How to Know Your Ideal Clients, Better Than Anyone Else in Your Field

How do you describe your ideal clients?

What do you say when a networking partner asks, “Who’s a good referral for you?”

If a succinct, crisp reply doesn’t pop into your mind, stay with me.

Get to Know Your Ideal Clients Well, So You Can Better Attract Them

It’s been said many times, many ways: Everybody is not your client.

My version of this truth: Everybody is not your perfect client.

Who is your ideal client?

Your perfect ideal client is the one who gets the best results from your products, services, and programs. You know, those wonderful folks who get off-the-charts results after working with you.

You also know that perfect clients experience incredible outcomes after working with you. What else do you know about your ideal clients? Is it a combination of these or similar traits?

Your perfect clients show up excited to do the work and…

• They share your values
• They are motivated, ready to learn
• They are open to changing
• They are prepared to let go of long-held beliefs that are holding them back
• They are excited to smash through old barriers
• They follow your recommendations to a “T”
• They pay on time
• They are respectful of you and others

These are the kinds of clients you want more of because you love working with them.

And they love working with you, don’t they? Let’s explore more about your perfect clients.

Do You Want Target Market Clients or Ideal Clients?

Now that you’re thinking deeply about your perfect, ideal clients, you might say, “great, my ideal client is my target market.” But keep reading and I’ll show you how that’s not true.

Many entrepreneurs think, because they’re told, that a target market is all they need. I disagree big time with traditional marketing here! In fact, it drives me crazy when trainers have you stop at target market. Please don’t get caught up in this myth!

You can go beyond ‘target market’ and learn dramatically more about your clients. Master how to attract more of your perfect clients by reflecting and understanding them completely.

Yes, it takes a bit of deep thinking, recalling, and reflecting. The benefits? For starters, your reward is purposeful marketing and the ability to communicate with intention because you have created a firm foundation. You’ll know your perfect client better than anyone else in your field. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

What separates your ‘ideal client’ from everyone else in your ‘target market’?

To see how this might work for you, let’s take a look at Marie’s story.

Marie’s Ideal Client Reflection Story

Marie is a purpose-driven entrepreneur running a wellness coaching business based in Chicago.

When asked to describe her dream clients, Marie typically said that her target market was professional women between the ages of 45 and 55, living in and around Chicago, who are overweight and overworked.

The problem was, Marie ended up having prospecting conversations with lots of women who were actually in her ‘target market’. The women she met and chatted with, said they wished they could lose their extra weight, once and for all. They took Marie’s card and told her they’d call her. Or they said, sure, “Give me a call next week. You can tell me about your program then.”

Sadly, too few of them followed through and signed up for her 6-month Get-the-Pounds-Off program. Hum. Has something similar happened when you explain your programs or services to potential clients?

Marie decided she needed expert help. After all, she’d poured years of hard-won experience into her programs. She’d successfully helped scores of clients get the outcomes they wanted, and they loved her. She wanted to serve more clients so she could have a positive impact on more people and grow her business. She wanted more of the win-win!

Marie worked with a marketing mentor who helped her think differently and more deeply. The mentor helped her clarify who, exactly, was the kind of client she wanted to work with in her business.

She went into reflection mode. She brainstormed and journaled about exactly who was her perfect client. She focused on identifying past clients who had achieved the best results with her programs. Marie separated the great-results-clients from the others.

She did this by ferreting out a list of the qualities, attitudes, and mindsets that all of her best performing clients had in common.

How did she accomplish this? She did deep thinking work. She replayed past conversations and interactions with her best clients. She scanned and reviewed old emails, texts, and letters from clients.

As a result of pondering this question for a couple of weeks, Marie did a brain dump. She simply started typing onto a blank document on her computer. She ended up with a 7-page detailed document, describing her perfect client.

Now, this was not a novel, white paper, article, blog post, or story for Huffington Post. Marie’s 7-page perfect client description was simply her resource. Just for her use.

When would she use it? Each time she was ready to write a blog post, record a video for her clients and prospects. Whenever she needed to be reminded of what was going on for her potential clients.

This is what Marie discovered: clients who took action, invested in her programs, and got the life they were after, shared a striking number of similar qualities. Even though each client’s personality and background was vastly different.

Here’s the key for Marie, that may apply for you too: not every woman who is overweight and stressed is ready to make the changes she needs to make in order to lose weight.

Not every overweight, overworked, Chicago-based woman in her forties is motivated to rearrange her schedule, change her habits, and become disciplined. They’re not all committed to rolling up their sleeves, staying the course, and doing whatever it takes to get the extra pounds off.

When comparing your client success stories with those of other clients, does this ring true for you too?

Marie examined the attitudes and characteristics displayed by her ‘star’ clients who were overjoyed with their results. She contrasted them to everyone else in her target market.

She found that while everyone in her target market fit the description of career women ages 40 to 50, overweight, overworked—and here’s the silver bullet—her perfect client had ‘something extra’. Perfect clients are over-the-moon excited about investing in the hand holding benefits of a guided get-healthy program.

This ideal client is committed to following a plan led by an expert. This perfect client is motivated for lots of reasons, she’s tried every diet, exercise regimen, and cleanse program out there.

It may be that she wants to feel better, get more done, and keep up with her children and grandchildren. Or she wants to look fabulous at her daughter’s wedding or her class reunion.

Speak directly to your ideal clients’ urgent pain points in your content.

Marie Shifted Her Marketing Content

Marie began ‘speaking’ directly to her perfect client. She shifted her client attraction content and conversations and began talking in a way that made it easier for perfect clients to hear her. Marie’s content and networking conversations caught the attention of more women who fit her perfect client profile.

She had more meaningful conversations with potential clients.

Happily, she also had fewer dead end conversations with so-called ‘target market’ clients.

Marie arrived at this new level of understanding of her perfect clients because she tapped into aspects of their mindset, situation, and frustrations she hadn’t previously considered. Along the way, she developed more empathy for her perfect clients.

The silver lining: she connected with more potential clients. Marie was now tuned into her clients’ world in ways she hadn’t been before.

Are you beginning to see how deeply reflecting on your perfect client can help you envision them in a whole new light?

Keeping Your Ideal Clients’ Values in Mind Gives You an Advantage

You want to invest your efforts, time, and talents into clients who do what’s required to make the changes they say they want. Don’t you?

You’ve poured your heart and soul into creating world-class services, products, programs, and courses.

Your work is designed to help clients get unstuck, navigate barriers, and become the best versions of themselves. Question: you want to craft content that attracts as many of your ideal, perfect-fit clients as possible, right?

So, to craft valuable content your perfect clients can’t wait to gobble up, here’s food for thought. It’s the scoop on how to uncover your perfect client’s attributes, values, and characteristics that I promised you.

Depending on your type of work, your clients’ attributes may include things like:

• they’re excited to grow their business
• they’re thrilled about becoming a keynote speaker
• they’d rather cook and entertain than do anything else
• they are committed to getting healthy no matter what it takes
• they don’t simply say they want to find a soulmate, they are prepared to change, become open, and even make sacrifices so they can finally meet the person of their dreams

Your Next Steps to Master Knowing Your Ideal Client

Step #1: Be Sherlock Holmes!

Investigate exactly who is your, perfect, ideal client. Pull back the curtain and discover everything about them.

But you may say to me, “I know my clients’ problems!” It’s crucial to have a handle your perfect clients’ urgent problems, of course. Most business owners do this.

And yet, you can go deeper to understand them. You can gain insights that other experts in your field fail to consider.

As a perfect client detective, you go beyond your clients’ problems to uncover their motivations, dreams, desires, drivers, and values. And this sets you apart from others. These insights become your secret sauce because you will know things others don’t about your ideal people.

You can write and talk about issues that matter most to them because you’ve done your homework!

How do you start? Here are some powerful questions to consider:

What are the characteristics that make your perfect client different from everyone else in your ‘target market’?

• Examples: Think about traits like, they’re introverts, lifelong learners, workaholics, overachievers, insatiable adventurers.

What exactly is it that sets apart your successful clients from everyone else in your target market?

• Examples: they’re motivated, can’t wait to get started, convinced they cannot solve this pain point on their own, respectful of your expertise, happy to follow directions.

What is the spark that your ideal clients seem to have?

• Examples: They’re creative, work fast, strive to be on the leading edge, push the envelope for their families, businesses, and employees.

What unique attributes do they display in how they show up?

• Examples: Are they energetic, curious, dedicated, focused, or something else?

What is special about them that tells you they’re open minded about following your program or using your products and services?

• Examples: they are eager to learn, immediately engaged, ask questions about their next steps.

How can you tell they are willing to do the necessary work to get the results they’re seeking?

• Examples: they show up on time, ask questions when they don’t understand, always want to know ‘what’s next’.

What are their values? They likely share many values with you.

• Examples: they’re community-minded, relentless volunteers, voracious readers, endlessly active, collaborators, appreciative, they lift others up, family oriented…

Step #2: Create your perfect client description. This is where you document everything you know, learn, and discover about your ideal client. It can be created in any style you like:

• a rambling description
• a series of anecdotes
• a set of actual quotes from past client conversations
• a long list of bullet phrases
• a set of phrases
• a story
• a profile
• multiple stories

This is your client description. It is your tool, resource, and/or handbook. It can be printed out on paper or kept digitally on your computer.

My recommendation is that you keep it in an easily accessible file because it is not a one-and-done project. Your perfect client description is a living, breathing document. It will morph, evolve, and change as you do. And as your business does.

Final Thoughts About Feeling Resistance

A final thought about resistance. You’ll likely feel resistant and want to skim over or skip the deep reflection I’m recommending. It happens all the time.

I work with dedicated, heart-centered women who love their work and thrive on helping clients get unstuck. My clients are ecstatic every day that they get to be their own boss.

And yet, when they have hit a barrier when it comes to attracting enough of the kinds of clients they want and begin to work with me, they are often challenged to do the reflection piece. Please work through it if that is you. It’s worth your effort.

Find a trusted business person to talk it over with. Share the questions listed here, what you’ve come up with, and where you’re stuck. It will take you a few iterations. It always does.

Don’t expect that you only have to sit down for an hour, and completely document your perfect, ideal client. No one does that. Your perfect client document is a living, breathing, and evolving resource. It takes awhile for you to develop your ideal client description.

Or you can message me with your questions, at c[email protected]

I hope you will put these tips, questions, and explanations to work for your business. I am sending you every good wish to make this approach your own. It’s vitally important because your perfect, ideal clients need you.

I say this to my private clients and you must keep it in mind. There are people out there, suffering, striving to solve problems and achieve dreams—who can work best with you. they can really only learn, resolve, and move forward when they connect with you. Make it easier for them to find you!

Be Unstoppable,

Cynthia

The Client Clarity Mentor

You can find additional posts to help you attract more of your ideal clients on my blog, here: https://shemarketsmentor.com/blog/