Startup: Target Market Sales Strategy (very easy & effective one!)

Well here is another super awesome article in the manufacturing startup series with focus on target market and sales; in this article I am going to give you a whole strategy that will help you in achieving your startup sales targets (quite easily; hopefully! 😜).

What You will learn from this article:

• Overall market sales strategy for manufacturing startups, from A2Z, in easy, practical manner
• Learn about how to identify target market
• Learn about key aspects that makes your sales strategy successful like pricing strategy, follow-up, developing beneficial sales route plans, hiring sales experts with a pay that you can afford to get the job done.
• Plus around a dozen practical tips, suggestions to make it happen!

If you guys remember I really emphasized in last article (which was about startup costs calculation) about identification of your product/service target market and there I said, doing sloppy work in target market identification can bring your whole startup down, so you need to do your full homework!

It doesn’t matter how great your product/service idea is, how great ROI you will achieve if there is no clear identification of your target market, that market buying behavior, trends, competition in there, you will need to answer questions like if your target customers are quality conscious or quantity conscious, if you can do better than what is already being done by your competitors and that too at minimum cost, in other words efficiently and effectively etc.

I might sound boring right now😢, I know but I am just getting started so I will be much fun when you get to the middle I promise! 😎 Let’s get back to the main topic!

Target Market Identification: Things You Should Know!

You need to be really clear on these following aspects of your target market:

• If you don’t know who your target market is, whom exactly you are going to sell your product to, then that means you should throw away that business idea!
• If your target market is insignificant that means you should throw away your business idea unless you can earn maximum out of that small niche!
• If your target market is hard to reach because of either budget or due to physical impossibility or simply because your target buyers are thinly spread then you should stop thinking about that business idea unless you are sure that you can overcome these hurdles.
• If your target market doesn’t care much about the product/service you will be offering, like buying it once in a month and that means you don’t earn much with type of buying behavior then you should simply stop thinking about that business idea unless you have sure way to remove these hurdles.
•  If your target market is chockfull of your competitors and you have slight doubt that you won’t be able to offer better than what majority of your competitors are offering, then you should wipe clean that business idea from your memory, yep, you don’t need that rubbish idea! Again unless you remove that doubt and know exactly how to overcome that hurdle!
• If the product/service you are about to offer has quite long life like years and due to your budget or some other reason you can’t reach a huge regional market to compensate for slow sales due to extended product/service life then it’s better to forget about that business idea!

As you guys can see there can be tons of reasons from the target market perspective alone that can take down your startup, so you need to be really cautious about target market.

Sales Strategy For Your Target Market:

Now once you get a clear picture about your target market next thing is to devise a sales strategy that you should be pursuing to achieve your business goals.

Those business goals should be no different than your life goals or wife goals 😍 let’s add better half too (because many of my readers are girls, so you know why right? 😝), in fact these business goals should be more serious than all of these goals!

Jokes aside! Set your business goals as such that it really helps you in achieving your life goals in the end, if its money, you better get money, if it’s about popularity and money, you better get both, if it’s about getting married with a beauty, you better get that too! 😈

Okay, that’s enough to get that drowsy, dozing feeling away (I hope! 😼), let’s get back to the main topic, shall we ?!

There are basically two types of strategies that you can pursue when it comes to sales

1. Low price penetration
2. High price penetration

In low price penetration strategy you offer low price to your target end user and comparatively healthy profit to your middleman (distributor, wholesaler, retailer etc), by comparatively I mean offering better than majority of your competitors.

This strategy is basically pursued by startups that are on tight budget, if you can’t afford advertising, can’t afford social media marketing, can’t afford quality packaging (again comparatively), can’t afford credit with your middleman (distributor, wholesaler, retailer etc), want to capture large market share in relatively short time, looking for increase in sales in early days, want to achieve breakeven in short time etc etc.

In high price penetration you offer high price because you have quality packaging, quality product/service, have been doing advertising on all relevant mediums, want to target your target market elite, trendsetters, want to earn maximum with relatively lesser (compared to low price penetration strategy sales) sales, can afford to do credit, don’t want to give much to the middle guys etc etc.

For more on low price penetration strategy check this article Penetration Strategies

Both of these sales strategies have their pros and cons but what I found throughout the years that low price penetration works better than high price penetration in startup situation.

So my suggestion would be to go with low price penetration.

Follow-up Is Key!

Now devising a sales strategy alone won’t help you, thinking it will doesn’t mean it will in actual, follow-up is key, I can’t over emphasize the importance of follow-up, nothing works in sales unless follow-up is religiously done.

Follow-up doesn’t mean you should constantly visit a particular dealer everyday and push yourself and his patience to the limit, to get sales rather it means to do a normal routine follow-up according to the sales route plan.

Sales Route Plan

Developing a strategically beneficial sales route plan means earning more comparatively to developing a route plan while sitting on your as* doing nothing but thinking!

Sales route plan that are product of no market survey, little experience are as good as no route plans at all!

You will never make any good sales with such route plans even if you paste or glue a large route plan picture on inside, on your office notice board, it won’t make anything happen!

A strategically beneficial sales route plan means

1. It is developed while considering your competitors
2. It is developed with the help of expert sales guys

It is developed while considering your competitors:

Imagine you deal in oranges and those oranges are in high demand, now there are some of your competitors who also deal in oranges and they go and sell two day stuff to each retailer in your target region before you.

That would mean you won’t be able to make any sales in that region because your competitors have fulfilled that demand earlier than you and so you will have little or no sales!

So it’s better that you develop your route plan as such where you reach your target market faster, earlier than your competitors

It is developed with the help of expert sales guys:

Simply because expert sales guys know on which day which target market region will give you maximum in sales.

Remember an expert is someone with at least 4 years of experience in a given field so here an sales expert is someone with at least 4 years of sales experience in your target market region.

For more how to develop sales route plan check this Chron Article

Hiring Experienced Sales Guys to get the job done!:

Since you are novice even if you are expert you can’t possibly focus just on sales you will need to focus on the big picture, in other words your whole manufacturing startup, so that you know where you are and where you are heading and what you need to achieve your goals.

Sales is really important, for startups it is almost impossible to get healthy sales, to be honest sales is what makes or break a startup and so you will definitely need healthy sales if not from the get go then at least in the second month.

And that’s where experienced sales guys come, but the problem is neither experienced sales like to baby sit a new born startup nor you can afford experienced sales guys as their salaries demands are almost impossible to fulfill so what you should do in that kind of situation after all without experienced sales guys you will get nothing done and hiring them at huge salaries means again losing too much money that you can’t really afford!

I have written an article that deals exactly with that kind of situation, do read it How to Hire Experienced Sales Guys for a Low Budget Startup ?!

Other Things That Can Boost Your Startup Sales Volume!:

• Investing money in cool packaging will boost your sales and will increase your target market attention time given to your product
• Investing in advertising will also boost sales not only in the short run but also in the long by slowly achieving top of the mind awareness for your brand.
• Delivering consistent quality!
• Working constantly in the market, be in the market as much as you can be! Even if everything screams “It’s not working!”.
• Having quite a thing for patience and perseverance!
• Setting small, reasonable sales goals and achieving them one by one, little by little.
• Never ignoring your buyer no matter how little he/she buys from you.
• Multiplying sales opportunities by increasing list of products/services, this one will require a little invest each time you go for a new product/service but it’s worth it!
• Giving your sales guys room to relax and pushing them diplomatically to achieve sales goals! Because you can’t afford to be the ANGRY BOSS right now!
• Avoiding being a crying a** for not having great days!
• Never thinking about business failure! Or any failure for that matter!
• Never doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result! Really important.
• Avoiding stupidly quick decisions, hasty conclusions at all costs!

Further on sales I am going to give you some really cool articles that will boost your sales like nothing!

Yep, I am not kidding!

Read 30 insights, practical tips on Sales & 5 methods to increase sales volume!

That’s it!

In this article we discussed everything related to target market, from target market identification, to sales strategy, to sales route plan, to hiring the right guys to get the job done, to some really important tips that will help you in achieving your manufacturing startup sales targets!

In the next kick-ass piece I will be converting “Crispy Snacks” business idea that we discussed in previous article of this article series into a practical, real product, from brand logo, trade mark concept to actual product!

That means next post is totally practical and a very important one and so you shouldn’t ignore it!

Over to you guys!

Remember it doesn’t cost a penny to share this article series with your friends, colleagues, social media, facebook, twitter followers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughter, share it with everyone, I know you can do that, so please!

And Subscribe for more 😊, plus you may also like How to develop new products (step by step practical example).