How do you go about finding and selling to your perfect customer? Do you know who you’re looking for? And if you know who, do you know how to get their attention and transform them from a prospect to a delighted customer or client?
Identifying your perfect customer:
Who is your perfect customer? If you have been in business for awhile and have made successful sales, think about the characteristics of your best customers. How old are they? Are they married or single? Do they have families? What are their hobbies, and what are their interests? What about your business has resonated with them? What pets do they have? What are their favorite restaurants? What music do they like? What do they hate? Do they support charities, and if so, which ones? Do they use the telephone, or email, or text? If you don’t know, make a guess.
If you don’t have a track record of customers yet, create a profile of who you think would be your perfect customer. Invent the person, with all of the details above.
In either case, write an extensive biography, including everything you possibly can. And then set it aside for a day or two.
Targeting Your Perfect Customer:
Next, pull out your perfect customer biography, and read it.
This will tell you two critical factors:
- Where this person can be found, and
- What will emotionally resonate with this person.
Selling to Your Perfect Customer:
The only thing that sells is emotion. Even the most technical sale has an emotional component. You might be selling machine parts with precise specifications, but the purchaser is buying to get the relief of checking something off their “to do” list. And the purchaser just might be buying from you and not a competitor because they happen to feel you are more approachable or trustworthy.
What emotions are motivating your perfect customer? How can you position your product to tap into these emotions? It’s no accident that toilet paper brands feature adorable babies or cute fuzzy bears. It’s also no accident that a men’s hair salon features race car drivers in full gear.
Connecting with Your Perfect Customer:
Once you’ve targeted your message to resonate with your customer, determine the location and modality to deliver that message. Go back to your customer profile. Where does this person spend time physically? What events do they attend? Where are they on social media? Do they read newspapers, trade journals or magazines, or are they predominantly online? If they listen to broadcast media, which types and channels do they listen to or view?
Putting it All Together:
Take your message, which has been honed to resonate with your perfect customer, and send it to the places they favor via the communication channels they use.
None of us have the time or resources to market to everyone in the world. Focus your marketing time, money and energy to promote your product to the people most likely to need it, through channels they use, targeted to places they frequent. Resonate emotionally with your perfect customer, and boost your selling effectiveness.
- Ellen Huxtable,MBA
- Advantage Business Concepts