Basically, there are two ways to approach this



* focus on what problems, issues, and concerns your customers are facing currently (what conversations are they having?)

* use things going on around them that aren't business related such as the political elections, sports, etc. to pierce through the advertising and marketing noise going on around them.

Moreover, help yourself and help your customer by identifying the niche market your business targets, the niche market that you service. This will also establish the conversation, since you inherently have a more laser focused marketing message to your customers. Your conversation includes using their language, talking to them about things they care about.

For instance, if your niche is financial services companies in the Chicago area, and perhaps there are some regional challenges that CIO's are experiencing, you can use that knowledge to tailor your marketing message in a campaign to reflect these challenges.

By focusing on a niche, you can speak your customer's language and make them feel that you understand them. This can be a serious competitive advantage against those that believe everyone is their customer and whose marketing message is so general that it fails to effect prospective customers in any meaningful way.

The basic idea is to have a message that speaks to them and cuts through all the other stuff going on in their life (noise). For instance, perhaps last year you sent a mailer or had a telemarketing campaign about virtualization and the prospect didn't respond. Perhaps they were busy with other things going on at the time. You have talked to them once. Now, fast forward to today and you learn that same prospect is researching or implementing a virtualization project because his company is doing less hardware purchasing and trying to do more with what they have. You can converse with them, again.

You want to enter the conversation going on in your customer's mind, which in the case of the scenario above is "energy efficiency, consolidation, and maintenance, etc." (Doing more with what they have.)

Believe it or not they will be more receptive to your message/offer if you relate it to something they are already thinking about. Always, the customer focuses on "what can you do for me - how can you help me - what is *in* it for me". Start the next conversation - tell them!

As always, knowing how to communicate (technique wise) and knowing who, within the organization, to communicate with is always vital to identify.