Knock it outta the park with these people

I received an email from a client just the other day titled, “Advice re: culling the herd”. I love creative email titles!

My client is growing a distinct online platform for a specific subset of entrepreneurs. It’s going to take time, energy and experimentation in order to get her value proposition crystal clear right at the outset. Potential customers are going to want to know exactly what they are getting and how it will help them if they are going to sign up for the monthly membership.

It also means she has to stop working with some of her current clients to create more room for her to focus on this new venture.

Focus on just one person

The big challenge that entrepreneurs grapple with when they create their value proposition are related to how many people they feel they should be serving versus how many people they actually do serve.

Entrepreneurs often have a big aversion to being specific about who they do their best work with and they simply don’t know how to get more specific and make it meaningful. There is a technique to do it and it’s not making up a client persona. I’ll explain later.

For now, let’s look at why people fear that naming their ideal client. Usually it’s because they believe that focusing on one kind of person too much will alienate others. Truthfully, weeding out a whole lot of are-never-actually-going-to-buy-from-you kind of people is going to give you a better conversion rate, a lot more time to create and better confidence.

Turn off those who are easily turned off

They aren’t your clients and won’t be any time soon. This is a hard concept to swallow but if you are serious about business you will need to be this bold.

Here’s what I said to my client:

“You don’t need to worry about pleasing everyone especially those who aren’t going to be your customers in 5 years. Relationships end and change for all kinds of reasons. If you can suggest others who can help them, that might help but, even they can’t be doing high level work at a steal forever. They will have to face the reality soon enough. Be strong in your value. Don’t worry about pleasing everyone or you won’t be able to knock it outta the park with everyone else.”

In other words, she really needed to get clear that her business focus was changing and it was essential that she cut the cord with some of the clients who weren’t on her journey and using her talent optimally.

To find your ideal client, here’s what you do …  pick your most fabulous client, ever, and focus everything on her – your messaging, products and copy are created with this one person in mind.

Yes, I mean the one actual person you love working with and who feels the same way about you.

Who is your best client?

It’s that simple. You’ll still have to get into their mindset at the deepest level possible but it’s so much easier to do for someone real than an imaginary profile.

In order to knock it outta the park, you need to be prepared to cater to real people, not a group of people. Thinking of many at once just waters down all of your thoughts and makes them too general and not very enticing.  You need to get bold and think of your most valued client. You may lose a few looky-loos but you know what else will happen?

You’ll begin attracting more and more of those very valuable clients!