Non-financial Ways Your Ideal Client Should Drive Revenue Growth

Let’s talk about the tale of two clients.

One is worth $100,000 a year in revenue and they’re a good fit for your business – but they’ve never brought you new business.

The other client is worth $50,000 a year, is also a good fit – but they’ve introduced you to another 2-3 businesses like theirs.

If you had to pick one, which would you choose?

1. Your Marketing Strategy Should Include Gatekeepers

Obviously, the one that brings you more referrals--which means “referrals” should be part of your “ideal customer” criteria.

I like to call these kinds of clients “gatekeepers”.

They’re individuals or businesses that are well-networked with larger pools of your ideal clients! 

Here’s a great example – a digital marketing agency started doing some work for a CPA firm, and the project went fairly well. That CPA firm was well-networked with other small business owners who fit this agency’s ideal profile, and started referring those business owners to the agency.

What did the agency owners do? As you probably guessed, they started intentionally targeting CPA firms.

I find that if you can intentionally identify, prospect, and pursue these opportunities, you set yourself up for exponential growth.

2. Ideal Customers (Sometimes) Include Reference-ability

Now, acknowledging we usually talk about the importance of revenue, referrals, and other sound business principles, there’s one that can be a little bit of a grey area for some business owners.

I’m talking about reference-ability.

Reference-ability allows you to point to a well-known brand and say you contributed in some way to their work.

That Time We Trained Salesforce on Sales

At Value Prop, we can say that we helped train the east-coast staff at Salesforce on their sales system. Now, they were far larger than our ideal client, but it’s a big name that makes ears perk up, right?

Reference-ability can be tricky because it often means setting aside everything that we just talked about with ideal clients.

I’ve seen a lot of business owners sacrifice other sound business principles to get reference-ability from big names.

It might set them back a few steps if it’s not an ideal client fit, but hey, at least they’ve “been there, done that, and got the t-shirt”.

So how do you decide if the juice is worth the squeeze?

If you think the “big name” would mean something to your ideal clients (the ones that are actually going to build up your business), then it might be worth it--if it’s a temporary project that won’t bleed you forever.

There is a great deal of value in social proof, and your ability to say “We helped _____” can be a massive benefit if (and only if) your prospect looks up to a company like the one you named. If they don’t? Take the flattery, but turn them down.