Recently, I spent some time doing business consulting with a sales team. Together we developed annual sales plans for each member of the sales team, as well as a sales process manual. It is a challenging time to make a sale in just about any niche of the market. As I reflect on the work I did with the sales team, the military’s targeting process is a helpful way to think about and break down the corporate sales process into more manageable pieces.

One of the US Army’s Field Manuals defines the targeting as the process of “selecting and prioritizing targets and matching the appropriate response to them considering operational requirements and capabilities. The emphasis of targeting is on identifying enemy resources (targets) that if destroyed or degraded will contribute to the success of the friendly commander’s mission.” A sales team similarly targets potential customers with a variety of tools in an attempt to make a sale.

To target military objectives, one version of the military’s targeting process uses the concept of F3EAD — Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, and Disseminate. Both conventional units and special operations units used the targeting process in Afghanistan and Iraq to attack a variety of targets. The phases of the military targeting process can be thought of as:

• Find: Intelligence assets identify and locate a target (a person or location).

• Fix: Assets are used to watch the target to make sure it doesn’t move. If the target does move it is followed.

• Finish: A team of soldiers or other assets are assigned the mission to kill or capture the target.

• Exploit: From the target, intelligence material is gathered, examined, and future operations are planned.

• Analyze: Intelligence gathered from the target is studied to identify further targeting opportunities. The operation is scrutinized to capture lessons learned and enhance future operations.

• Disseminate: Publish the results of the operation and intelligence gathered to the team.

To attack sales targets, I think it works better to modify the military’s targeting process to follow the F3AD concept. A sales process that follows Find, Fix, Finish, Analyze, and Disseminate looks like:

• Find — Find potential clients or customers

  • Develop a target list of the top 10 companies you want to engage with to generate new business

  • Engage current clients

  • Engage former clients

  • Use social media to generates leads

  • Attend trade shows

  • Ask for referrals from current clients

• Fix — Deploy and use your sales tools with the potential customer to understand their challenges, provide solutions to their problems, and move them through the sales pipeline. Sales tools to deploy and use include:

  • Sales Story

  • Social media engagement

  • Emails

  • Proactive telephone calls

  • Voice mails

  • Face-to-face sales calls

  • Marketing products

  • References

  • Samples and demos

• Finish — Make the sale!

  • Make the presentation

  • Provide the proposal

  • Solve the customer’s problem

  • Close the deal

• Analyze — Analyze what went right, what went wrong, and what could be done better next time.

  • If we won the sale, why did things work out for us?

  • If we lost the sale, why didn’t things work out for us? What can we do better next time?

  • A short After Action Review could be used for individual sales. See post #10 for more ideas on the AAR — https://www.thefivecoatconsultinggroup.com/the-coronavirus-crisis/the-after-action-review

• Disseminate — Publish the results to the sales team.

The current environment makes making a sale tough right now. Using the sales targeting process — Find, Fix, Finish, Analyze, and Disseminate — can help your sales team make sales critical to the success of your business.

If you are a military veteran using something similar, describe it in the comments.

Good luck with making more sales.