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Fish Where the Fish Are

1/1/2009

How to turn your ocean into a lake

A few years ago, I was hired by a company that sold weather systems to television stations and K-12 schools. In an effort to expand their overall market presence, they wanted me to address the nation's colleges, universities, science centers, and other non-K-12 educational institutions.

Imagine my challenge: A terrific but complex product, a fairly new company, and my territory was the United States. That was my ocean!

Now, as you know in sales, regardless of the challenge, you've got to come up with results in a hurry and sustain those results into your next quarter's forecast. So I asked myself, "Self, what are we going to do?" At this point, let me say that although by title I am in sales, I do not consider myself a salesperson. My objective is to help an institution and its staff find solutions to the problems and issues they face. If my solutions can do that, then we have the start of a mutually beneficial relationship. If not, I walk away with information for my next sales call.

So, after a lot of prayer and reflection on past challenges, I reminded myself to go back to basics: the ABC's of shrinking an ocean into a lake.

A. Identify a Market Segment

The first thing I did was research the college and university market, looking for sub-groups that might actually benefit from having a weather system. I identified land-grant colleges and universities, which were founded beginning in the nineteenth century under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts. Two of the goals of land-grant schools are to teach agriculture and engineering-- goals our product line could support. I found my market segment.

B. Find a Funding Source

Land-grant institutions, I learned, traditionally receive specific federal funds to support agricultural research and extension. (Land-grant institutions have a mission to "extend" their resources to the public through nonformal, non-credit programs.) I realized that I could position our weather system-- which collects real-time, local data-- to help the institutions execute their initiatives.

I do not consider myself a salesperson. My job is to help my customers find solutions to the problems they face. If I can do that, we have the start of a mutually beneficial relationship.

C. Fish Where the Fish Are

There are over a hundred land-grant universities across this great big country of ours. I wasn't about to visit every one of them (not if I wanted to keep costs down for my company). I needed to identify an efficient way of reaching as many of them as possible-- find a well-stocked lake, if you will. So I pinpointed one of the many organizations that support the landgrants, identified their key people, and paid them a visit (face-to-face is always better than phone or email). I learned that their annual conference-- attended by presidents, provosts, and other key decision makers-- did not have exhibitors. Talk about a sweet fishing spot!