When searching for prospects to buy your products or services, you want to find those companies who have a problem for which you have the solution. The methods you use in finding and contacting those companies will determine if your business-to-business lead generation efforts will be a success or a failure.
Begin by creating lists that rank your current customers in three categories:
Gross revenue. Place the largest companies at the top of the list and the smallest at the bottom.
Profitability. List from most profitable to least profitable. Keep in mind that the most profitable are not necessarily those with the most gross revenue.
Fit. Which companies represent the best fit for what you are selling? This ranking is more subjective than the first two. It identifies the companies you know well, those with business you understand, those that are fun to work with, those you understand best and those with which you haveor could havea great working relationship. Rank these companies in order, descending from the best fit.
Your ideal customers are those that are at, or near, the top of all three lists. While reviewing your...