Profile your Customer/Client/Patient

By Steven Lynn
If you’ve never completed an exercise on developing your client profile, I would challenge you to drop everything and do one right now. Taking this action will save your businesses lots of time and money, but only if you’re interested in working less and keeping more. It’s not easy but so worth it and all successful businesses know precisely the demographics of their client’s profile. Be creative if necessary, even if you’re not sure of the answers. The goal is to paint a mental picture of who your ideal client/customer/patient is.

As you develop this profile, keep in mind the clients you currently enjoy serving, those who need your service or product, who can afford them and who you’d like to attract more of.

Step #1: Answer the following questions.

1. Who is my ideal customer in terms of age, gender, education, home ownership, income, and if you’re a B2B, what are the ideal business’s annual sales, employee count, and geographical location?
2. What other sorts of products/services do they buy that relate to mine?
3. When does a client have a need for my product or service? If you’re B2B, what role does your customer have in their company?
4. Where do they go to get the information they need about my products or services?
5. How did they find out about my company?
6. What’s important to them?
7. What do they think of the quality and value of my product or service?
Step #2: Compare your ideal client profile against an actual client. Look for similarities and differences. Analyze both the similarities and the differences to insure that the perfect lead is indeed the perfect client. Once done, put all the profile characteristics into a paragraph that summarizes and details these identifying traits. When you’re done, your profile may be similar to this example:

“My ideal client is a small to medium sized business owner. His annual sales are above one million but less than 5 million, he understands the value of marketing, though he may not have the skills, time or employees to keep it in house. He also invests in other outside services, and offers web-site sales. He reads small business blogs (which is how he found my company). He values customer relationships and trust over just getting more web traffic. He finds my prices a little high, but knows that the investment is worthwhile”.

Here’s a hint: If you feel you are still guessing, take your best customers and ask them to fill out a survey or call them on the phone and ask them these same questions. Using feedback through surveys are excellent tools that will confirm your data. Additionally, valued customers won’t feel imposed upon, they will actually appreciate the opportunity to help.

Most business owners I meet believe they know who their ideal client is but when asked can’t clearly describe them. They often say I know who I’m looking for but I’m not sure what they look like. If you used that formula as a police investigator your arrest record would look pretty dismal.

Need help defining your client profile? We do that! Can’t seem to get your business to grow because all you’re doing is replacing lost clients? We can help! Maybe you know your client’s profile but don’t know how to market to them; we can help with that too! We believe you don’t know what you don’t know and we here to fill in those gaps in your business knowledge. Give Estrada Strategies a try, for free*, no obligation, all it takes is a call to learn more!

*Free 90 minute business evaluation, no obligation!