You’re going to be interacting with a lot of people who are not your ideal clients. And along that path you’re going to be asking yourself, does this person meet enough of my criteria where I would like to take them on as a client?
David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I’ll be discussing the topic of are you speaking to your ideal clients? Welcome back, Kevin.
Kevin: Yeah. Ideal clients. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for? Not always easy to find though, but how, do you define an ideal client? Or how could someone define their ideal client, and why is it really important to know who that is?
David: Yeah, I tend to use the term a lot because in the early stages of my business, when I was talking with clients, I’d be asking them about what they were looking for and all that sort of thing in terms of the customers that they wanted to be able to bring in. And most people have a pretty good idea of what it is that they’re looking for.
And I realized that whenever we do anything that talks about getting clients, it leaves out a key component, which is the kind of clients that we actually want to have. So I think of it in terms of ideal clients.
An ideal client. That’s a very personal thing. What’s an ideal client for me? What’s an ideal client for you?
You may value certain traits over the traits that I value. Right? So It’s very likely to be different for you than it is for me. So when I use a word like ideal clients, I mean for whoever it is that’s making that call, what is an ideal client?
Is it somebody who is hyperresponsive, is it somebody who is very open? Is it people who are willing to make decisions quickly? Is it somebody who is very eco-conscious? What are your criteria for what describes an ideal client for you?
Because however you define it, you want to make sure that the messaging that you’re putting out into the marketplace is designed to appeal to them as opposed to just anyone who can fog a mirror.
Kevin: I like that. Are there there that, someone might think they’re speaking to an ideal client, but they’re not?
David: Well, there can be. I mean, there can be sort of false positives as you’re going through this. With social media and that sort of thing, it’s a lot easier to get a feel for someone. Get a feel for their approach, feel for their thoughts, feel for the way that they communicate with other people.
You can sort of check them out pretty quickly on there and say, “oh yeah, this is the kind of person who I think I get along with.” You can say, “oh yeah, this is definitely not the kind of person I’m likely to gel with.”
It’s a lot easier now than it used to be. Before you could really do all this snooping, it was a lot more challenging because if you’re finding names in a phone book and trying to call people, you had no way of knowing that at all, and you had to find out in the conversations.
So it is a lot easier to be able to identify the traits that you like upfront and not even approach the people that you think are not ideal for you.
So there are a lot of time savings that come with that sort of approach.
Kevin: How important is messaging to pull in the people you really want to work with?
David: It is absolutely critical, because there are a lot of people who don’t even realize that. They don’t really think in terms of what the messaging is going to do. If you are interested in clients who are looking for high quality, high value products, that’s very different than if you’re looking for the people who are just looking for the lowest price. So if your messaging is talking about getting the lowest price, that’s likely the type of prospect you’re going to attract.
Kevin: Great example.
David: If that’s not what you want, then you want to make sure that your messaging is more in line with the type of people that you’re looking for.
Kevin: Such a great point because I think, you know, we all can easily caught up in okay, what are the buzzwords that’ll get people to talk to me. But if your buzzword is “we got the cheapest pricing” and you’re looking for people that might have bigger spend capabilities, then you’re not attracting the right person.
David: Right. And another one that goes with that is, fastest service. Right? Fastest service, lowest pricing. It’s like, okay, now I’ve got the cheap skates who want everything tomorrow? I mean, what is that going to do? What does it do for your positioning? Now, if those are actually your ideal clients, then by all means, knock yourself out.
Actually, related to that topic, I have had clients who wanted to go in a direction like that, and so one of the things that we did, is we helped them come up with a group of suppliers that they were able to utilize, that they knew provided really fast service and you know, at least reasonable pricing.
So that when they talked to their clients about that and when a client expressed interest in that, they had this particular stable of people that they could go to.
They didn’t use them for everyone, obviously, but for people who did want to go that way, at least there was a process in place on the back end of the business to make sure that they could at least reasonably appear to be accomplishing what the customer was asking for.
Kevin: No offense to anyone out there, but a lot of times those people could be the most difficult to deal with the people who want it fast and cheap.
David: Right?
Kevin: So be careful what you wish for, to some degree.
David: Yep.
Kevin: Are there sort of general questions that anyone could ask to get a clearer idea of who their ideal client is?
David: Well, yeah, I mean you could start with personality traits. And again, I would just do this on a sheet of paper. What are the types of personality traits that I’m looking for?
And sky’s the limit here. You get to pick what types of clients you want to interact with, what type of client appears to you to be ideal.
Are they communicative? I mean, I think that’s a big one. We already had an entire podcast about that. Do they have money to spend? That was in the same podcast?
Like those two things I think are relatively important so you’re writing this stuff down and you just jot down the questions or you jot down the things that you’re looking for in an ideal client.
What are they? Because it’s going to be different for all of us. I mean, some things are probably going to be fairly universal, but it’s likely to be different. So you just jot it down.
And if you look at your best clients, the ones that you love the most, who have spent the most money with you, what are their characteristics? What do they have in common?
What industries do they operate in? How do they communicate with you? Do they communicate more with you on the phone, via email, via text?
How are you communicating? How do you like to communicate? How do they like to communicate? Right? Because when you are. In sync with that. If you like talking on the phone and you have clients who like talking on the phone, that’s a good match.
If you like talking on the phone and your prospects or clients like interacting in other media, then you might have a bit of a disconnect.
Now, again, that’s not to say you’re only going to work with people who meet all of these criteria, but at least you’re giving yourself an idea of what you would describe as an ideal client. So that exercise alone is definitely worth doing.
Kevin: Yeah, you mentioned finding out where they are and stuff. You know, we talked about messaging, but when it comes to marketing, how can people figure that out? Is there something that you people on and figure out where their client sort of spend their time?
David: Yeah. Well again, you can start with your current ideal clients and figure out where they spend their time. That’s sort of the easiest because it’s likely there might be more, like them, in those situations.
I mean, you have typical things like networking functions that people go to and you may go to those and you may say, okay, I haven’t found a lot of ideal clients there. Or you may say, I’ve found a lot of ideal clients there.
Sometimes I’ve had people like with BNI groups that they’ve had tremendous success with. Depends on the group. because I’ve had people who’ve
Kevin: Right.
David: groups like that and they haven’t had tremendous success with it. But you look at where your best clients came from. That’s a great place to start.
And then also, as you’re doing different types of outreach, and you’re interacting with people in different ways, then you can also find out what you’re getting from that.
So if you’re doing some sort of outreach on social media, and you’re getting good response, okay, let’s do more there. If you’re not getting great response, you say, okay, well you continue to test it there, but also look in other places.
And then eventually, you’ll figure it out. If you’ve been doing it for any length of time, you probably already have a reasonable idea of where your best clients are coming from.
But if you don’t, it’s really just a matter of taking the time to pay attention and see what they’re doing.
Kevin: Mmm hmm. I mean, it’s probably possible too, to have more than one ideal client, right? As far as the bio, as far as the category goes, right?
David: Yes, I’m sure that’s true. I mean, I think they will have a lot of things in common. Now, your actual top ideal client, who is my very favorite client, a lot of times we know that too. And that’s where if you look at that and you say, okay, well what do I really like about this person?
What is it? Is it about their personalities? Is it the way they do business? Is it the way they communicate? What are the things that I like most? And put those down on your sheet because if that resonates with you, that’s the kind of person you want to work with. And, it’s just going to make your life and their lives a whole lot better.
Kevin: Is it possible to get too deep in the weeds with your ideal client where you’re like almost missing out on some sales because you’re so focused on finding that perfect client?
David: You could be, but. In reality, what’s more likely to happen is you’re going to have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince or princess, you’re going to be interacting with a lot of people who are not your ideal clients.
And along that path you’re going to be asking yourself, does this person meet enough of my criteria where I would like to take them on as a client? They might not have half the things that you listed, but you get to decide then, okay, perhaps not ideal, but am I willing to give them a shot?
And also, it’s important to think about the fact that when we talk about rejection, this is what gives you an opportunity to reject potentially poor prospects.
You’re deciding upfront who you’re even going to give an opportunity to say no to you, right? So when you make those decisions upfront, you’re really able to turn the tables on rejection by not pursuing non-ideal clients, based on whatever criteria you use, upfront.
Kevin: Mm-hmm. do you see in some businesses that ideal changes over time?
David: Well, sure. I mean, as we grow, as we evolve, we have different preferences and things like that. Yeah. And I think it becomes obvious because when you start having conflicts, you start having second thoughts, and you look at it and you say, why am I having this feeling? What is it about this relationship that isn’t working for me?
Then you may notice that there are some words on your sheet that might have to change. I mean, I had relationships over the years in business where started out great, you know, lots of great communication, really seemed on the ball, really liked the person, and then over time I realized that their communication level was just not there.
And I was like, this is frustrating. It doesn’t mean that you give up the relationship, but when you recognize what those key issues are for you, you’ll have a far better idea of what you’re dealing with. because otherwise, if you don’t think about this stuff, you’re just going to go, “oh man, this guy’s just really frustrating me,” and you won’t know why.
But if you know what your ideal client is and you know what this person is doing, then you can also compile a list of the things that you don’t like and that you won’t take, and you can put that on the other side of your sheet, right?
And then when you have people who are expressing that sort of thing, you can recognize, okay, maybe this is not somebody I should pursue.
Kevin: So what’s the payoff of getting this right? Of truly aligning message with your ideal client?
David: Well, you’ll attract the right people. And I think the best example of that is what we talked about at the beginning of this. If you’re putting out messaging that’s relating to price, you’re likely going to attract people who want to buy on price.
And then if you’re frustrated, because all your clients are asking you about price, you have to decide that, “okay, well maybe I had something to do with that when I was creating that in my messaging.”
It depends on the value you put on your own time. Like if you’re willing to create the wrong impression in the marketplace to begin with, and then spend a lot of time correcting it by interacting with these people, you can do that as well. But I mean, I think the rewards for doing this right upfront are kind of obvious If you take the time to look for ’em.
Kevin: Mmm hmm. Great tips for sure. Where can people go to get more information if they’re listening to talking about, here going, man, I really need to unpack this more.
David: Well, if you’re looking for a shift in your business, if you’re looking to get from where you are now to where you want to be, you want to make things better and you’re not quite sure exactly what to do next, then go to TopSecrets.com/shift.
You can pick up a copy of our free PDF, which will explore the shifts that need to happen between what you’re doing now and what you’re earning.
So if you want to be able to get more from your current actions or maybe even get more with fewer actions, it’s definitely worth a read TopSecrets.com/shift.
Kevin: Awesome. All well thanks so much, David. Great talking with you again. Thanks for being here.
David: Alright, thank you Kevin.
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