Did you know that having a well-built database of potential clients is a gold mine for the development of your company or organization? In fact, in both B2B and B2C, it is important to focus your strategy on capturing the right profiles. In this way, you ensure better business opportunities.
But, are you clear about the concept of potential customer? And above all, do you know how to define who your potential customer is to determine if they are ready to become a buyer, consumer or user of your product or service?
Different strategies and tools help you to achieve this objective and to ensure the construction of a relationship with the client that lasts over time but the most easiest way now you can usein case of “Intake forms” for your clients before staring work. In this article, we share them with you.
What is a Potential Customer?
The potential customer is defined as that person (natural or physical) who would be willing to acquire your offer of products or services. So then, we could consider that potential customer or lead is synonymous with future customer.
The importance of identifying and capturing it lies in being able to ensure its conversion into a real customer, which in the end translates into achieving a higher volume of sales for your business.
Customer Types
Clients are generally divided between actual clients and potential clients. Although both are interested in what you offer, the former have already established a business relationship with you, while the latter have not yet taken the final step.
More specifically, customers can be classified according to different criteria:
According to the Frequency of Purchase
The frequency in the purchase responds to the relationship that has been established and the degree of customer loyalty. In this sense, three subcategories can be distinguished:
- Regular client,
- Regular customer,
- occasional customer.
According to the Purchase Volume
This criterion, beyond the type of relationship you have established with the client, depends on the client’s profile and their purchasing power:
- High volume. They are clients who, per month, usually place important orders, perhaps because their main activity depends on the services or products that you offer.
- Medium volume. These customers, equally involved with your brand, may not place as many orders per month.
- Low volume. It can be occasional customers or retailers, who trust your brand, products or services, but do not have the specific need to acquire them.
How to Identify your Potential Customer?
What are the strategies and sources of information you have to identify the profile of your potential client? Let’s see:
1. Go to your Network of Contacts
Without having to implement an overly aggressive business strategy, you can rely on your network of contacts so that it is the same that is in charge of recommending you to close people.
2. Gather the Necessary Data
For this, your own website represents a unique opportunity to create a complete list of prospects. There are different strategies:
- Web tracking: in the event that visitors to your website have not left their data, these instruments find the user by identifying him (by means of the IP address, for example) and crossing this information with other sources, such as databases external data.
- Re targeting: it is a technique that consists of “re-targeting” an individual who has visited your page through an advertising message. This message may invite you, among other things, to fill out a form in exchange for a product or service.
3. Apply More Detailed Targeting
An external database generally offers the advantage of having a much more exact segmentation (precise geographical area, interests, etc.) that better qualifies potential customers, based on the interest they show in your offer.
4. Create your Own Prospecting Database
A good way to build qualified prospecting databases is through the use of social media. Participating in discussion groups, posting and offering relevant content are ways to build strong relationships with potential customers. It’s about being creative!
5. Implement a Lead Template
During an event such as a trade fair, be it national or international, where you meet a lot of people, filling out a potential client template with all the information that you are interested in knowing about the contacts you make helps you ensure prospecting.
