Design Your Dream Client – Find the Best and Most Profitable Business
Targeting the right customer or client is the key to effective marketing. Here’s how to identify the most profitable, rewarding clients. It’s a bold idea: Don’t search for them. Design them.
A Sweet Dream
Just close your eyes and your special person is there. Calm, patient, generous … your special person chose you … just you, over everyone else. You feel needed, appreciated, valued.
This isn’t your dream date – it’s your Dream Client!
Your Dream Client is looking for a solution and not a price. He wants results and an exceptional audience/customer experience. He cares about your ideas and doesn’t want someone to just agree and fill the order. Your Dream Client sees your relationship as doing lots of business over time and not a “one-night stand.”
Find the Best and Most Profitable Business
Quick, find this person before the dream gets away! Well, you have a record of all your best and worst jobs. And you have a listing of the clients who really “get you” and are fantastic … and the other clients who are there to give you abuse, waste your day and eat your cash flow. This record is your company billing.
The goal is to find more business from Column #1 and eliminate everyone from Column #2. There are only so many hours in a day, so why spend them on work you have to endure?
Too Much “Possible” Work
Finding lists of potential customers isn’t hard. You can search online, contact the state board of Industry & Trade, buy lists of contacts and even use the handy, low-tech Yellow Pages. The problem is that there is too much information. You can’t market to everyone, so you end up not marketing to anyone.
This is where knowing your ideal customer is important. All you have to do is:
Analyze
Identify
Design
Market
Analyze
Look over your sales from the past 24 months. Take an objective look at every project, customer and client. Then do a simple analysis.
Type of the project
Size & scope of the project
Was it profitable?
Did you do it well?
How painful was the process?
Be as impartial and honest as you can. You can love a client but not make any money. Or you can handle some client challenges as long as the project is profitable. This is a business analysis.
Identify Three Ideal Clients
Pick the ones you most enjoyed working with, who treated you well and paid you fairly. These three companies are the templates for designing your Dream Client. They will set the direction for where your business is going.
Recognize that you have to specialize. You have to find a niche you can fill and become the undisputed “best logical choice” for that future business. This is where you have to get over being hungry for any business at all and focus sharply on the type of business that will sustain you for years to come. In short:
You need more of the business you want, and not just the business that wants you.
Design Your Dream Client
This is the longest and most critical step. Take a look at each of the three companies you’ve chosen and add some client intelligence.
• Their industry
• Number of employees
• Their main customers
• How they sell their products/services
• How much they spend on similar projects each year
Then fill in some data about your business relationship.
• What you do for them
• How often you do it
• How many people are involved
• Average project budget
• Your net profit
Finally, add some details about the client/decision-maker.
• The person’s name and position
• How does she/he make decisions?
• What is most important to her/him?
• Why does she/he buy from you?
• What is the client’s desired result from your services?
• Motivations – the challenges the person faces and how she/he likes to handle them. What does he really want and need and how does he want it?
A Simple Plan
Review all three businesses side by side and you should see their common points. Keep it simple. This isn’t therapy – it’s business. Don’t get into psychology, personality profiling and super-deep demographics. Think of it as a simple strategic plan. We talked about this in the blog article Strategic Planning For People Who Don’t Like To Plan. You have to decide where you are now, where you want to be and how to get from Point A to Point B.
What you want is to decide the right-size business you can handle profitably, what kind of companies are doing that kind of business and then approach them in ways that show that you can do more of what they need … better.
Congratulations! You have just designed your Dream Client.
Market the Things That Matter
Now, go after them. Take a few minutes to look back at the three companies and you can find some key information.
Industry areas where you have experience
The size of the ideal company
Their business
The size and scope of projects you can handle profitably
The amount of potential business and the frequency
The target client and how she/makes decisions and does business
Now you market to the clients who fit this profile. Focus only on the companies who are most like you favorite clients and the jobs you can do profitably. Focus on the ones that fit your financial needs and cash-flow schedule. Focus on the big need that you can meet in ways that are different and more valuable than your competition.
And your dream can come true.
Living the Dream
If you have all the business you’ll ever need and don’t want any more, then you can forget this plan. If you are looking for the best, most rewarding and profitable business you can get, then this is a way to find it.
Designing your Dream Client will clarify your business realities, target the type of business you have the greatest chance of winning, and help you establish the unique value you offer. According to research, we forget 90% of our dreams within five minutes of waking up. Instead of waking up and forgetting your dream … follow these tips. LIVE the dream and increase your success.
