Who’s your perfect client?
The customary answer involves traits such as “reasonable” and “pays immediately and without question.” What business doesn’t like such clients? But the key to answering that question of the perfect client relies upon your ability to dig further into the persona of client your business serves.
Steve Eakin says it simply: “If you try to help everyone, you’ll never help anyone.” Developing a client persona or avatar helps a business identify and understand the target customer and then craft a specific sales and marketing strategy to reach and communicate with those people who fit the profile. Few businesses serve only one type of client, so developing a minimum of three ideal client personas guides the prospecting effort in an effective, decisive manner.
Your perfect client is out there. Think of your best customers: the customers with whom you enjoy working the most, the customers who treat you with respect, the customers whose projects generate excitement and enthusiasm, the customers who pay their bills, the customers who value what you do. Building an ideal client persona takes work and may not be an intuitive process. Robyn Kyberd suggests starting by defining what your ideal client is not. Using the “not this” method of paring away those traits that don’t fit the ideal client should leave you with the antonyms or those traits that do fit your ideal client.
When building a customer avatar, you can take advantage of the many templates offered online that will guide you through the process of fleshing out the ideal client. Use customer feedback surveys to collect information. Or simply talk with them. Infusionsoft lists the defining information for each customer avatar: demographic traits, psychographic traits, names to personalize each avatar, pictures or stock photos to give each avatar an identity in your mind, a dossier, and story. The story imagines the persona’s journey, the circumstances that bring him or her to your company for the service or product you provide that will solve—or help them solve—their problems. The best client persona involves details, lots of details.
Entrepreneur On Fire advises that, once you’ve fleshed out the avatar, start searching social media to find people who match that profile. For instance, your ideal customer may spend hours weekly on LinkedIn or may be hooked on Instagram. Perhaps you ideal client is a professional wrestling aficionado or an amateur gourmet chef. What magazines and websites will appeal to them? Take the exploration further by attending events where your ideal client personas may be found and strike up conversations with them. Conferences, conventions, and networking events offer tremendous opportunities to make personal connections with potential clients who fit your ideal customer profile. As your business changes, so will the traits defining the ideal client, thus requiring that client avatars evolve accordingly.
The process for defining ideal client avatars may not be intuitive and may require the objective, analytical insight of a third party who can begin with a bird’s eye view of your business, the services and/or products you offer, and the people who benefit most from them—and why.
The Heggen Group not only provides this service, as well as the analysis of strategy and business process to businesses that need assistance in finding their direction, but CEO Jayne Heggen also teaches entrepreneurs how to develop effective client personas and reach them.
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