One of the best ways to waste a lot of money on marketing is to set your sites on the wrong prospects. And doing this is easier than you might think. Fortunately, it’s also easy to avoid.

The reason marketers take off after the wrong prospects has to do with perception versus reality. The people or companies we think are our ideal prospects may not be. Before you jump into any marketing program, let’s be sure you’re aiming at the right target.

Your best customers reveal your best prospects.

Your existing client base holds a wealth of information about who makes a good target prospect. Unless you are launching a totally new product line into a totally new market with no connection to your existing business, you’ll learn a lot by taking a close look at your current clients. Actually, even if you ARE introducing a totally new product into a totally new market, this exercise is more than worth the time you’ll spend on it.

The objective is to identify a group of customers who are most profitable and easiest to work with and then to figure out what they have in common. If possible, you want to do this with actual quantifiable data – not just with anecdotal evidence from your sales force or account management teams.

Really. Take the time to pull the data and analyze it.

If you’re lucky, all you have to do is get a report from your accounting department. But you’re probably going to have to do some of your own sorting.

It may not be who you think.

If you’ve never actually done this exercise before, you might be in for a surprise. I’ve had clients tell me their customer base was primarily Fortune 1000 pharmaceutical or oil & gas companies only to find when the numbers were run that the bulk of their business was coming from regional insurance companies. And clients who believe their sweet spot is companies with more than 5000 employees when in reality their best customers have 500 to 2500 employees. And clients who think corporations provide the bulk of their business when actually academic institutions do. And so on.

My clients aren’t lying to me. They just haven’t taken a real close, objective look at the customer base lately. Things change, and when you’re involved in it day-to-day the changes are often not so noticeable.

So, it’s important to look at the numbers, identify your most profitable customers and find out what they have in common – industry, annual revenue, number of employees, geographic location, number of purchase orders they write a month – whatever is appropriate to your product or service.

Companies don’t buy – people do.

Now you’ve got a good, clear idea of what types of companies make your best customers and you’ve taken the first step towards describing your ideal prospect. You’ve also probably found some good places to target a marketing effort.

But let’s not stop here. Now that you know the types of companies that make up your ideal customer pool, let’s take a look at the individuals to whom you sell.

Again, what do they have in common with each other? Here’s a quick checklist of things to consider:

• Job title

• Age

• Sex

• Education

• Number of years of experience

• Achievements

• Associations

• Primary language

• Resistance to risk

• Decision-making style

• Professional challenges

• Values

• Goals

Roll all of this together to create a profile of your ideal customer. That’s a pretty good place to start to describe your ideal prospect. Doesn’t it just make sense to go after more of the people who make you most successful today?

This information is very valuable. Share this with anyone and everyone who is developing marketing programs or materials for you.

Now you know you’re chasing the right people.