Are you Attracting the Right Customers….or the Wrong Ones?
Do you offer your product or service to anyone who will listen, and even if they are not listening, do you offer it anyway?
How can you stop offering to everyone, so that you are just saying yes to the right types of customers? This can sometimes be quite daunting and involve a leap of faith, but it can also be very liberating…..as well as financially rewarding!
So how do you work out which customers are right for you and which are wrong?
Do a Bit of Sorting
As a small business coach I often help my clients to segment their customers into groups – sorted by their attitude and behaviours rather than more traditional demographic means, such as age or where they live. Having done this it is easy for them to create different messages for different groups (as well as decide on the groups they don’t want as customers). This is a strategic marketing tool that all the big brands use very successfully.
Let me show you what I mean from my own business. To begin with my doors were open to all small business owners – Come on in! I can help you! Let’s get started!
However, pretty quickly I created my first ‘segmentation’ and split potential customers into ‘Doers’ and ‘Dreamers or Twiddlers’. As their name implies Doers do. They get on with things and subsequently achieve results. They are fun and rewarding to work with and it is great helping a Doer achieve even more than they could on their own.
The Dreamers or Twiddlers are another kettle of fish – I have nothing against dreaming, in fact it is one of the first things I encourage new clients to do when creating their vision. But once you have dreamt, you have to do.
Dreamers or Twiddlers don’t get on with things, and there is always going to be something that is getting in their way, or something that they are twiddling with rather than making bigger steps. Some coaches work brilliantly with this kind of group – so now when I come across a Dreamer or Twiddler I politely say no, but always have another coach I can recommend they could work with. These other coaches refer back to me in return – so by saying no to the customer I don’t want I get back the sort of customers I do want. (more…)