Winning your ideal client

Welcome to the latest episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. I'm really excited to bring this one to you because it's one I've been planning to do for a while. And now in this podcast I want to talk to you about winning ideal clients and specifically how you identify who that ideal client is and how you go about finding them. Now the reason for recording this episode is because I spend a lot of time talking to clients about this and generally in my marketplace. And I talk a lot about the consequences of of not targeting your ideal client and what happens when we invest a lot of time with those less than perfect clients. So it seems to me that a good starting point for this podcast is to outline what happens when we do that. Now, I could have renamed this episode how to find the best coffee shops in your local town. Now this is a super action packed episode with loads of practical advice that you can begin implementing immediately and will have a significant impact not only on your agency, but on your own personal time. So grab a pen and paper and let's get on with the show. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta. Before I jump into today's podcast, I just wanted to let you know that today is the final day when the doors close for for enrollment to the 2019 Agency Accelerator Mastermind program. Now, this is a 12 week hybrid coaching program that consists of one to one coaching sessions with me, weekly group coaching sessions, your unique roadmap, plus access to over 35 hours of online content that you have lifetime access to. So head over to dacostacoaching.co.uk agency accelerator and and join up before the doors close at 6pm UK time this evening. Okay, onwards with the show. So let's kick off this episode by outlining a typical scenario and see if you can relate to this experience. An email pings in your inbox or you get a new contact through your website or the phone rings and it's a potential client at the other end saying that they are interested in your products or services and they're requesting that you have a meeting with them. So you get excited by this. We're always pleased when we get new prospects coming in to us, especially when they are proactively reaching out to us. So you look in your diary and you agree a meeting with them and you're going to meet them at your local coffee shop in town. So you rock up to that meeting, you buy the prospect a nice cup of coffee and you have a chat that, that's supposed to be scheduled for half an hour, but actually goes on to over an hour where they're picking your brains about your product or service and you are trying to convert them into a customer. But you quickly realize that this person either isn't your ideal target client or they're too early in their journey to buy your product or service. So you try now to wrap up the meeting and you leave that meeting thinking, well, that was an interesting conversation, nice cup of coffee, but I actually just wasted an hour of my life and I know that this person isn't going to buy from me. And if you're like me as a coach, you have probably ended up giving an hour's free consultancy as well in the process. Now if you can relate to that typical scenario, then you are going to be with the majority of us who have been there and done that. And if you go on a lot of those meetings, you're going to have a lot of caffeine highs and, and you're going to get exhausted pretty quickly and you're going to be a busy fool. Now this is something that happens to all of us. So you're not alone if you can relate to that. Like I said, I've certainly been guilty of this. And I want to just tell you a quick story about a client that I worked with a number of years ago who asked me to go in and do some training with their sales team. So they were a consultancy and they had a small sales, a small sales team of about four or five people and they felt like their sales team weren't doing a good job at winning new business. So they said to me, can you come in and have a do some sales training with them now? I said to them, well, before I do that, what I really need to do is look under the bonnet and see what's really going on. Because a lot of time people think they have issue A, but actually they need to get to the source of why that issue is happening. So I went and did some fact finding with them. I met with their sales team one on one. I met with the managing director and I met with the marketing director. And it quickly became apparent to me that the issue wasn't that their sales team were not good at selling. The issue was that the leads that they were generating or being given to them were not well enough qualified. So they were going out on lots of sales meetings and you know, going through that same scenario I've just described and having lots of cups of coffees, having Lots of conversations, but their conversion rate was really low. Now, the MD thought that was an issue to do with their ability to close a deal, when in fact it turned out that it was an issue with the quality of the leads that they were generating and the fact that they weren't qualifying those leads well enough before they agreed to meeting. So what we actually did is we looked at their marketing process and we looked at their qualification process and we really honed that in and the net result was that the sales team were going out on way less meetings, but their conversion rate went up massively. So, like I say, you need to make sure that you get that right. However, in order to reach our ideal target audience, we need to do a number of things. So in the next section of the podcast, I want to outline what those specific things are. And the first of those things is to get really clear on your target niche. Now, this is a massive topic and I am going to be recording more podcasts in the future, both me talking about the topic as well as doing some interviews on niching. But for now, the key message is that you need to make sure you're clear about your niche and that you're not trying to be a generalist. That is, you're not trying to please everybody that could buy your product, but you're trying to identify your ideal target audience who have the pain that your product or service can solve. Now, if you're not sure about how to find your niche, well, I'm going to put in the show notes an ebook that's connected to how to establish your niche. But in a nutshell, your niche is the intersection of these three areas. So that's where. Where your business has been most profitable in the past. And if you're just starting out, where you know that you have good experience from previous companies that you've worked for that has been successful. So where your business is most profitable, intersecting with the kind of clients that you do the best type of work for. So that's not everybody. That's the clients that really value and appreciate the work that you do. And the third intersection is the area that where you have the most passion, where you enjoy working. So if you can identify the intersection between most profitable, the best results, and where you most enjoy working, that is going to tell you your niche. Now, you can establish your niche by looking at either geography, so the region you work in, the sector that you want to specialize in, the deliverable that you deliver, or the problem that you solve for your clients. So think about how to Cut your niche one of those four ways. And as I said in the show notes, there'll be a link to an ebook you can download that talks all about niching and gives you a step by step guide on how to establish your niche. Okay, so that's the niching part covered in a nutshell. Once you've established your niche, the next thing you need to do is to know the intimate details of your ideal target customer. And in order to do that, you need to define your customer Personas, your customer avatars or your idc. Your ideal target customer. And yep, you've guessed it. I have an ebook on this as well. So again, look in the show notes and it will give you real insight in the step by step guide on how to create your ideal target customer. But the kind of things you want to ask is what's their demographic information, what is their job, their level of seniority, what does a day in their life look like? What are their pain points that your product or service can solve? Where do they go for information? So they look on social media, online, on printed media, and so on. And what experiences are they looking for when they're shopping for your product or service? And lastly, what are the common objections that they might have to buying your product or service? The whole point of the customer Persona is that you take an abstract concept that is this fictitious concept of a customer, and you give it some physicality, so you probably will end up actually giving them a name. And I know this sounds silly, but it is super helpful. And if you've got clarity on your niche, then the next logical step is to define your ideal target customer. Okay, so now we have some clarity on our target niche. We've defined our ideal target customer. The next thing we need to focus on when we're trying to win business is that the low hanging fruit the easiest wins. So I say to my client, think about your marketplace as a fruit tree that you're standing underneath now. Are you trying to target those clients that sit right at the top of the fruit tree? There might be some really juicy fruit up there, but it's really hard to get to. Meanwhile, you're treading on all of the fruit that's actually fallen off the tree because it's ripe. Well, that's going completely the wrong way to do it, and it's super hard to win business that way. So what you really want to be doing is looking down instead of up and looking at the fruit that's already laying on the ground under your fruit tree. Because that is the Easiest client prospect to win. Now we need to think about the sales process. So this is the sales funnel that I'm sure you're familiar with and this concept of know like trust. So if you think of the funnel, the top purpose of the top of the funnel is to get your target audience to know you. The purpose of the middle of the funnel is to get them to like you. And then the bottom part of the funnel is to get them to trust you. Because no one will buy anything, your service, my service, or a bottle of water unless they know like and trust that brand and that product. So you need to now think about what your sales funnel looks like. Now in my experience, most people fall down in the middle of the sales funnel. This is the part of the sales funnel where you're trying to get people to like you, trust you. You're trying to build empathy with that audience. And this is the point where people normally agree to a meeting. Whereas if you agree to a meeting at that stage, but the prospect isn't well enough qualified, then you're going to waste your time. So what I want to introduce you to, this concept of which you may well know about, but you can certainly go and Google it, is that middle piece of your sales and marketing strategy where you're building like and trust. You need to use some education based marketing tools. So let me explain that a little bit more to you and I'm going to start explaining it by sharing a real example with you. So in my early days of coaching, I broke all the rules that I've been describing. I would get an inquiry or someone would agree to a meeting and I would just run off to that meeting being really excited. And I find myself having a conversation where I was trying to convince people that coaching was the right thing for them to do. So let me give you an example. I met with an HR manager of a large PR company once and she said to me that they had a limited amount of budget allocated to training and coaching. But she wanted me to try and sell to her the idea of why she should spend her money on coaching rather than on training. So I sat there trying to convince her. Whether I did a good job or not, I don't really know and it doesn't really matter because if I did get her thinking more about coaching, she, she would probably then go off and research it a bit more and she'd probably end up buying coaching from somebody else. I don't quite know the psychology of that, but trust me, when you are the educator to somebody, they often Go and buy from somebody else. In the end. So using education based marketing should not use your time. That is a really, really key message. Let me say it again. Education based marketing should not involve using your time. And this is a conversation that I have a lot with clients, so I want to make sure that you get this right. So what do you need? Well, in that case, I could have produced a piece of content on my website which said 10 reasons why you should invest your limited budget in coaching rather than training. And then when I'd better qualified that HR manager earlier on in the process on the phone or via email, I could have sent her that guide and said, have a read of this. And if coaching still sounds like something that you think would really work for you and your team, then get back in touch and let's have a chat. So we need to use education based marketing tools such as ebooks, tips, templates, tools, videos, podcasts, all that stuff, all those things that you can help educate your audience that isn't using your time. Now the great thing about producing an ebook on 10 tips on why you should use a coach rather than invest in training is that once you produce that content, it's there forever. So we need to use the middle of the sales funnel. That's the like and trust part. By producing some education based content to help educate your audience to further qualify them down the funnel. Now in doing that, you're also demonstrating to your audience that you're credible, so you're building empathy and trust with them as well. So really crucial, my message here is don't spend your time, which is really precious and limited, going out and educating your marketplace in those one to one meetings. Use tools such as ebooks and videos and podcasts to do that. Now of course you could also do things like present at workshops, which is another great way of building empathy and trust with your audience whilst at the same time educating. But the point I'm making is don't invest your limited one to one time doing that. Now to further that conversation a bit more, I always talk about my five non negotiable questions that you have to have answered before you do something before someone moves to the next stage of the sales process. Now I usually use this in the context of writing a proposal because in my experience people agree to writing proposals too early when they don't know enough information or when the prospect is actually just in fact find mode. And they're using your proposal to help educate them into what they need to write a better brief. But also we can use These concepts of the five non negotiable questions to determine whether you will meet someone. So if we play this back a bit, you get that phone call, that inquiry through your website or an email about potentially buying your product or service and they're requesting a meeting and what you want to be saying is, hey, hold your horses. Before I agree to a meeting, I need to find out a bit more from you. So you'll have a set of questions. I call them the five non negotiable questions. But of course they could be 3, 4, 5 or 10. I don't know, it will be different for you that you need to ask your prospect before you agree. So you might say, could you just complete this questionnaire or can I just ask you these questions or, or could we have a quick call before we agree to a meeting? So you just want to slow things down in order to make sure that you're investing your time wisely. So what are your five non negotiable questions? Again, a subject for another podcast, but really important to think about the things that you have to have answered before you will agree to meet someone or before they will kind of qualify to the next stage of the sales funnel. Okay, so now we've qualified the client and you've got the answers to those non negotiable questions. Now you agree to meet them. And when you agree to the meeting, you need to make sure that you have a shared context. In other words, you're both really clear about why you are going to that meeting. A lot of the time we don't slow down to get this shared context. We agree to the meeting. Now let's just imagine what happens when both parties have got a slightly different agenda in their heads. You're going along thinking, great, this is a prospect. I'm going to try and close them. And they're going along just as a fact. Find exercise to learn a little bit more about your company. How good a meeting do you think that's going to be? Probably not very good. You're both going to be there with different agendas in your head and it won't be a very good meeting. You'll have had a nice cup of coffee and then you'll have walked away thinking that was a waste of time. Or you try to follow it up and you never hear from them again, which I'm sure you can relate to. So we need to make sure that we get clear with the prospect about the purpose of the meeting. And you can do that in an email by saying, this is the Purpose, as far as I can see of the meeting, this is what you'd like to find out. This is where I'd like to be by the end of that meeting. Do you agree with this or do you have anything else you'd like to add? So you don't need an agenda, but you just need to make sure that both parties are on the same page. And then when you've done that and you get to the meeting, the next thing you need to do is make sure that you are super consultative at every stage of this journey. If you can set yourself up through the sales funnel as being a consultative partner, then the client will see you as a partner if they take you on to work with them rather than this kind of whipping boy of supplier customer type relationships. So you need to demonstrate your consultative credentials at every stage. That's why the education based marketing is so helpful and why in a prospect meeting, if you've qualified it well enough, you can be consultative. I don't mean give it all away, I just mean show up as a consultant and don't be scared of sharing some insights. But of course what you don't want to do is go to a meeting, be a coach for an hour, give away loads of information and then never hear from you again. And that's because you haven't had those five non negotiable questions answered. Now the last part of this is closing the meeting and you need to put your sales hat on a bit here because you need to make sure that you understand what the next steps are, what you've agreed to do. And I think really crucially, there's two things you should do at this stage. First of all, you should try and think of an action on them as well as an action on you. So often you would leave this kind of prospect meeting where you have promised to write a proposal, you send that proposal off and then you never hear from them again. So what I'd suggest is if you can find an action on them, you have a reason to follow them up. It might be that they were going to send you a report or they were going to send you some insights or, or they're going to introduce you to somebody else in their agency, find an action on them and have that little filter during the meeting to say, okay, let me just keep thinking of what I can ask them to do and then the final piece. So you're going to have an action on them and an action on you, and the final piece is to get a date in the diary at the end of that meeting for the next interaction with them. So that could be the next follow up meeting or it could be a phone call to debrief on the proposal that you're sending or whatever it is. But two key things here, action on you, action on them and a date for a follow up meeting. If you do that, you're giving yourself the best chance of not having that situation where someone said, I really need to meet with you urgently and can you write me this proposal, I need it by Friday. And you rush and rush and rush, you do the meeting, you work long hours in the agency to get the proposal written and then you never hear from them again. And you try to follow them up and you can't get hold of them. You try to follow them up and you can't get hold of them. And I'm sure you can relate to this because I've certainly been there and it's because I didn't apply some of the best practices that we've talked about today. Now, when you've taken your prospect through this journey, you've identified your ideal client, you've used education based marketing to further qualify them down the sales funnel, you've asked them your non negotiable questions, you've gone to a meeting and been consultative and at this stage you agree to write a proposal. Now when you've done all of that and you've got to the point where you've agreed to write a proposal and you've got a follow up date, then you're giving yourself the best chance of getting as high a win rate as possible. So there you have it guys. I feel like I've covered a ton of content in 20 minutes. So I hope you had a pen and paper and I hope you've written it down. Just to recap, get clear about your niche, get clear about your ideal target customer, produce some education based marketing tools that will support the qualification of those prospects when they come in and then work out your five non negotiable questions. Be consultative at every stage. Make sure that you have a clear context for meetings that both parties share. And when you go to those prospect meetings, make sure you leave with an action on them, an action on you and a date for the follow up. And only agree to write a proposal if you feel you can genuinely help them. The thing is, it takes so much time to write pitches and proposals that if we go about it half heartedly because we know deep down that this isn't an ideal target customer for us, then guess what guys, you're not going to win that piece of business. It'd be much better off saying, no, I don't think we're a good fit. So that you invest your limited time and energy in those ideal target customers where you know you could do a fantastic job for them and you write a great proposal that reflects that. Apply all of these best practices and you're going to be well on your way to identifying ideal target customers, winning them, and not feeling that you'll run ragged going from one cup of coffee to the next. Now, I've covered a ton of depth in today's podcast and I want to make sure that you get the accompanying workbooks that I've mentioned that will be listed in the Show Notes. That is a workbook on identifying your niche and a workbook on defining your customer avatars or Personas or your ideal target customer. Use both of those tools and those resources to support you in the development of that and that will help you well on your way to winning those ideal target customers that become loyal clients with you for the long term. I hope you found today's podcast really useful. I am aiming to provide honest, practical tips that I know work because I've used them myself and use them with my clients. So if you have found today's podcast useful, please leave a review. And of course, make sure you hit the subscribe button so that you are alerted every time a new episode comes out until we get together on the next podcast. I hope you have a fantastic week. Sam.