The best way to grow your business is to increase the number of ideal clients that you work with (or sell your products to). I’ve heard stories in the past of business owners asking marketing specialists how to work out who their ideal clients are and getting the reply of “well that’s the $64m question isn’t it” and getting no help whatsoever to work it out. You know it’s really not that hard to work it out, if you follow this simple exercise.
Think about all the clients you’ve worked with (or sold your products to) and write down those ones that instantly spring into your mind when you think of “ideal clients”.
Now you have your list of ideal clients add to each one:
- some details that helps define them as a business (eg sector, size, location, target market etc)
- what it was about them that made them ideal
- what services or products they bought from you
Now look through what you’ve written and pull out the common ground. Generally speaking it’s best not to over analyse what you’ve written down. Don’t get hung up finding criteria that encompasses 100% of all of your ideal clients. Instead find those elements that cover a good 80% of them instead as you’ll always find the exception that breaks the rule (and you’ll get so caught up in trying to get it right that you’ll end up getting nowhere fast).
When I did this exercise I realised that my ideal clients are usually within their first 2 years of trading, want to grow their business and are ready to take a proactive approach to achieve it, plus more often than not they had left a corporate career behind them to start their own business. That’s how From Employee to Business Owner was born!
In the coming blogs & newsletters I’ll show you how to take the ideal client criteria you have just created and use them to pull more ideal clients towards you.