Market Segmentation - Steps to take before Cold-Calling - Tip # 3

Most organizations (if not all) require the use of a CRM tool - be it for monitoring, organizing accounts, keeping notes, etc. I personal think it was the best creation since sliced bread and have used tools ranging from the ever popular Saleforce.com, Sugar CRM, Siebel, ACT!, Upshot.com (yes I am that old - this was probably one of the first CRM's in the early 2000's), Excel (yes some organizations are that archaic!), etc. The one thing I think all of them are missing is a feature to develop a hierarchy of an organization. So at a quick glance/view, you as the key account manager can quickly know where the person is on the chain of decision making, holding the purse strings, influence, etc. Until that gets invented (or may have but I don't know), I have created a formula of my own to help me manage my accounts.

Organizing your contact lists

This is especially great In complex sales as you tend to speak with multiple people and don't know the interrelationships (matrixed organization).  It gets hard to keep track of who reports to who in the hierarchy, and remembering names of the different people in the organization.  I’ve devised a simple technique that’s easy to implement and if looking at your CRM, you can easily identify who each person is.  I’ll give you an example (sorry for the editing):

	1 - CEO
2A - VP of IT	2B - VP of Sales	2C - VP of Marketing
3A - Director of IT	3B - Director of Sales	3C - Director of Marketing
4A - IT Manager	4B - Sales Manager	4C - Marketing Manager
5A - Systems Administrator	5B - Sales Rep	5C - Intern

The number is the hierarchy within the organization and the letter refers to the department they belong in.  It’s a very easy technique that helps in knowing how senior or junior a person is and the relationship in the hierarchy of the whole organization. I've not assigned a letter to a specific department, but you can implement them as you go - if you know of two people in the organization place these tags on them. I'll show you how I place them:

Name Athar Afzal  
Title: 3B - Director of Sales

Note: Always place it in the first part of the title and not their name. Name because if you sent them an email through your CRM it would show the tag. First part of the title as you read from left to right and it becomes easier to see it first.

Summary of Market Segmentation

I thoroughly enjoyed talking about the topic of the week on market segmentation. Yes, there is a lot of work to do before prospecting, but I believe there is great value in doing this to work less and achieve more. Look forward to comments!