Potential customer definition
A company’s potential customer is usually referred to as a prospect.
It is a person who has the potential to be interested in the services and products that are offered by the company but has not yet purchased. In that sense, he’s not a customer… yet !
The term potential customer is extremely vague, it can very well define a person who knows the company and who wants to buy one of their products. For exemple, it could refer to a person who could potentially be interested, as they have a common characteristic with the majority of the company’s clients, for example, the practice of the same profession.
Once the potential customer makes a purchase or subscribe to a service, he is called a customer.
What are types of potential customers?
We will find 2 main types of potential customers. First, the hot prospect who has expressed interest in the company and the cold prospect who has not yet expressed interest.
Compared to “potential customer”, we will prefer the terms lead, suspect and prospect which give much more information on the potential of the person to become a customer. Those three words better define the stage a customer is in at the moment (from the less inclined to the more inclined to buy a product or subscribe to a service). During each phase of the familiarization of the potential customer with the company, it will thus be able to evolve in the eyes of the company so that it can approach it at the ideal moment.
Who are my potential customers?
Not everyone is a potential customer for your business or company. A potential customer will be a person who will naturally have better chances at interacting with the company. For example, for a roofing company, the potential customers will be those who need a new roof for their house.
Identifying potential customers, and at which stage of intent they are, is essential to better communicate with them and ensure that they become customers, with far less trouble than having to find them from scratch.
It may be interesting to use the company’s current customers to find potential customers. Current customers will express what the product or service did for them and why they bought it. This information can allow the company to communicate better and more easily to potential customers because it knows their problems.
Here’s an example :
- If you are an HR specialist, your client may have told you how you helped find them a great profile. Thus, you can look on LinkedIn to find company who keep posting about their latest recrutement offers.
How to keep track of my potential customers ?
If you have been a sales rep for a while, you may know how difficult it is to keep track of every opportunity and potential customer. Fortunately, Moovago help you keep an eye on this very simply, by adding them to your database as you meet them.
Of course, we have design an effective tag system (completely customizable), to keep track of their intent level as you interact with them : “Lead”, “Suspect”, “Prospect” or “Client”.
Still not interested ? We also propose to optimize your sales trips, write efficient reports, keep an eye on your tasks and follow your sales and objectives.
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