You want to grow your business, achieve financial freedom and live an extraordinary life. One of the best ways to secure your business success is to secure the ideal clients for your business. Attracting ideal clients will increase your profits in less time because you will be targeting a customer base that’s already aligned with your business, product and service.
First you need to be able to answer these questions:
Do you know who your ideal client is?
Do you understand your clients’ wants and needs?
What are the problems, concerns and frustrations of your ideal client?
Make sure you can answer these questions so you don’t leave money on the table. Knowing your customer means you know who will buy from you, who will give you the greatest return on your marketing investment and who will stay with you over the long haul. If you already have all of that information on your clients, you are on a pathway to a profitable future.
Now get it in writing. Creating and documenting a client profile will help you gain clarity and greater insight on who your ideal client is and how to recognize ideal clients faster in the future. Remember ideal clients translate into more revenue. When you attract the right clients, not only will they buy from you, the will keep coming back and buying from you—forever. They will also tell their family and friends to buy from you as well.
To develop your client profile, there are four steps:Identify your clients’ needs and wants.Identify what you need and want in an ideal client.Compare them to see if they match.Decide if current clients are ideal clients.
The only reason clients do business with you is to fulfill some want or need that they have. They want you to solve some problem in their lives. Find out what those needs are and fill them better than anyone else, and you’ll dominate your entire market. Your competitors will know what hit them.
So what do your clients want filled? What unmet wants or desires do your clients have that you can fill?Do your clients need faster or lower prices?A broader selection of choices?Do they want only top of the line goods?Do they want bargain basement values?Do they want more convenience?Do they want personalized service?Do they want you to be open for more hours each day or more days per week?Do they want you to stock more variety?Do they want to deal with a specialist?
It’s absolutely critical that you have a clear understanding of the needs and wants of your ideal client. That’s the purpose for developing your client profile. If you distill it down to one significant purpose—it would be to create a match between your buyer, and your product and service.
Think about relevance. Make sure you are targeting your message with content that is relevant to them. Think about sector, niche, industry. Use keywords for their business. Highlight how you can help them without selling. Add value. Share contacts. Connect.
When you think about attracting more of your ideal clients, begin with the end in mind. The only way to attract more clients is through effective and compelling marketing. Since compelling marketing is often expensive, your first step is to make sure you are getting the right message out to the prospects who are most likely to buy what you sell—and that’s why it’s critical to have a clear understanding of the needs and wants of your ideal client. Your number one priority—before you do anything else—is to find out exactly who is your ideal client by creating a client profile.
Creating an Ideal Client Profile by John Assaraf
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Why you must know exactly who your ideal client is
Your ideal client is much different from your typical client. How?
Your typical client NEEDS what you sell. Your ideal client WANTS what you sell.
That difference is huge. Prospects may or may not buy what they need, but they will always buy what they want… even in a tough economy like we’re experiencing today. Here’s what you need to know…
Needs are logic-based, wants are emotion-based. So when your product or service matches your prospect’s specific wants, you have found an ideal client. And your ideal client will make you the most money.
If you’re like most business owners, 80 percent of your current revenue is generated by only 20 percent of your customers. That 20 percent represents your ideal clients. They love you and what you provide to them. They buy from you and you alone. They’re loyal and will never leave you. They sing your praises from the highest mountaintop, they send you tons of referrals and they give you unsolicited testimonials.
What if you could replace the remaining 80 percent of your unproductive clients with more of your ideal clients? Do you realize your income would explode by 16 times?
If your revenues right now total $50,000 annually, you have the potential to increase your revenue by an additional $750,000. No kidding!
What could you accomplish with that much additional revenue?
What would that revenue mean to you personally? To your business? And especially to your family?
Can you afford to continue to watch this much additional revenue fall into the pocket of your competition?
How can you attract more of your ideal clients and develop the critical skills you need to grow your business?
How to identify your ideal client and generate more revenue?
Let’s begin with the end in mind. As a small-business owner, you want more clients, which translates to more revenue.
However, the only way to attract more clients is through effective and compelling marketing. Unfortunately, marketing is expensive these days. So when you do it, you want to make sure you’re getting the right message out to the prospects who are most likely to buy what you sell. And if you get the right message to the “right” prospects, they’ll not only buy from you, they’ll keep coming back and buying from you forever. They’ll tell their family and friends to buy from you as well. And they’ll spend more money with you than your typical client.
So your number-one priority is to find out exactly who your ideal client is.
A massive volume of clients is not nearly as important as serving the right clients. When you match your business with the right clients, you’ll increase customer loyalty, decrease complaints, and have fewer returned items from dissatisfied clients.
Here are three areas to look at when marketing to your ideal client:
Wants vs. needs — why they buy
Attracting your ideal clients through marketing requires you to discover the specific wants and needs of these clients. These wants and needs are often referred to as “hot buttons.” Keep in mind that there is a big difference between wants and needs. They may sound similar, but they’re as different as day and night.
A need is something you have to have. A want is something you would like to have. You need a new car but may be broke at the time. Therefore, you don’t want a new car, because you feel you can’t afford it. On the other hand, if you want a new car, you will probably find a way to get it, even though you may not need it. Wants are much more powerful than needs. Therefore, your marketing message should focus on your ideal clients’ wants.
Hot buttons — what they want
Hot buttons are the problems, frustrations and concerns that most clients consider when they do business with companies. Many business owners feel that price is always the number one hot button that impacts their clients. In reality, price is one of their last considerations. Most clients are more than willing to pay a higher price if you offer enough value to warrant the higher price.
Unfortunately, most marketing and advertising looks exactly the same. Everyone uses the same old phrases and platitudes such as, “We’re the fastest, we’re the best, we have the lowest price, we do excellent work,” and so on. And since everyone says this, your clients don’t believe any of it. If you market this way, as most businesses do, your clients can’t determine the true value you provide, so they default to lowest price as a differentiator.
Whatever you do, don’t fall for this trap! If you can only compete on price, it’s time for you to get completely out of that business. It has become a no-win situation for you because there will always be someone willing to undercut your price. Fortunately, the idea that price is most important exists only in the mind of the business owner. All you need to do is provide more value than your competition. When you do, you can actually increase the price you charge for your product or service.
Decision makers, influencers and users — who to target
There’s one more area that needs careful consideration. In most business transactions, there’s a decision maker, an influencer, and a user. Here’s a typical example for the service industry. When ordering a pizza, the parents are the decision-makers, the kids are influencers and they’re all users. If you’re in the pizza business and want to sell more pizza, give the kids (influencers) candy for dessert when you deliver the pizza. Then they will continue to influence the parents to order your pizza.
This example serves to highlight a critical point — that the end user of your product or service may not be the only person involved in the buying process. This is especially common in business-to-business transactions, where you may find that there are influencers or decision makers that are not the user.
When selling to another business, you will often find yourself dealing with subordinates that require the approval of their bosses before making a purchase. Knowing that in advance allows you to be prepared to market to — and then train — these subordinates so they can “sell” your product or service for you, since you won’t have the opportunity to do it yourself.
Remember, you’ll need to take this information into consideration when you begin your marketing program. Once you identify these three roles, you will actually notice a huge difference in your numbers when you begin lead generation and lead conversion.
This article is written by Murray Smith by OneCoach
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