The Precise Formula for Discovering Your Most Profitable Customers
Don’t waste time marketing and selling to people who will never take your business to the next level. Save time and energy by discovering your most profitable customers.
A great deal about marketing has changed over the last few years, but mostly what’s changed is the overall way people shop and buy and that’s what you have to understand in order to thrive in the world today.
Building the trust and rapport needed to convert a lead into a client can be a slow and difficult process—especially when you as the owner or your sales team has to adjust to changes in this buying environment. But what if instead of constantly struggling uphill with unqualified leads, every prospect in your pipeline was profitable right from the start?
Impossible? Hardly. All you need is the right formula to discover what profitable clients looks like in the most specific way possible.
The secret to increasing your profitability isn’t more marketing—it’s targeting. Don’t squander your marketing budget and hundreds of hours generating leads that take your business nowhere. Find your profitable client from the outset, and everyone wins.
Segment Your Client Base
Create a spreadsheet of your clients and focus on segmenting your client base between normal accounts and your most successful accounts. Your best clients or most successful accounts should have the following two key behaviors: they are profitable and also refer business to you.
Dive Deeper
From your client base above start looking at the characteristics of these successful accounts or best clients. You’re searching for any common characteristics that are shared by this client base.
Here’s what you are deep diving for:
- Demographics – Business2Business (B2B) demographics could be the type of industry, the job title of that individual, the years that a company has been in business, and/or revenue levels. Business2Consumer (B2C) the demographics could be age, sex, illness, income, and a particular area of town.
- Psychographics – Understand where do they hang out, what do they read, what do they listen to, what do they search online, what makes them tick, what triggers them to go looking for a solution
- Challenges or Problem – Marketing is about solving customer problems, whether those are problems customers are currently facing, or problems they will face as their marketplace evolves and their needs change.
- Real Quotes – Include a few real quotes taken during your interviews that represent your persona well. This will make it easier for employees to relate to and understand your persona.
Start Building Your Profitable Client Profile
Now armed with the information of what your best clients or most successful accounts look like and their characteristics, develop a detailed profile of your profitable clients. Then, show up in the right places (social media channels, networking events, publications, search engine, mobile) at the right time (when profitable clients are looking to solve a problem or research a solution). You may be featured in fewer publications and meet with fewer people, but you’ll close more sales.
Today’s buyers require more expertise, interaction, trust, and maintenance than ever before. So don’t waste your time courting the wrong clients. Consistently add something to the conversation: leads will listen, suspects will engage, and prospects will buy. You just have to make sure you’re talking to the right people first
Indispensable Marketing takes a process approach to developing and installing your small business marketing.