One of the most important questions you have to answer for yourself as you build your business is who is your target market. This is especially true now with the economy putting pressure on you and your competitors vying for the budget conscious customer.
I have found that there are 3 questions that you need to answer to sort out which is your ideal customer and worth putting your marketing efforts into pursuing.
1 – Who do you enjoy working with?
Silly as it seems, many people are using all their time, intelligence and energy to do it the hard way. Wouldn’t you rather work with people it gives you pleasure to help succeed? Make a list of the characteristics of the businesses, industries, and style of people you most enjoy working with.
2 – Who has the greatest need AND the desire to be helped?
OK, it may seem self evident, but I constantly find I’m coaching my students and coaching clients to get their attention off “the people who should want things to work better” and onto “the people who are looking for solutions.” They are not necessarily the same people!
3 – Who values the result you will get for them?
One of my favorite clients selected a target market filled with professionals who want a Platinum result for pennies. The want the result but don’t value investing to get it. They don’t value my client’s expertise at getting the result. Life is way too short to keep trying to prove yourself to this type of customer. You are better off taking the time to find people who value what you do up front and them find more of them, over and over again!
I’ll share with you that I had to go through these questions several times for myself. For many years I was a generalist/specialist – helping many kinds of businesses increase their productivity. But it was only when I focused on small businesses, entrepreneurs and so on that I could create a message that matched their need.
My recommendation: The clearer you define your target market, the easier you can speak to their needs and the results you create for them.
That is why I created The Business Accelerator Club to train you how to build your business by increasing your productivity and taking your proven expertise and turning it into New Streams Of Income: I’ve done it, I’m teaching it, and I continue to do it everyday, consistently bringing to the Club Members the leading edge strategies that I am using today to build my business and my client’s businesses.
