How Data Center Sales Teams Identify Their Target Audience

Data center sales teams can identify their target market in a variety of ways. However, there are three core aspects proven to produce real market success:

• Product/market fit
• Setting SMART goals
• Building buyer personas

In a recent Q&A webinar, we addressed concerns of Data Center CEO’s, Sales Directors, and CMOs relating to sales acceleration, discussing this topic in depth.

Interested in watching the webinar recording? If so, access it here: “Data Center Sales Funnel Acceleration Q&A Webinar.”

Product/Market Fit

Your data center needs to capture the concept of product/market fit.  Product/market fit is a huge prerequisite your business must fulfill before being able to set SMART goals or build buyer personas.

Product/market fit needs to be the first step; it is painful when companies try to scale their marketing and sales resources but are oblivious to:

• What are they selling?
• How much it costs?
• Whom are they selling to?

Your business must have a deep understanding of what product and services it is selling, and which have the highest demand within a particular segment of the market.

Data centers attempting to market everything to everyone in their industry are failing in today’s marketplace, proving the importance of having a crisp definition of product/market focus.

If no one in your company holds the “Product Director” or “Product Manager” title, it is critical to assign someone those jobs roles and responsibilities. Once your job roles are in place, you need to identify who your most profitable clients are—whom you want more of. These clients are ones you would to simply copy and paste. These clients are:

• Fantastic
• A super fit
• Gratifying to work with
• A good margin in it
• A high growth area

SMART Goals

Setting smart goals are critical. We need to have:

• Goals that are specific
• Goals that you can measure
• Goals that are attainable (relative to what you have done in the past)
• Goals that are relevant to your company’s mission
• Goals that are time-bound and tied to deadlines

For example, anyone could say “I would love to run a marathon!” However, it would be more actionable if you said “I would love to run a marathon in 2017,” and then calculate “I have 18 months to work towards that. What are the interim steps I need to get to?”

The same goes with building out your sales funnel. All your goals must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant to your business, and time-bound with a time deadline.

Buyer Personas

After you have defined your product/market fit and set your SMART goals, then—and only then—focus on building buyer personas.

Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal clients. Buyer personas are based on research and educated speculation; it is important when you are building buyer personas to make sure you are not just guessing.

Personalize Your Message

It makes a big difference how your buyers are typing “data center” in content and on social media. For instance, are they typing

• data center
• data centre
• datacenter
• #datacenter
• DC (short for data center)

All of these things make a big difference. When you start getting into the problems, challenges, goals they are up against, and what keeps them up at 2 o’clock in the morning, getting their words exactly perfect is a really big deal.

Beware the HIPPO

It is not uncommon for egos to get in the way.

The highest paid person in the organization—also known as The HIPPO—can easily discredit the data you need to identify to approach your market in the right way.

All too often, seasoned data center industry CEOs, sales directors, and marketers make mistakes by making assumptions. Their mentality is: “I have seen it all, done it all, and know it all. I do not need to ask people anything.” This mentality is absolute nonsense. You do need to ask people, get their words, and get a consensus.

The Takeaway

To get the targeting right:

• Product/market fit is critical
• SMART goals are critical
• Buyer personas must be considered 

Does your sales team have difficulty identifying its target market? Let us know in the Comments below. 

To learn more about data center sales acceleration, download the webinar recording Data Center Sales Funnel Acceleration Q&A Webinar.