Target Your Prospects:Defining a Prospect List

Prospect Lists can be very effective in your marketing efforts.

Even if you don't purchase a list, the exercise for defining your target market will be invaluable!

Two important rules for defining such a list:
1. Define as specifically as possible what you want.
2. Define as specifically as possible what you don't want.

Here are the Steps:

1. Choose the SIC Codes (Standard Industrial Classifications) that best describe your Target Market.
   These codes are a way of classifying businesses to provide new comparability in statistics about business activity across North America.
   Here is a great site from the US Department of Labor to use for this purpose.
   Important: Many of these codes go several layers deep. Going through the layers of each code is an important part of the filtering process needed to specifically target prospects who meet your criteria.
   There are Divisions, Major Groups, and Industrial Groups with explanations for all.
   
   
2. Filter by Data Elements; i.e. number of employees, annual sales, square footage, etc.
   Example: Janitorial Services might be interested in square footage.
   Too little space may not be worth their while, and too much space could be a competitive bidding war they might also want to pass on.
   
   
3. Define the geographic area of your prospects.
   This might be nationwide, regional, state, zip code or a mileage range from a particular zip code.
   
   
4. The List Broker will then come back to you with a 'Count' of how many records meet the criteria you have specifically filtered for.
   
   
5. Purchase the number of records you needed based upon budget, price breaks, and specific needs.

Good Selling!