would end up being average clients at best.
4. Design your Dream 100 marketing collateral
Now keep in mind that at any given time, only 3% of your sellable market is ready to buy right now.
You want that number to be higher. That’s why the Dream 100 strategy works; it’s a long game. The longer the game the higher that number moves. Familiarity with your business or brand is the aim of the game.
You want to put your brand on their radar. Being top of mind, premtively positions you as the obvious choice when they need your service.
You can target your dream list through your marketing campaign on Facebook, google ads, Linkedin etc.
From there you can reach out to them using a more direct line e.g. email, LinkedIn messages, a phone call (gasp) or even direct mail.
Be creative and personal in your approach. Again, this is a long game.
5. Design your Dream 100 marketing plan
Plan a year ahead. The implementation of your plan should be systematic and repeatable. Create a marketing calendar to implement the activities. Set this up in your Outlook calendar to easily keep track.
The first month you could engage with them on LinkedIn.
The second month you could connect with the on LinkedIn or send them an email.
Spread your approach throughout your calendar and execute.
Execution is the most difficult aspect of business.
Once you start building relationships with these potential clients, it’s only a matter of time before they start engaging your services.