The sales process · Customer research
Most of your wasted selling time goes to companies you should have refused.
An ideal customer profile describes the kind of company worth selling to: size, sector, location, what they already buy, and what rules them out. It is a filter rather than a wish list, and the honest test of one is whether it makes you turn enquiries down.
In one paragraph
An ideal customer profile describes the kind of company worth selling to: size, sector, location, what they already buy, and what rules them out. It is a filter rather than a wish list, and the honest test of one is whether it makes you turn enquiries down.
Ask an owner who their customer is and the answer is usually the whole market: anyone who needs a warehouse shed, any clinic that wants more patients. An answer that rules nothing out feels safe. It is also why the prospect list ends up with four hundred names on it and no orders.
An ideal customer profile is about the company, not the person inside it. Turnover band, staff count, sector, distance from you, what they already spend money on, who they buy from today. Write down what disqualifies a company as carefully as what qualifies one.
Keep this in-house. Nobody outside your business knows which customer paid late twice, which one rang at eleven at night, and which one you quietly hope never comes back. That knowledge is the raw material, and it is in your invoice book already.
It follows the people goals you set in the strategic plan, because the profile has to match the selling capacity you actually have. It comes before the buyer persona, which describes the individual inside a qualifying company who says yes.
Where this sits
Stage 2 of 10, customer research. Who buys, why they buy, and what they are comparing you against while they decide.
- The stage before
- Strategic plan
- The stage after
- Prospecting
If you want this done for you
Know exactly who your best customer looks like before you spend to find more of them.
The work
What this step is actually like.
“Start with the customers you already have”
Pull two years of invoices into a sheet and sort them by what they paid, how long they took to pay, and how many of your hours they swallowed. The pattern is in there already. Most owners are surprised by which name sits at the top.
“The disqualifier list is the useful half”
A builder who pays only after the flat sells. A trader who wants ninety days of credit your working capital cannot carry. A buyer two states away who needs a service engineer on site the same day. Name them, so the next enquiry from one is a two-minute call.
“Every line has to be checkable on the first call”
Turnover, staff count and machinery are things you can ask about or see. Ambition, professionalism and growth mindset are not, and a profile built on them cannot be used by anyone but you.
“Two profiles are fine, five are a way of avoiding the decision”
A workshop in Peenya may genuinely sell to both original equipment makers and repair shops, and those are different companies. Beyond two or three, you have written the market again under a new heading.
What we do
What you end up with.
The artefacts this step produces, what each one is for, and how you know it is finished.
The one-page profile
A single sheet with six headings. Sector and what they make or treat, size band, distance from you. Then what they already buy from someone like you, who signs the order, and what they can realistically spend.
Result: Finished when a new salesperson reads it in two minutes and can describe the target company back to you without the sheet.
The disqualification list
Five to eight lines naming the companies you will not chase, each with the reason attached. The reason matters more than the rule, because it is what lets somebody judge a borderline case.
Result: Finished when you have used it to say no to a real enquiry, and nobody in the office argued about it.
The fit score for incoming enquiries
One spreadsheet row per enquiry, with columns for company, sector, size, distance, what they buy now, and a fit score out of five. Whoever answers the phone fills it in while the caller is still talking.
Result: Finished when last month's enquiries are all scored and the high scores and the closed orders line up.
The evidence behind it
The invoice analysis itself, kept as the working file. When somebody challenges the profile in six months, the sheet settles it rather than whoever speaks loudest.
Result: Finished when every line in the profile can be traced back to a customer you have actually billed.
Why us
Why owners pick GullySales over an agency.
Marketing and sales, as one job
Most agencies stop at the enquiry. We also fix what happens after it: the reply, the follow-up, the quote and the CRM.
The person on the first call does the work
No account managers in between. You are never handed to someone you have not met.
A baseline before anything starts
Your numbers are written down on day one, so every monthly report compares against something honest.
The fee in writing, split three ways
Our time, your media spend and production on separate lines. You always see what goes to us.
No lock-in, no guarantees we cannot keep
Three to six months at a time. We never promise a ranking or a lead count, because nobody controls those.
One office, and we say so
Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru. We work across India by call and WhatsApp and travel when a session needs to be in person.
#257, 3rd floor, Sri Nanjundeshwara Complex, Nagarbhavi 8th Block, Outer Ring Road. How we work.
The offer
Start with a free audit of how you sell.
It is useful on its own, whether or not you hire us.
What you receive
- A 90-minute call with the person who will do the work
- A written, scored report on the six places orders leak, within a few working days
- Every fix ranked by what it returns and what it costs
- The one thing to do first, and why
- An honest line on whether you need outside help at all
- If you do, the scope and the fee in writing
No invoice. No obligation. No sales script.
FAQ
Questions owners ask before they call.
Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.
How long does this take?
We are a new business with no customers yet. Can we still write one?
Who in the company has to agree it?
How do we know the profile is wrong?
Is this worth paying someone to do?
How much does it cost?
How long is the contract?
Who will actually do the work?
What do you need from us?
What if we are not happy with the work?
Where to go next
The work that carries this step further.
The rest of customer research
Or read the whole sales process in order.