Sales & Marketing Management

2. Target Market

In developing your business plan, you should have extensively researched your
market area. As part of this research, you will have defined who are your
potential customers and developed profiles on the needs of those
customers.

The sales manager needs to take the market research
developed during the preparation of the business plan and use
this information to direct the activities of the field sales
people.

To do this most effectively, define target markets by

analyzing the market research information.

The sales manager will then develop a target marketing strategy to

penetrate those markets and directs the field sales people in the

implementation of the strategy.

The following material will indicate the type of information that needs to be
gathered in order to determine the potential customers that make up the target
market. Probably, you need to review:

Û Customer base

Û Financial Feasibility of Business Offerings

You should now have a very good idea of your total market and its various
market segments. Now, that research data should be re-examined in even more
detail to determine the make up of each of the market segments.

The purpose is to reveal those subgroups within each market segment that

have the greatest revenue potential, hence, marketing programs can be

designed to target those groups.

Assume that customers also refer to clients and products refer to services