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Building Customer Profiles: Know Your Customer and Increase Sales

Mark Friedman, The Velos Group | Articles > From the section: Lead Qualification

November, 2014 |

One of the best ways that any company can increase their sales lead response is to profile their current customer base. By identifying the accounts that have responded favorably to previous programs you can target new accounts that resemble them.

Also, by categorizing companies by size and industry type, it helps you when purchasing additional prospect lists and/or databases. And, by creating marketing programs that address their concerns, problems and issues and a resolution plan, other companies with similar issues should respond well to the solutions offered. Creating a comprehensive Customer Profile is the first step in gaining a better understanding of the characteristics of those accounts.

Customer Profiles:

Since you are already doing business with these companies, you have a ready source of basic profile information. By using in-house data from your Accounting and/or Manufacturing software, a customer profile can be built with the following information:

Key Contacts
Products Purchased
Revenue From Your Company's Sales
Payment History
Returns History
Customer Service Incidents
Systems Information

Using Outside Data:

Constructing a clear profile of what your customer base looks like allows your company to perform more targeted acquisition of databases and lists to support your sales and marketing programs. By using Third Party databases, helps companies augment their in-house profile information with needed valuable data that includes:

Precise Industry - (SIC)
Company Size - # Employees, Annual Sales
Senior Contact - President, Owner
HQ, Branch, Single location

Qualification Information:

When qualifying sales inquiries, specific prospect information is captured into the account profile. Whether the account is sent to sales depends upon the degree of similarity to the Customer Profile. For larger prospects where the sales team has already made an introduction, this data can be collected and placed in the account profile. Below is a good example of specific qualification information for the Material Handling industry:

Size of Warehouse
# of Employees in Warehouse
Use Conveyor Systems or Trucks
Linear Feet of Conveyor System & # of Conveyor Lines
Own or Lease Trucks
# of Trucks
Brand of Trucks
Engine Type - Electric, Diesel, Propane, Gas
Type of Products - Case, Individual, Pallets
# of Shifts

How Do You Find This Information:

Most companies pull sales qualification information from their Sales Force Automation (SFA) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. To make it all work, the company's Sales and Marketing teams must agree on the specific details for qualifying an inquiry, as well as the process they will follow on making a sales call. Once these information parameters are clear, the software should contain a data field for each piece of prioritized information. This ensures that anyone who deals directly with customers and prospects will have access to the same information when they need it.

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