Ideal Customer meets Real World
My mate Jeffrey reckons that 9 times out of 10, people will shut down if you mention the “ideal client”.
And now that he has mentioned it, I look back on my experiences with tracking down the elusive “ideal client” and I know what he means. Your eyes glaze over and it becomes a purely clinical exercise.
However, people are not clinical or cold, nor can they be represented purely by statistics. Humans are warm blooded emotional beings.
Jeffrey has developed a way of making a real emotional connection with your “ideal client”, using Avatars.
It starts with asking about a customer who has really annoyed you.
He teases these negative attributes out of you relatively painlessly. Then he reverses these negative attributes to establish the positive credentials for the Avatar.
Of course there is a lot more to it than that but the outcome is amazing. You end up with a real connection to real customers.
If you then take that customer Avatar and accurately assess your demographics, you will work out whether you have a target market, how big it is and where to find those real world customers.
Hey Yvonne:
Thanks so much for such a great review of our conversation last week. When I first sat down to figure out who my “Ideal Client” was I became immediately distracted, fidgety and couldn’t wait to do something else. Trying to figure out what I would do if I had all the moolah in the world or what type of legacy I wanted to leave for my (non existing) kids gave me the creeps. It did the exact opposite of what it was intended to do. I knew that it was a valuable exercise to do though and I kept with it.
After briefing you on my findings, we both found that by inverting the “Ideal Client” work on its head gave both of us much better results. For example, I asked myself, “Who annoys the sh*t out of me?” I mean, “Who drives me nuts?!” Once I got myself going I realized I had quite and extensive list of attributes of non ideal clients. Now, this is where it get’s interesting. Check this out:
“Jeffrey: His name happens to be (X); he fit quite a few of those characteristics. He was very pushy, he liked to intimidate with his like social status, with his economic status, with his so called knowledge base even though there was a severe lack of. So yeah like someone who wants to intimidate me that way, someone who says they want to be managed yet they have no intention to be managed at all, and that are actually trying to actively set me up to be their bi*ch quite frankly. That annoys me like a lot.”
That’s pretty specific, no? Now let’s flip those characteristics on their head:
1: Opposite of Pushy – Humble, grounded, relaxed
2: Opposite of Intimidate – Put at ease, collaborate
3: Opposite of Making me your Bi*ch – Someone that is cooperative, sharing and trusts my advice
Pretty cool, no? Try it out and see what happens. Put the “Ideal” stuff away for a bit and explore what type of client or situation drives you nuts.
When you’re done venting, just find the opposite of what you don’t like and within an hour you’ll have the most perfect, super duper, ideal anything you ever imagined!