How to Find Your Ideal Client

Do you think everyone (or anyone) needs your product or service? That sales is just a game of numbers?

Let me tell you — this is a mistake in thinking that many businesses make in their quest for success.

One of the best ways to grow your business is to know who wants to buy your product or service. This is the person you want to target as your customer. The ideal customer is someone who is already out there looking to buy your product or service, from either you or your competitor.

How Well Do You Really Know Your Ideal Client?

We’ve all done the exercise. It’s the first thing you’re taught when you first start your business:

Create an ideal client avatar.

This vision of your ideal client guides everything you do, including pricing (you can’t charge that single mom as much as you can the CEO of a Fortune 500 company), pain points (mom probably isn’t worried about shareholders), and even the color of your logo.

Perhaps one of the number one rules in business is if you’re not solving problems, you’re not making money.

What Problem Do I Solve For People?

So, the first thing you should do is to ask yourself, what problem do I solve for my customer? Spend a few hours considering things such as:

• Age group
• Income
• Family status
• Education
• Lifestyle goals
• Location

Maybe you even write up a nice little story about your ideal client. You give her a name, a couple of kids, a husband who just doesn’t get it, and a load of student loans. You know quite a bit about her, right?

The one place you may be ignoring

Maybe you are completely stuck in defining this person. How would you know the answers to these questions anyway?

A great way to get this information is to look at an asset you already have: your current customers. Do you have an email list? Send them a survey (that can be created free on a site like SurveyMonkey) and ask basic questions like what is their age, gender, location, etc. One important question you should not forget is to ask how did they find you? Give easy options like Google, Facebook, Friend, etc.

If you look at your current and past coaching clients, you’ll begin to see patterns. You can easily look back and see what made some clients a joy to work with, while others were a struggle.

Think about what those differences are, and add them to your ideal client profile. Then compare any new potential clients to this ideal profile, and you’ll never again sign on with a less-than-perfect client.

But what if you don’t have any customers?

Not to worry! Join Facebook groups that belong to your niche, or line of business, and look for questions there. For example, if you sell a fitness product, join a recipe or a healthy living group on Facebook and look for the most common questions. Based on the most frequently asked questions, you can tailor your content online and on social media.

Still searching? Why not watch your competitors to learn how they are helping their customers? Watch their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for the most asked questions or the biggest complaints. Once you figure this out, you will begin to understand how to communicate your solution to the customers who need you most.

However, if you stop there, you still may be missing a huge piece of the puzzle — and losing out on the best clients because of it.

Personality Mismatch

Here’s something that’s rarely considered in the “ideal client” equation, and it’s arguably the most important part: personality.

If you’re snarky, sarcastic, fun-loving and loud, then a quiet, middle-aged mom who spends her time volunteering at the church is probably not a good fit for you. Sure, she might need your help, and she might love your products, but for one-on-one coaching, this match-up is a disaster. Either she will be uncomfortable with your style, or you’ll be miserable trying to reign in your natural exuberance.

Better to pass mom on to a coach who is a better fit for her personality-wise.

Conclusion

When you try to serve everyone, you’ll end up serving no one.

Work through these steps in defining the person you want to serve most, and those around him or her will see your good work too. Make sure you know who they are, what they need and how you can help them.

Once you have perfected your message for that ONE person, choose the next avatar you’d like to target next. Then we all win!