An easy way to determine your best potential clients (prospects) is to look at your existing clients by declining gross sales or (better yet) gross profit. Select your top ten, top twenty or top fifty and ask yourself a series of questions:
- Is there anything common among your top clients?
- Are they in similar industries? Professions? If so, do they belong to similar associations or professional organizations?
- Is there a common reason why they prefer your business? (Price? Speed? Service? Friendliness? Unique competencies?)
- Do you resolve a specific problem? A problem each of them share?
- Who are your decision makers? List them, by name (along with their influencers). List them by title. What similarities do you see among these buyers?
- Drill down to individuals: Who are they? Where do they live? Shop? Eat? Hang out?
See any patterns? (By the way, I blame Rubicon for this blogpost).
The questions you ask could go on and on but you get the idea. This is a simple exercise but it's hard for many of us to slow down, get out a pen and paper and actually do the analysis.
Another exercise is to list and cross reference your clients by volume, time spent, money spent and enjoyment. (Yes, enjoyment. I'm no Pollyanna. Work is hard. Business in the real world can be messy but there are certain clients you enjoy* working with. In a perfect world, your client list would be full of them). Once you find the similarities and discover the patterns you have a rough profile of your best potential client. This takes the guesswork out of much of your marketing and business development.
It's not foolproof but it's a hell of a lot better than assuming that everyone is your customer.
*Enjoy does not mean easy. Enjoy means the client themselves consider your services valuable, exceptional, therefore your expertise is handsomely rewarded in more than just cash transactions. It's a mutual enjoyment because you are giving your best to someone who recognizes it and you both benefit from the relationship.
