For those of us in business we often try to sell to everyone who has ears. In my coaching practice, I often coach small business owners who want to sell to anyone who walks through their door, real or virtual. When we begin a coaching session and we talk about what they want in their business (and that is usually always more money, sales, visibility and so on), this is the very first question I ask: What does you target demographic look like? Most of the time I get a wide eyed blank stare back at me. I have seen this deer in the headlights look so often that I have come up with a way to totally disconnect my client from the speed boat circling inside their head.
I have some large sheets of craft paper about six feet in length and I roll it out on the floor and I ask my client to lay down so I can trace their body onto the sheet of craft paper. They look at me funny and agree and once they are traced, I have them tape it to one of my pinning walls in my office. I then have us pull our chairs right in front of the image and we look at it. I have my client write on the head of the person “My Ideal Client”. Oh, now we are getting somewhere.
Our conversation begins in earnest and my client begins to get the idea. I basically ask: “…and what else?….and what else…..and what else……” Once the client has written a number of things inside the tracing, I go in another direction.
The questioning changes from inside to outside the “ideal client”. I begin to ask my client: “…where does you ideal client spend their discretionary income?….what does your ideal client read?….where does your ideal client vacation….and so on.
After about 30 minutes is up, I ask the client to take his drawing down and tape it up back in his office and continue to fill in the tracing as he encounters customers, and interacts and makes phone calls etc.
This is a great first step to getting to know who your ideal client is in your own business. It is my experience that entrepreneurs only see a very faint outline of who their true ideal client is. They spend so much time trying to sell to anyone, they miss thousands of dollars in sales because they are not focused on their ideal client.
What do you know about your ideal client?
How do they behave?
Where do they shop?
Who is already selling to them?
Where do they spend their extra income?
Why is your product or service something they would want?
What are they reading?
Who is their thought leader?
Who is their role model?
Who is their main influencer?
What are they watching on you tube?
What age are they?
Are they single, married, divorced, on a web based dating site, what?
What age are they?
The questions are endless and everyone of you that sells something needs to know the answer to each one in order to be an effective sale person.
What other questions can you think of?
