No Customers = No Business
The first stop on your business growth journey is to identify your ideal customer. It is impossible to grow your business if you don’t know who you are serving. That is why identifying your ideal customer is the foundation for business growth.
If you don't have customers, you don't have a company. You may be amazing at what you do, but if you can't find the right people, you're never going to stay in business. It all starts by solving a problem for the right person.
The truth of the matter is this: you shouldn't run after just any customer. What you need to focus on is attracting the right kind of customer. The type of customer that pays you and that you actually like!
Who are your best customers?
I want you to take a second and think of your BEST customers. You have to determine what is important to you. These aren't necessarily the customers who pay you the most money. Instead, I want you to think of the customers that love you and that you love to work for. The ones that get you out of bed on Monday morning.
Now that you have a customer in mind, why do they like working with you? Why do you like working with them? Take a moment and write down your answers.
Do they pay on time? Do they ask you for the least revisions? Do they share about you with other people?
Once you identify the traits and characteristics of your ideal customer, you can focus on the next part: identifying their problem. here...
Are you solving the right problem?
Now you have an idea of who your ideal customer is. What problem can you solve for them?
People rarely buy from a desire. Most of the time, people buy because of a pain point or problem in their life. If they cannot solve a problem on their own, they are far more willing to pay someone to help them.
You have to stop thinking about what you do and start thinking about what is keeping your customer up at night. If you identify a problem nobody is solving; you can charge more money while making your competition irrelevant.
Do you even care?
As Simon Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
If you want to get out of the customers game, you have to care about them. Do you genuinely want to help the people you want to reach?
If you don’t actually care about them and their problems, they will find out.
Write everything down!
As you start to formulate who your ideal customers are, you have to write down everything, and I mean everything about them. What they want. What they like. What drives them. How old they are. Where they hang out. And so on.
Make yourself the only option.
In order to get out of a bidding war with your competitors, you have to be the only option for your customer. To do that, you have to position your brand correctly.
We will cover how to position yourself to make your competition irrelevant in tomorrows post.
Until tomorrow,
This topic and the rest of the steps in the Business Growth Guide are covered in much greater detail in the Brand Compass Course. You can access the first section of the course, which covers the customer profile, here