Who’s Your Audience?
Identify and then focus only on Quality Customers to build profitability.
Jim Stein
Published Date: May 17, 2023
Simply put, if you reach and “speak to” potential Quality Customers better than your competitors, you’ll build a stronger, more profitable business. Here’s how you do it.
Pull out your billing for the last 100 customers you served (or the past 12 months). Look at each one and think of the customer. For each customer, write down the answers to these three questions:
1. Were they good to deal with?
2. Was the service you performed what you want to be doing in the future?
3. How profitable was this transaction?
Now, choose the best half of these 100 customers. These “chosen 50” customers are your Quality Customers. Keep looking at and thinking about these 50 “chosen customers.” Don’t literally profile all 50—instead, write a range that seems to cover 4 out of 5 of these 50 customers. This will eliminate the outliers and tighten the focus of your Quality Customers and Prospects Profile. Here’s an example: an owner finds that a great majority of his best customers have, by his estimate, an income of $125k+ and/or a home value of $700k+. Even if 10 to 20% of his clientele are great customers, those who don’t fit this range aren’t included in the Value Range, so that total focus can be given to sweet spot customers and prospects.
How to Beat Your Competitors Where It Matters
To maximize your competitive standing, inventory and rate each of your Deep Info Impact Points (DIIP) for both you and your top four competitors. Then, choose one DIIP to improve so, through this improvement, you beat all four competitors in that specific DIIP.
Example: BEATING YOUR COMPETITION in one DIIP – Before and After
You compare job photos and descriptions on your website with job photos and descriptions posted on your four chosen competitors’ websites. You rate yours in last place because you only have two photos and no narrative. So, you decide to focus on this by profiling 5 new jobs and going back and profiling 5 past jobs. You want to beat the competitors’ presentation of their work by capturing 8 quality job photos plus the customer photo, with well-organized and beautiful descriptions of the work at each one, plus long quotes from each customer of the profiled job. You then add a job portfolio section to your website and give high visibility access to these 10 job profiles at the top of your homepage. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! You just beat your four competitors for visual and written profiles of job examples. You then repeat this process for a different DIIP and go from losing to winning.
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