Understanding Your True Ideal Customers
June 16th, 2021 // 1:15 pm @ Scott Manning
There isn’t a more direct way of saying it other than some business owners get caught up in the “building a better mouse trap” instead of opportunities, in transactions instead of relationships.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are breakthroughs needed and evolution required in every business. We could have a long discussion about big giant American staples of companies that are now extinct because they didn’t evolve and change with the trends.
However, generally speaking, business owners use “working on” their product or service as an excuse to not do the things that are actually necessary for growth.
You have to be great at what you are doing, that’s a given for today’s message. You wouldn’t be here if you were neglectful of your business development and customer experience.
Case in point, you can’t grow a restaurant with bad food, at least not for long. You can trick them to walk through the door once but they won’t come back and nor will anyone they tell.
All that to say, continuing my point from last week, know your customer, improve your messaging, and build a more valuable math formula so that you are in control by reverse engineering what you want to happen instead of just hoping to be successful.
Smart business owners know what every lead, phone call, first appointment, initial customer, and the long-term value are worth – from start to finish.
Knowing this is critical as it helps you to make much more informed decisions about your business. It also gives you specific metrics to measure and to then decide where to go to work on. If you are going to tweak and improve systems and processes then you have something to base it on and see where and how you can move the needle. Unfortunately, many business owners just don’t know their numbers and therefore they are making decisions based on feelings.
Perception maybe reality to your customer, your team, life in general but it isn’t business reality. Numbers are reality. But please don’t stop there, it is important that you understand and dive deeper into the story behind the numbers. That’s where the secrets for success are hidden.
And that loops us back to knowing your customer. Here’s a question… which customers should you know the best?
Well, it may not be as obvious as you think. Let’s start with this…
You care most about and want to focus on the ones that say yes. The people who believe. The customers that vote with their dollars. If you understand more about them, you can work to turn others into them. Done right you can even get their help in doing it with testimonials, stories, and even ambassadors, among many other strategies to do so.
Just like in your life, if you were focusing on everything negative or your weaknesses instead of developing your strengths and focusing on the positive, you can waste your time, energy, and resources.
One of the most important lessons I ever learned is this: if you try to be for everyone you will be for no one at all.
You want to build it for the best and focus on attracting more of those to your business. Plus, you will still win over some of the others. Don’t fret, you will certainly repel some people but that’s okay because you will have more time, capacity, energy, and resources to dedicate to the most appropriate customers for you (who also happen to be the most valuable and appreciative ones).
By knowing the ‘right’ customer for you, you can begin designing everything to attract these people.
Think about this for a moment: are you playing the middle? Are you trying to appeal to everyone and thus appealing to no one specifically?
Remember, you will still fill up your business with plenty of customers, it’s about elevating the “customer population” within your business by being very deliberate.
For my doctors, most mistake this by “patients with money” instead it is actually not that, though that can be part of a “qualified” patient at some point – the real value and the patients my doctors want are “patients with motivation.” That leads to them wanting to get healthy, wanting to take action, wanting to be helped and therefore serious about ‘finding a way to invest’ versus just having the money to do it.
It does take both but one is much easier to figure out (money) than the other (motivation).
So, which customer are you calling out to, what is your system built to do deliver, and who precisely is your experience set-up to serve?
We’ll move into marketing and sales next week because there is just so much to say about it. It is where the rubber meets the road and where there is so much room to increase profitability when a business chooses its sales system to be engineered for success. It can be predictable and reliable so that you can manage your business by the numbers and then make improvements accordingly.
Your homework this week is about reassessing your ideal customer and taking a deeper look at every part of your business and which customer it is catering to – more of the customers you want or rather the ones that you don’t…
On top of that, look at your numbers, the numbers that matter, that tell you what is going to happen…
For my doctors, the numbers we really want to look at are nearly the opposite of what the industry would tell you to pay attention to because they have little bearing on how to make decisions. Instead we look for the numbers that drive growth and results…
Daily opportunity (diagnosis)
Conversion (case acceptance)
Visit value (building a successful day)
All of these lead to what their patients are actually worth and then we can work on systems and experiences to increase them. However, without knowing them – and there are more, these are the big three that lead to others – we won’t know where to focus to better control the future. Most focus on past indicators (such as collections), but they don’t show where we are headed, only where we have been.
This is my principle of being future focused. It has everything to do with these three areas of business mastery: customers, marketing and sales, financial success and the money formula of your business.
Let’s see where this leads you. In every paragraph there is something you can do to make a positive, profitable difference in your business.
Avoid the urge to fall into that business owner trap of just working “in” your business instead of “on” your business. Where you put your focus and efforts will mean all of the difference in creating a business that gets more high value customers for you that become a rising tide for everything else.
Category : Blog