The Art of Customer Acquisition

Outbound strategies that get the best result are built on understanding who your customers are. When you understand who you're targeting, and why, you can convert leads and raise revenue at a pretty regular, predictable pace. It turns out successful cold emails really aren't so cold after all. You can begin your prospect targeting with these 3 initial steps: 

Using the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework to identify what jobs customers hire your product to do — scenarios where they could realistically use your product to solve their problem. If you have an existing customer base, conduct interviews to discover the actual conditions of their purchase.

Scenarios in hand, translate them into job stories for different customer segments. "When I'm in this situation, I want to be able to do this particular thing, so that I can get this acceptable outcome."

Prepare for prospecting by creating an ideal customer profile and from there, individual buyer personas. Investigate your job stories and other research to build your perfect fictional B2B customer. What's their size and structure, and what vertical are they operating in? What job will they hire you to do and for which specific pain points?

Consider your own criteria as well — what makes your ideal customers valuable for you?