What Is Sales Segmentation and How To Do It Well?

What is sales segmentation?

Sales segmentation is the process of dividing customers or prospects into smaller groups based on shared characteristics (= the sales segments you want to target). These characteristics could include elements such as:

• age;
• gender;
• location;
• company size;
• and more.

The goal of segmentation is to identify specific customer needs and create targeted messages and offers that are tailored to those segments.

Segmentation comes right before sales targeting, which is the process of targeting one of the segments you’ve identified during the segmentation stage.

Why is it so important for your business?

Sales segmentation helps you come up with an effective sales strategy by providing you with the data and insights needed to create better, more targeted offers. It also allows for better lead qualification as it helps your sales team focus on prospects who are most likely to convert.

Furthermore, segmentation makes the whole process of selling easier, faster, and more efficient.

By understanding which segments require different sales approaches and messages, you can quickly identify opportunities for growth that would otherwise remain undiscovered.

Finally, sales segmentation is essential when it comes to B2B targeting, as the sales prospecting methodology requires it to be much more accurate than it is in B2C.

How to create a great sales segmentation process?

Segmentation requires methodology and knowledge in order to be done well and efficiently. This is what we’re going to cover in the next part of this post.

There are different ways to do sales segmentation. The following process is what we’re doing at LaGrowthMachine. This is also a methodology that we use to recommend to our customers:

• Step 1: Have a look at your current customers
• Step 2: Have a look at your competitors’ customers
• Step 3: Draw Up your personas
• Step 4: Measure your potential audiences

Let’s dive into each stage.

Step 1: Have a look at your current customers

The very first step of sales segmentation is to look at your current customers. This helps you identify the main segments that already exist for your offer.

But this isn’t the only way to do it, though. People that you own don’t necessarily reflect your market insights.

To complete this first stage, you need to have a look at what’s happening on the market, especially for your competitors.

Step 2: Have a look at your competitors’ customers

As said in the previous section, you need to complete your first analysis with a look at your competitors’ customers. This is also known as competitor analysis (or benchmark), and it can be helpful on two fronts: to see what markets they are focusing on and to better understand the competition. This is a common LinkedIn prospecting technique.

To start with, you need to find out who your competitors are targeting in terms of demographics, interests, and behavior. You can use data sources such as LinkedIn to get the data. It’s very useful, especially for B2B. From there, you can build a list of potential target segments that your competitors are focusing on.

Here are a few techniques that we’re using at LaGrowthMachine to conduct our benchmark with LinkedIn:

1. Review competitors’ content: Check your competitors’ LinkedIn company pages and posts to see the type of content they are sharing. Look for patterns in the topics, tone, and language used in their content. This can give you insights into the personas and marketing segments they may be targeting.

1. Analyze competitors’ followers: Look at the followers of your competitors’ LinkedIn company pages. Click on the “Followers” tab on their company page to see the list of followers. Review their profiles to identify any common characteristics, such as job titles, industries, or locations. This can help you identify leads and marketing segments that your competitors are attracting.

1. Review competitors’ employee profiles: Analyze the profiles of employees who work for your competitors. Look for information about their roles, responsibilities, and areas of expertise. This can give you insights into the types of customers or segments they may be targeting. Pay attention to keywords and skills mentioned in their profiles, as well as the content they share or engage with on LinkedIn.

If you’re using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, forget all of this: you just need to log in to the platform and search for your competitors.

Then scroll down to the Growth Insights tab.

There, you can observe all the personas (=segments) listed for the company you’ve searched for!

You can use all the sales techniques above and others as well. The idea is to get a maximum of segments to complete your first analysis.

Step 3: Draw Up your personas

Once you have identified a list of potential target segments, it’s time to create your customer personas. Personas are semi-fictional representations of real people with particular characteristics and needs. They give human faces to your marketing efforts and help you better understand the needs of each segment.

To draw up customer personas, use the data you’ve collected from steps 1 and 2.

Get creative with your personas: give them names; create a profile picture (use stock images or draw one yourself); assign characteristics, goals and challenges; create a story for each one.

To do so, you can use Hubspot Personas Tool, which is free and very useful!

Step 4: Measure your potential audiences

Now that you’ve identified all your segments and drawn each persona, you need to measure the potential of each segment.

This goes through different metrics:

• the potential number of leads per segment;
• the potential conversion rate of each segment;
• the potential purchasing power of each segment;
• how much they would fit with your brand, product, or service.

To know this, we suggest that you get the data from Google Analytics. This should allow you to measure the number of visitors on each page and identify which ones are most interested in your product or service.

You can also use social media platforms to track any conversations or ads and KPIs that are happening around your brand, product, or service. You’ll be able to see what people think about it and if there’s potential for future growth.

Next Step: Automate your outreach using LaGrowthMachine

When you’re done with your sales segmentation process, you can go on with sales targeting, as explained in our dedicated post.

When segmentation and targeting are achieved, you should have a very accurate plan of which segment you should prioritize and how much you can expect from outreach to them.

So the next part, as you probably guess, is all about outreach. With LaGrowthMachine, you can do this very easily and expect a very high ROI, thanks to sales automation.

To begin, import your lead from LinkedIn or a CSV file and create your audience. Afterward, create your email sequence and match it with your audience, which is the prioritized segment of leads you want to target.

Our software allows you to build your sequence on a single channel or multiple channels, such as LinkedIn and email.

Based on our experience, using a multi-channel approach is the most effective method for sales outreach.

For better results, combine your effective sales targeting strategy with impressive copywriting (you can read our post about AIDA copywriting), whether you’re doing it on one channel or multiple channels. With a successful combination of both, you can achieve a 50% response rate even with cold outreach.

Once you’ve set up your campaign, just launch it and you’re good to go!

For the final steps, you have many additional options.

Firstly, you can integrate your LaGrowthMachine account with your preferred CRM to automatically receive and update leads in your CRM interface.

Also, you can respond to messages on LinkedIn or via email using our sales inbox, which is a convenient way to save time by managing your communications in a single interface.

Finally, you can analyze the performance of each message in your campaign using KPIs like bounce rate, deliverability, and response rate. This detailed reporting feature helps you identify potential issues and make improvements to your campaign.