Are you ignoring your perfect customers without even realizing it?

Sounds like a weird question, I know. But it’s really not. Because I made this exact mistake for a long time.

And I see it happening all around me still. 

Johan Cruyff, a famous Dutch football player, once famously said:

“You’ll only start getting it, once you understand it.”

Having been through this I can confidently say that Johan was right. I’ve seen businesses grow by leaps and bounds after they figured out how to fix this.

Let me show you.

The Train Station Problem

Picture a busy train station. People everywhere, crowded, noisy, chaos.

In that crowd is a certain someone and you HAVE to get his attention.

How would you do it?

You could stand on a bench and hope to spot them in the crowd. 

You could ask people one by one. But with thousands of people that’s hardly practical.

The best way to get their attention?

Shout their name.

Makes sense, but what does it have to do with reaching your perfect client?

Fixing Bleeding Necks

When I work with clients I ask lots of questions. One of them is: 

“Who is your perfect client? Who is perfect for your service?”

Every once in a while a client says: 

“Everyone! We sell to everyone!”

No. 

You do not. 

For two simple reasons:

1. Not everyone needs or wants your service. 

2. If you try to reach everyone you’ll end up reaching no one.

   
   

A perfect client has a problem, a desire, something they really want. And your service gets them what they want.

In the marketing business, we call this a ‘bleeding neck’ problem. 

Something you want to solve right away. An itch you want to scratch ASAP.

Reach those people and you solve every marketing and sales problem. Here’s how: 

Reaching Your Perfect Client

If you were a dog trainer you could theoretically sell to anyone that has a dog.

But let’s say your most profitable service is helping clients train their puppies to stop chewing on furniture and stop pooping in the house.

So instead of targeting every dog owner, we focus on puppy owners. 

The WORST way to reach those perfect clients is to put up an ad or a post saying something like:

===
Dan’s Dog Training

We train all dogs, all breeds, and all ages to do anything.

Here’s a list of what we can do.

• training your dog on how to fetch

• training your dog on how to walk on a leash

• training your dog on how to socialize with other dogs

• training your dog on how to not break stuff when you’re out of the house

If you have a dog and you want to have it trained by us for anything, please call us at XXXX
===

See the issue?

It’s so bland, so vanilla, so non-descript… that no one is going to think:

“This is for ME!”

And that’s the response we want our perfect client to have:

“This scratches my itch,

this person gets what I’m dealing with,

this is for me!” 

So, don’t be afraid to stand out and tailor your message to your perfect client. 

Talk soon,

Eric

P.S. If you want us to look at your marketing plan and see what we could do for you, get in touch here

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