Finding customers five top rated methods for zeroing in on your market to find your best customers. To be more effective at developing relationships, you should always take time to describe your best customer. This is the customer that gives you the biggest bang for your buck. This is the customer that pays bills on time and uses you exclusively for all its business needs in your area of expertise. These are also customers with whom you have an excellent working relationship. These customers know they can rely on you for the services in which you specialize and for whom you will go out of your way to make sure they're happy at all times.

And if they're not happy, these customers know they can rely on you to analyze the problem and come to a win win solution. The best customer is the one that knows You are the best solution for their business pain. You are the one to help them pass through trouble times and come up the other end more profitable as you will be at the same time. These relationships develop with ease and not take long periods of time to solidify. The best customer is the customer on which you can focus your energies and at the same time be able to help them focus on their core competencies. Since the customer that is best for you is also the customer that is best for your competition.

You must nurture this customer and not let them hang out to dry. These important that you have a process in place that allows you to make sure this customer is always happy. For example, one day I came across a small Human Resources company that specialized in sales personnel. The company was working with many types of clients, but found that certain clients brought in more money than others. The company decided to profile his best customers using that process. file it then concentrated it sales and marketing efforts on the potential customers that fit the profile.

The result was that for the same effort, the company made more money by not wasting time on clients that did not pay off. Once you have defined your best customer, it would be beneficial to look more closely at how you describe what you do best. The words that you choose to describe your business needs to be very few and to the point, which is why such a description is often called an elevator pitch. The pitch also needs to be worded so that you're you have identified your best customer and you can be easily understood as to what you do and how you can help them. What type of fish are you? This may sound like a strange question, but who pays you the most understanding where you sit now in the list it's important to know some people act big and tend to steer away from little fish or just swallow them up.

No, you might be wondering why the analogy. Let's start with knowing where you are with this. I consider myself to be a little fish in a little pond. That is, I am a happy fish. This is to actually to my advantage. I know lots of people, but they do not necessarily know me.

It is therefore my job to make sure they know who I am. So with a little fish image, I can swim around the pond very quickly, any tidbits. These tidbits are often door openers to further meetings to learn more about my target audience. Now, you should consider also what type of fish you are and what type of fish you were after. If you want to land big fish than you had better know a great deal about them. You will want to know their business inside out who they currently use to service their area that you want to be it for them understand the competition you have in getting their attention and know if they have the budget to use your product or services.

That's just a start. Now, you also have to find a way to get their attention and being a little fish can pose challenges. This is where you have to work your way up the food chain until you're introduced. You still do not have a good handle on your target market yet, but you do have a general idea of the size of the company you want to approach. Step one is therefore knowing what type of fish you are after. This means focus on the size of the company you want to service.

Take some time to think about the best place for your organization. For me at small business owners, I have done much Work with larger organizations. So by experience I know my niche is small business. The best customer is one that knows you are the best solution for their business pain. You were the one to help pass through troubled times and come out on the other end more profitable just as we had mentioned before, so which are you little fish, big pond, big fish, little pond, or like me, a happy fish. One size does not fit all.

We're going to talk a little bit about working relationships. Let's start with everyone. I have a health product that is good for lowering blood pressure. I know it is good for most people even if they don't have high blood pressure. Note that I said most people however if I tried to sell my products to people that do not have high blood pressure, I will not get the same results and the response that I want, I would be spinning my wheels indefinitely trying to get to market with my product to everyone. What I need to do in this case is to concentrate on building working relationships with only those that have the problem, which is not everyone.

Everybody also creates the same problem. If I walk into a networking event, I am facing everybody in the room. Now I'm sure a few people will have high blood pressure. And I know a lot of people do have the problem, but not everybody in the room. I need to hunt and find these people by asking questions as we are in a conversation. Questioning will be part of the third degree lesson later in this course.

I still have to find a way to sift through the group to find specific people that have the problem. I still have no clue about age, income, gender, or anything else at this point, everything is another word that makes my shoulders cringe when it comes to making an offer for products and services. You can't possibly be everything to everyone and everybody. If you were, then the rest of us could go home and sulk, because you will get all the business. This is the focus part, get to the core, and understand the types of people that you meet and what they need from your products. One of the biggest problems with networking, is we're not too sure where we're going with it half the time.

So what were you thinking? Well, first of all, I'm thinking about the competition. The competition offers a way to get to your target audience much more quickly if you take the time to start. who's buying their product? It is likely you will find more details about who will buy your product. Not only will you figure out the demographics, age, gender, income and education, you may also be able to determine how much they're spending.

After all, you only want customers that can afford to pay for your products and services. And if they are already spending with the competition, then you are going to find a way to entice them to buy from you. You see, you must go beyond the demographics To find out more about the marketing tactics that are being used. Do they buy from fliers, a coupon offering specials, or just simply a need for the product or service? There is much more to this than just the numbers learn to look beyond them to the psychographics as well. So where do those customers live?

Now that's an interesting component, thinking about those customers and where they're living, is called geographics. Most businesses want to focus on local and perhaps regional. So if you live in California, you could think in terms of Southern California or Northern California. If you live in British Columbia, you would think in terms of the Lower Mainland or the island or perhaps the Okanagan. It is possible that you will want to expand beyond regional, but then that is a different subject altogether. What else are we thinking about?

You're thinking about how to zero in on the customer research and study to find your ideal customer takes more than just a little time. I know that most of us want to get to it and get that business. However, if you do take the time to truly analyze your ideal customer and pinpoint your service area, including demographics and psychographics your chances of hitting the target almost every time is significantly increased. Think about this course, and the book from which the course has sprung. I mentioned that small business was the ideal target. I did not go much further than that before.

But now let's dig a little deeper. It is true small businesses ideal, but not all small business needs what I have to offer. I need customers that need the skill set of networking, defining their audience and getting more sales than they have had in the past. Many retail businesses do not necessarily want my products as they get foot traffic. At least most of them do. They are more likely needing marketing services before they'll ever need mine.

Now taking it one step further, I do not consider gender in my demographics, although I could. Business owners tend to be mixed. What I really need to know is the ability to pay. I know people fall into three categories. One is that look for free will Ones that like a discount and sometimes a heavy discount, and ones that will buy outright. What type of customer Are you looking for the secrets of the Continental Divide?

Let's first take a look at cultures. Each culture has a different way of looking at business and their products and services. Not all products and services can be sold same way to the same audience. in different cultures, it is your job to understand the cultural aspects of your customer. If they're female, age 30 to 45 have children are in a management position in the workforce, make their own buying decisions and our specific descent then your marketing efforts need to be geared for that person. It is key to know that when you market to individuals within a group and not to the group, more sales will come your way more on that later.

Products and services are for people in North America with various ethnic backgrounds. This does not close the door to other countries. I just have my target in that area. What about you? Now let's take look at countries. boundaries between nations are much easier to cross when you use the products and services, you're better off to become well known in one country first before attempting to infiltrate another.

Here in North America. We have Canada, United States and Mexico. I concentrate on the first two and even then there are huge regional differences that need to be addressed. So let's look at connections. Connecting is easy when you put yourself out there. I belong to many social media platforms including LinkedIn.

I have a growing network of over 19,000 people. The biggest issue hears the fact that my connections are unfocused and communicating regarding my business is much more difficult to achieve. I attend many events and add people to my list, but once again, it is not focused on my target audience. So what can you do to resolve these types of issues? First, zero in on the ideal client. Second, make an attempt at meeting and greeting in person or through social media your ideal on a regular basis, and you don't have to sell them on the first meeting.

There's no point in gathering names of your target audience if you're not going to communicate in a regular basis. connections are good if you make them count. Who else wants a buying audience? There are many different places to get your buying audience. The first one that comes to mind of course is friends of friends. Here it goes.

Everybody knows someone that Come perhaps use your product or service, you just have to ask. If you focus on your business core, know the type of customer you are looking for, and asking becomes much easier. Do you know anyone that can use a book on networking is far too general a question to ask to get any reasonable response? If you ask, Do you know anyone who owns a small home based business, your response rate will shoot up significantly? If you have gone through everything you can to define your audience and asking the right question will be much easier. Now, you do not have to be specific about who you ask the question as the person you're talking to, is not necessarily your target.

They may respond that they are interested or they may just refer you to others. Be aware some people do not like to give referrals just make note of who they are. So the next time you can Change your tactics. I never refuse to ask for a referral. I just changed the way I asked it. So another way to look at this is who are the ideal referral sources.

Many of us look to find the ideal referring partner. I feel the idea is good and have found I can offer do better by outsourcing and out surfacing an existing customer and getting a great testimonial. Customers are the best source of referrals as they not only refer to you, they recommend you. My best advice is that you need to constantly find ways of getting new customers as long as your current customers are well looked after. What is the point in getting new business when your pipeline is leaking out the other end. Now let's take a look at ideal networking events.

The ideal event is the one that Where your target audience is attending and they are looking for products and services the minute you walk out the door. If this scenario is not possible than your ideal event attendees fit most of the definition of your list of the ideal customer. We will discuss more about events in the next lesson. Networking like the rich and famous. Here are the ideas to remember from this lesson. What type of fish are you?

Big or little fish? It does not matter as long as you know what type of fish you are and what type of fish your target market or audience is as well. Warning. One size does not fit all. Everyone, everybody everything, demographics, psychographics and geographics all play a role in defining your ideal customer. What were you thinking?

What do you know about your competition and their customers? No more than they do if you want to gain market share and be very definitive about who your customer is, the secrets of the Continental Divide. cultures, countries and connections all figure into the formula for defining your audience. Take time, and get into the details when knowing who will buy from you. Who else wants to buy an audience? referrals can make the difference if you want to build a business quickly.

Ask friends, family and others for referrals. As long as you can be very specific about what you are looking for. Don't neglect your current customers as they are excellent source of leads. I hope you were able to clearly define your audience based on your focus of your core business. Another piece of the networking puzzle lies in you being able to do that termen your expertise in the form of your specialty. We will see you in the next lesson.