Impossible to please everyone

Carefully your clients choose, young padawan! Yes, hrrmmm.

Let's get it into our heads: pleasing everyone is indeed an impossible mission, which will inevitably always lead us to waste time, energy and consequently... money!

To avoid this unpleasantness, the thing every salesperson must do is to learn how to correctly segment their customers and market.?

But what do we mean by 'segmenting' customers?

It means being clear about our playing field, the composition of the market, and deciding what slice we want to have, and what value we think we are giving to this target.

Simple as it is: choose your clients.

Client segmentation can be approached in various ways, depending on the specific business and industry. Here are some commonly used methods for segmenting clients:

Demographic Segmentation: this involves dividing clients based on demographic variables such as age, gender, income, education, occupation, marital status, and geographic location. Demographics provide a basic understanding of your target audience and can be useful in tailoring marketing messages (specially used on B2C);

Psychographic Segmentation: this approach focuses on clients' attitudes, interests, lifestyles, values, and personality traits. Psychographic segmentation helps identify the underlying motivations and behaviors that drive consumer choices. It goes beyond demographics to create more nuanced segments based on shared psychographic characteristics.

Behavioral Segmentation: this segmentation method categorizes clients based on their purchasing behavior, product usage, brand loyalty, and engagement with marketing channels. It examines factors such as frequency of purchase, average transaction value, customer lifecycle stage, and response to marketing campaigns. Behavioral segmentation provides insights into how customers interact with your products and services (great both for B2C and B2B).

Geographic Segmentation: this segmentation divides clients based on their geographic location, such as country, region, city, or neighborhood. Geographic segmentation is particularly relevant for businesses with location-specific offerings or those targeting a specific market based on regional preferences, climate, culture, or regulatory differences.

Firmographic Segmentation: primarily used in business-to-business (B2B) contexts, firmographic segmentation classifies clients based on attributes specific to their organizations. These attributes can include industry, company size, revenue, number of employees, location, and decision-making structure. Firmographic segmentation helps businesses tailor their offerings and communication to meet the unique needs of different types of organizations (but be careful because companies are always made by people, and you have to understand how this segmentation matches the people one).

Benefit Segmentation: This approach focuses on the specific benefits or outcomes that clients seek from a product or service. By understanding the various benefits that different segments prioritize, businesses can develop targeted marketing messages highlighting those specific benefits.

It's important to note that segmentation approaches can be combined or customized based on the specific requirements of a business. The key is to identify meaningful and actionable segments that align with the organization's goals and enable effective targeting and messaging. Customer surveys, market research, data analysis, and customer feedback can all contribute to the process of segmentation and help refine the segments over time.

Don't forget that segmenting clients will bring you a more efficient resource allocation, competitive advantage and an enhanced customer understanding, allowing you to define your strategy and offerings starting with a deep knowledge of your base client!