Welcome to Module One, lesson one, ideal target customer. In this lesson, you will learn how building a sustainable, scalable and repeatable sales process needs to start with a strong foundation. When you complete this lesson, you'll know how to give your sales efforts the best possible foundation by clearly and specifically defining your target customer. We'll get more into that you will learn how to find them also how to communicate to them in a way that will be authentic and compelling for you. So, before we get started with this lesson, I want to get us all into the right mindset. Think of the time and the efforts that you are going to spend during this module.

To truly understand the people that you serve as a key investment in your company's future. You are not spending time you are investing time. The reason I'm saying that right now for for this is because this module is a doozer. It's long. It has a lot of worksheets. There's a lot of work that comes with this, but this work is so important.

It is an investment. It is not a time waste, and I didn't put anything into this that I didn't think would pay you dividends in the future. So, let's jump right into it. This is Katie. Katie is my ideal target customer for my company. Satie.

It just so happens Katie and Katie, right? That was not on purpose. So Katie is a designer with a growing line of handbags. Her business is small, but she's really serious. She wants her products to look as good and photographs as they do in real life. She knows the photos are what sell the products and she worries that she will never make her business successful.

She had no idea that getting her lineup would be so hard when she started. She isn't spending enough time doing the stuff she started her business for in the first place. And she's afraid that she will fail. And everyone will say, I told you so. So here's the thing, a lot of people will say, Oh, yeah, this customer personal activity have died before. Yeah, I get it, I get it.

Well, here's the thing. We are going to go a little bit deeper. Actually scratch that a lot deeper than most people have or ever will, including your competitors. We are going to get underneath the surface of things, to really knowing and understanding the irrational fears, hopes and dreams that our ideal target customer has. You need to understand exactly what they're going through in order to be able to establish and build the level of trust with your customers that you will need to and want to. So you can see here that we speak a little bit to Katie's irrational fears and dreams, the more you understand The more effective that you're going to be, even though you're never actually going to mention these things to them, the sense of understanding and connection that you have will be really subtle, but it'll be there.

So a lot of people really get upset when we do this exercise because they'll say, Oh, I can help everybody. I don't want to exclude anybody. And I don't just have one type of customer. And you've heard this before, and you're probably even thinking a lot of this to yourself. But here's the thing, if you're selling to everybody, you're selling to nobody. Have you ever looked at a website or heard somebody talk about what they do?

And you you didn't get it? Chances are they were trying to word it or present it in such a way that it appeal to everyone and so you didn't get a sense of what they did at all. You need to generally understand your customers. The reason for this is your conversations, outreach and marketing will become easier and will be more effective. And if you don't Don't speak to one person, then you won't come across as being very clear or very understanding to the people that you're writing to everything you do, in terms of your marketing and your writing, and your communication will be so general, it will really lack any of that articulation of real understanding of who these people are, and it'll make them feel like they're being sold to. And that is not what we want.

So avoid the fear of going away from the customers that you want. Knowing that learning how to speak very clearly to one person is going to help you attract many people. And the worksheet that we're about ready to go through is going to help you stop thinking like you and start thinking like your customer. So just rest assured in that. So So back to Katie, the activity that I did in order to get myself to the point where I could kind of go deep and dark with Katie involved steps. And those are the same steps that I'm going to take you through.

But what it eventually ended in was with me writing a journal entry as if I were Katie. And I'm going to read that journal entry to you. I think one of the things that you'll notice is that it sounds like it's a real person. So here we go. When I first decided to take this to the next level, I was so excited. It felt so right.

And I was super nervous to put myself out there because it took years to get the courage and there's just so much good work out there. You know, I know that I can do it, but it was just so difficult to make this thing The first thing that was hard was getting the website together. It was challenge after challenge, then the photography was a whole new nightmare. It looked nothing like I envisioned. And I was so discouraged. I wanted to give up right then and there, but I just kept trying.

Things were hard. But I had no idea that getting my stuff out there would be so hard. I feel like my life is just endlessly figuring out ways to be found marketing and all that isn't really something I thought much about. But now I feel like it's the source of all my worries, everything just takes so much time. I find that I'm not spending any time doing the things I want to be doing in the first place, which is creating and designing. I just want some of this off my plate.

I know that if I could get things to the next level, a huge weight would be lifted, but I don't know how my boyfriend is super supportive. But I'm always either stressed or holed up in my studio or I'm on the computer trying to figure out things and we just don't get really any time for us. I know that certain things is hard, but I didn't think it would be like this. Sometimes I think that maybe we should just go back to doing this. is a hobby for family and friends. So when you hear that you realize that you know, that's not me speaking.

That's Katie. And that is the beginning of what is something that will truly connect with your customers. So the worksheet that we're going to go ahead and get started with is called the ideal target customer worksheet. I want you to download the worksheet which is in the downloads area, print it out, or work on it digitally, however you work best, you're going to be tempted to skip it, you're going to think, Oh, I'm just gonna do this in my head, or that looks like a lot of work. I'll do it later. But please don't skip it.

I promise you the time you spent on the worksheet will pay you dividends and give you a leg up on the competition. They're probably not doing this and they probably won't. So take a few days. If you must fill this out, think about it, bounce ideas come back to it. I promise you, you will be glad you did. Let's go through it together.

Here's the ideal target customer worksheet. This is a really foundational building block for your entire sales process. But you'll also find after you do this, that this will start informing and trickling into so many different areas of your company. It'll go into your marketing how you write copy on your website, what you say in your newsletters. If you do that, it'll go into everything. A lot of people, when they talk about doing a persona, they just stop with demographics, and maybe skim the surface, maybe with psychographics.

We're going to start with the demographics because that is important and go into the psychographics. But we're quickly going to dive deep below the surface. So we need to start by listing all these demographic and psychographic commonalities so that we can create a simple representation of the ideal target customer and bring that person to life. So start by listing all the traits of your ideal target customer something like you know, name and where do they live? And do they live in an apartment or a house? And what's their job?

And how much money do they make? And do they have kids? Are they single? What do what are their life beliefs? Do they attend church? Are they very political art?

You know, do they believe in? You know, are they vegan? Or, you know, something like that? What's their favorite books? What kind of music and movies do they like? What conferences do they attend?

Where do they spend their free time? Another one that's really important is what authors, teachers, subscribers or figures do they read or subscribe to online? What do they like to read and who do they like to follow? Things like that? Go ahead and fill that out here. And then, you know, we'll go a little bit deeper, deeper.

What kinds of brands do they like? And why do they like them? You know, do they love Apple because it's clean and sleek. Do they Love anthropology because it's full of a sense of discovery and wonder what's their dream vacation? Is it laying on the beach in Cancun partying? Is it India?

Is it Disneyland with their kids? Where do they like to go? And you know, where do they shop for clothes for themselves? Are they a discount shoppers? Do they love thrifting? Are they all about the high end brands they shop at Neiman Marcus, you know, who is this person?

Now go ahead and look through their eyes. This is where we're going to go ahead and take all the things that we brainstormed and bring it to life in this journal entry. It's really helpful when you do this to go ahead and close your eyes and just be quiet and be still for a moment. Think about this person and sort of tap into who they are. What is she thinking to herself, you know, even get what are the what are the specific words or phrases that she might be using. She is at the moment she's about ready to purchase your product.

What story is she telling herself what she's saying in her head? What's that inner narrative maybe sounding like? Right? The journal entry below is if you were her similar to the one I read you about Katie, include all the things that she keeps to herself that she wouldn't say out loud, or to anyone else. This is her inner narrative. Write that journal entry in her voice as though you are her.

Next, we're going to go a little bit deeper with it. Because we're in this business of solving a problem, your product that you're selling solves some sort of problem for somebody. Speaking to their need means understanding a lot more about the need. It's really easy for us to forget that anytime someone makes a buying decision, it always has a heavy emotional component to it. So get better clarity here. What keeps her awake at night worrying.

A lot of people like to say this is what keeps my customer awake at night, but they haven't really delved into that, what is it that stressing her out on a regular basis? What is she afraid to talk about? Or even really look at? Because it might trigger fear or anxiety for her? And how will she lose power or influence or control if these things don't change? This is one thing that particularly comes out because we're selling to businesses, where might she lose influence in the office?

Where might she lose power in her role? If things don't change, or if she gets worse, or the problem gets worse? And then the next step here is, you know, we're calling this area paint a picture. What does she secretly wish were true about our situation that relates to your product or maybe just about life in general? You know, another thing would be, and I found this one extremely helpful and powerful is what is the absolute dream solution? If she found out that this solution to her problem existed, what would she buy immediately, and pay almost anything for?

What does that look like? And don't try to look at through the lens of your existing product right now just try to look at it purely through the lens of this person, what do they want? Even if it's not something you offer or something that's even possible to offer? What does that solution look like? And if the stream solution could unfold perfectly for her, if it could be presented to her in just the most serendipitous way, how would that go? How would you find that?

And how, you know, how would it go in terms of, you know, becoming a reality in her life? And what would she be able to do or get or be if this dream solution that we're talking about were real, how would she achieve that future sort of idealized state and what would that look like if it were real? Now go ahead and just let it all summer. Put this in a safe place, print it out, save it somewhere, whatever you need to do, go on a walk, look at it later. Read it to others, let us do Just don't let this trip you up or stop you. It does not need to be perfect.

You just need to start. And you're going to gain a lot more insight as you go through this process. So if you feel like something's not quite right, change it, it's no big deal. The best part is this person is an ideal target customer, they aren't real anyway, so change it all you want. You're going to find after you complete this exercise, that you're going to be able to target a lot smarter. You now have such a specific idea of who this person is actually not an idea anymore.

You have a specific knowing of who this person is. You won't have to necessarily go out and cast that wide net looking for people anymore, anybody and everybody, it's expensive and it's time consuming. Now you'll be able to look at a particular channel or a particular campaign or, or method and say, will this attract her? Will this does this speak to Katy, knowing that it will be more effective that way. And by doing so, when you're speaking to just one person in a really authentic and heartfelt way, you're going to attract so many people. And the great thing about that is all of those people fit into the umbrella of Katy or whoever it is for you, in a way, so they all end up being ideal customers, even though they may not be handbag designers named Katie, for example, it will help you write better, you're going to be writing a lot of emails.

We all write a lot of emails all the time, but you're going to be writing a lot. And you need to know when you're writing these prospecting emails that we're going to learn how to do, how to write really authentically because if you can write like you're writing to a single person, even though you are actually going to be writing to multiple people, it will make that email much more Be authentic and it'll connect better. And as a result, you'll resonate stronger. So chances are your ideal target customer is just inundated with haphazard messages. I mean, we'll you'll see some later. It's just ridiculous how, you know, half baked some of these things are of people just trying to get our attention like, hey, Katie.

Hey, Katie. Hey, Katie, you know what speaking authentically will get people's attention, speak directly to her, and it will resonate better in her inbox. The next worksheet is the current versus the future state matrix. I want you to go ahead and do this right after the ideal target customer worksheet, you'll be tempted to skip it again. But I promise you, it will be worth your time and it'll help you get a lot better understanding and clarification of how you exactly and your product fits into the total picture that we discussed in the ideal target customer activity. So let's go ahead and pull that worksheet up.

I will walk you through it. Here's the worksheet, we're going to think through the current versus the future state of what our product or service is going to accomplish for our customer. So you can see it's divided into currently, as well as after average day mental state status and perception or feelings and emotions. So just to give you a sense, in some context, we'll talk through it really quickly, all examples generalizations. average day, currently, maybe they are currently very stressed. They have a lot on their plate, they're doing the job of two people, they don't have the resources that they need to get their job done, right.

Their mental state is they're feeling really torn. They're very frustrated because they know that they're not being everything that they could be they know they're dropping the ball, they know that they're not showing up fully and they know that They're having to essentially fall through on certain things that they really wish they didn't have to, but there's simply not enough resources and time to go around their status and their perception as a result is you know, maybe people think, oh, gosh, you know that person Katie, she's so hurried, she's just all over the place. And, you know, her desk is a mess, and she's all over and she can't get anything done and you know you better if you want to, if you need something from Katie, you better ask early because there's not a good chance you're gonna get it later. You know, maybe her status is she's a middle manager, she's, or she's kind of lower level and she's really feeling like maybe she's never going to get recognized for what she can truly do.

Because she's just so buried in all of these day to day tasks that don't really matter, but are part of her job. As a result, her feelings and emotions are she's just feeling stuck and she's feeling frustrated, and she's also feeling afraid. She's afraid she'll never get to show her value and she's never she'll never be able to show really what she You can truly do and what she can truly bring to the organization. So after your you know, miracle miracle product comes in and fixes the situation for her. It's great software, it's, you know, organization, whatever it is. Whoever today is much more streamlined, she's still busy, but she's productive.

She still has a lot to do, but she's able to handle it. And even more importantly, she can prioritize, she knows how to say that something isn't going to be done. She knows how to tell somebody in a way that they understand. And she knows how to keep everything on the rails. And that has in turn helped her mental state. Now she's feeling a lot calmer.

She still gets stressed. She still has deadlines, but it's not constant. It's not a frequent intense feeling of falling short that she had before. The status and perception that she has now as a result in her organization, as you know, Katie really stepped up to the bat. You know, this person has really made things better for us, you know, she gets busy and she's got more on her plate that she can handle. But we recognize that and we know that she's really able to bring value.

And, you know, I really think that we should allocate more resources and more time to her, she's got a lot to contribute, you know, she's, you know, let's really see what she can do. She's really been shining lately, you know, things like that. And, you know, as a result, the feelings and emotions that maybe she have is just feeling so much more safe and stable and centered and peaceful, you know, and where she's at. She knows that now she's able to show her value, she's feeling more like she's able to shine as who she is in her role, and she's not having to be overshadowed by the things she's not doing, because she's just too busy. These are all examples. So again, print this out, and think through it after you've done your ideal target customer worksheet for yourself, or for after you've done it for yourself or your ideal target customer.

So before we get into the final worksheet, I want to go ahead and just have this conversation with you. When you're first starting out, you're going to need and want every single customer, but there's going to come a point where it's just not worth it. A lot of people don't realize this until it's too late but bad fits can do a lot of damage in your business. So this is a super common thing that a lot of people do insert in trainings and a lot of people do and these types of things, but I wanted to include a section of this first module to really get clear on bad fits and red flags. Bad fits and red flags cannot only hurt you. They can hurt your business in the long run and they can hurt your team.

So it's really important to understand as you're moving forward, sometimes you're going to have to take on customers that maybe are at the fringes of what you consider your ideal target. Maybe they're just not fully there. But it's more important to you to have the clarity and the understanding of why they might be a risk to your organization. Rather than have it be a surprise to you. Go ahead and download the attach worksheet and print it out. Again, however you work best, and you'll be tempted to skip this portion.

But please don't because after you've had a couple experiences with some bad fits in your company and some red flags, you're really going to want to make sure that any of that gets minimized moving forward. As soon as I was really able to outline that there were certain aspects of customers for me that were creating a lot of problems in the organization. It was hard for me to say Nope, we can't work with those types of customers anymore. And it's not because we don't love them. It's because we're not properly set up to serve them. Things got so much easier and so much better.

So if you're experiencing this or anything like this in your business, I really encourage you to do this worksheet. So first, I want you to think about all the customers you've had that weren't a great fit for you. Maybe it was really difficult to help them. It was like a help me help you moment all the time. They weren't happy, your team wasn't happy, perhaps you lost money on them. However it may have played out you have to admit to yourself that you did not get into business to have this type of experience serving your customers.

So list out all the traits You know, I'm very similar to what we did before list of traits you know of that are a bad fit. It could be things like they don't have the budget, or they've never spent any money on marketing before, or they think results will magically happen overnight. Or they're always making last minute requests, whatever it might be, list those things out and start to create a general picture, we're not going to go so deep as to you know, give them a name bad fit Betty or whatever. But, you know, get a general picture of what a bad fit for your business might look like. The next thing I want you to think about is, how do they find you start thinking about what channels or methods these bad fit customers seem to be contacting you through it might be different than the way that your ideal customers seem to find you.

It might not be but it's really important to think about it. Is there a particular referral source? Is there a particular channel is there a particular source of traffic that's yielding these bad fit customers? Think about that and you know, again, this may take Some time and you may even have to talk to a couple people in your company and ask like, Hey, you know, how did you know bad fit Betty find us, you know, where did she How did she get, you know, kind of into the pipeline and, and go on with us and see what people say, the next thing to think about is how large of a business are they? Or where do they tend to be in their growth, thinking about this will also help you not target them on accident. Maybe they're a really big company, maybe bad fit.

Betty, you know, came from a large organization that was sort of stagnant kind of just plateauing, and she really didn't want to change and maybe your company sells organizational change consulting, I don't know. Or maybe she was really, really new in a business and she didn't fully understand her business didn't really fully understand the challenges they didn't even know quite sure what they what they were selling. Maybe they were total startup, whatever it might be, where are they in their growth? And is there any way anything that is common among Stir bad fits that might be different than your ideal customers. Next, what industry or category were they? And how did it differ?

Or how does it differ all from the industry or category of ideal customer? So, you know, for example, this could say, Oh, I'm a consultant and I work with, you know, apparel industry companies in the apparel industry brands, but for some reason, I just don't work well with swimwear brands or I don't know, outdoor brands or denim, you know, whatever that might be. You could say, you know, it just kind of seems funny that everyone who who has worked with me who did swimwear, it just didn't work out, you know, and just go ahead and note that it may not be something that you define as a bad fit, but it's important to have an awareness that they all seem to have those commonalities there. And then what aspects or attributes of your products did your bad fits most value? Why were they buying your product or even if they said kind of one thing and did another which we know customers tend to Do what?

What is it that they ultimately were wanting from you? So then, you know the flip side of that, what's the aspect of your product that they least valued or did not understand? What's something that you really have sort of maybe baked into your value proposition that was kind of lost on them? Is there anything like that that seemed to be prevalent in your bad fits? Are there any changes or requests outside of your normal product that they tend to want? Is there anything that they're asking for that's like, you know, kind of not part of the core product or core service, but that you sort of find yourself giving them to make them happy.

Anything outside your workflow, any customizations, any extra work that they always seem to need? What does that look like and what problems or friction points come up when you're working with them that you don't experience with your ideal customer so sometimes, you know, your bad fit customers might always seem to be in a hurry. Maybe they always want super quick time frame turnarounds because this particular persona who is a bad fit for you? doesn't plan I don't know, what are those friction points that come up? And what do they look like? And how is that different than your ideal customer?

The next thing here is just some quick math. Now, I don't want you to freak out because I like to do something I talk about this all the time is I like quick iPhone math. If it's complicated. You know, I generally say you know, what, what's the quick iPhone math, give me the, and that's what this is. So we're gonna figure out real quick how much an average bad fit yields you or cost you sort of in relation to a good bit. So first, how much on average per visit to your bad fit customers cost to serve?

So I want you to consider what's the labor add in maybe the charge of customer service or your customer service people on the phone with them for hours? Do they have change requests, you need any special supplies? What does all that look like when you come together to serve a bad fit customer Think about that, again for your good fit customers as well, and get those numbers down somewhere. Now, how much on average per visit? And per year? Does this bad fit customer generate you in revenue.

So take the average amount they spent, let's say they spend, you know, set, you know, I don't know, like $1,000 to keep it easy, they spent $1,000 with you perfect. And they need you or visit with you once a quarter, so four times a year, so their estimated annual revenue is $4,000. Now what's that gross margin per customer take the cost to serve per visit. So let's say it cost them $100. It cost $100 to serve them per visit, times that by four $400 a year times by the estimated number of visits. That is your total cost to serve them per year.

And so then take the total revenue, subtract out the total cost and you get your gross margin. This is how much money you make. Made from this customer. Do the quick math again for an ideal customer does it compare? Sometimes it will and sometimes it won't. But what you will very commonly see is you don't spend that much difference in supplies or in anything related to sort of general fulfilment overhead, but you're going to, you're spending a lot more time in customer service, labor and change requests or anything like that related to trying to make your core product better fit for your bad fit customer.

And again, it may turn out maybe they're the same, maybe the cost of your bad fit customer is just purely emotional stress, whatever it might be. It's also helpful just to know these numbers, if you haven't done these numbers for your business, that's definitely something you need to do as well. So I don't want you getting stuck. I know this is a lot to work on, especially for the first module right out the gate. But just like your business, just know this is all a work in progress, it does not have to be perfect. In fact, it will not be perfect.

The best part about this is you're going to learn so much about your ideal customer. You're going to refine this over time, and it will just get better and better. The framework for thinking about your customer like this is going to serve you for years to come in whatever business you've started. So I just encourage you to please do the worksheets. Think about it, work on it. If you have an opportunity to interview people, or get feedback do so you will not regret it.

We'll see you in the next lesson.