Whether you want to increase your market share where you are currently, penetrate into a new geographic market or diversify your services you need to know your facts before you begin this process. If you do not zero on the requirements of your prospects and/or clients you will be wasting your time and money. These facts include: where are they located, how much do they spend on the services that you offer (in a dozen categories from contract labor and legal costs, to computer expenses and packaging), what are the names and responsibilities of all of their key managers, what is their credit rating, how long have they been in business, what all of their SIC and NAICS codes (including definitions), how many employees do they have, what is their sales volume, square footage by location, what is their EIN number, social/business websites, etc. Some companies may contain have over 300 data fields to draw upon per company. There are various ways to try to get this data, with wildly different degrees of information, accuracy, focus and cost.  

Here is an example of how to use this data, using a staffing company as a case in point. The ABC staffing company does $10 million and specialize in placing office service temps. Although the staffing industry is growing at about twice the national average not all staffing sectors are the same and ABC sales has stagnated. 

They first identified the companies within their market area (based on SIC/NAICS data from the government and other data) that used temporary clerical employees to contact individual prospects. They concentrated on mid-tier requirement, not 1 or 2 clerical temps, or large users who would likely be served by national accounts or VMS’s. In one example, some 6,000 firms were targeted in a major metro market.

Based on the results on the above they could decide to expand their line of business by serving first existing clients and then prospects within their geographic area in new business segments. This, as existing clients are easier to add new lines of business then selling to prospects. The allied sectors they might select could include accounting/finance and technical staffing. Once again, using the marketing tools and parameters noted above. Where necessary, they might need to add personnel who had the experience to sell and recruit in new specialty segments.

Again, based on the success of the above, they could then decide to expand their geographical footprint into new locations, often using Also, an existing client in ones existing marketplace would be ananchor account in a new market. Within any staffing niche therewould be numerous sub groups they could drill down to, like inaccounting/finance from VP of Finance and CFO to A/P accountsand accounting clerks.first their core staffing specialty and then new niches such as those noted using the tools referenced.  Also, an existing client in ones existing marketplace would be an anchor account in a new market.