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# How to Eliminate Time Sucking, Tire Kicking, Penny Pinching Clients While Providing Endless Value to Your Ideal Clients

by Cinnamon McCann · 2 comments Follow me on Twitter

Many business owners fall into the trap of thinking everyone in the world is their potential client. As an entrepreneur and business owner you are considered a problem solver. People pay money to satisfy a need, feel better or to solve a problem. It is up to you to demonstrate how your product or service will provide such a solution to your customers. But how could you possibly satisfy a need, solve problems or make EVERYONE in the world feel better? The truth is, you can’t.

A 36-year-old, wife and mother, corporate executive living in Wyoming is going to have a different set of needs than a single, male, college-aged dog groomer who resides in New York. A restaurant owner in Florida will have a different set of concerns than an accountant in Texas.

Let’s say you provide bookkeeping services to small business owners. If you are not specific enough, you may waste time and money marketing to the solo small business owner who may not see the need or yet have the budget for such a service. Marketing to a large company that probably has such a person on staff wouldn’t be your market either. Instead focusing on a mid size business with the budget and the need would be more beneficial.

If you develop laser focus when identifying your ideal client, you can come up with innovative and exciting ways to provide exceptional value making you irreplaceable. This allows you to get paid what you are worth, spend less time and money on ineffective marketing, increase customer retention and help you stand out from your competition. More importantly, the time attracting the wrong clients will diminish.

To attract your ideal clients, you have to have a keen sense as to who they are and the problems or issues they experience. When you can explain how your product or service will solve their problems or make their life easier in their language, you will attract more ideal clients.

Examples of focused ideal client statements:

General: I provide virtual assisting services to small businesses.
Focused: I provide virtual assisting services to real estate agents in the San Francisco Bay Area that sell 7 to 25 homes annually.

General: I provide consulting to women entrepreneurs.
Focused: I provide business consulting for women age 35-43 that are transitioning from corporate America to starting their business.

Take some quiet time and brainstorm:

- Who is your ideal client?
- How old is your ideal customer? (I encourage you to keep this within a 5 to 10 year time frame. Are you the same person at 40 as you were at 20 or 30? Exactly, neither is your client.)
- Where does your client live, work or spend their free time?
- Who is your product/service best suited for?
- What is your client’s ability to pay for your product or service?
- Imagine what set of circumstance would create a great day for your ideal customer? What would create a bad day? How could your product or service help?

If answering these questions make you sweat or get a little antsy, consider asking your customers to answer similar questions in an email or customer survey. There is nothing wrong with going straight to the source.

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Tagged as: attracting your ideal client, in stilettos

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- TwoBits2012

  As a business owner selling wine to the general population, my minimum age is 21. It’s difficult to sell to the younger crowd, but to be fair, I don’t want to exclude them. They can learn, very early on, to have a “refined palate” and while most can’t afford extensive wine collections, I think they deserve the opportunity to purchase just as much as the 30-, 40-, 50-something lawyer, doctor, professional that has an established wine cellar and palate. I would love to find a way to market to everyone – explaining that I can help them learn what they like or help keep their cellar/wine rack(s) filled with some of the best award-winning wine available. Of course, I’ll earn more money and have a more consistent business if I market to the more “financially stable”. Do you have marketing ideas that will help me be all-inclusive? Rather, market to the “financially stable” without excluding those just discovering wine and everything it has to offer?

  - cinnamonmccann

    Greetings TwoBits,

    Great question and thanks for asking! I think your marketing would be easier if you define your ideal market rather that attempting to create all-inclusive marketing. Defining your ideal market doesn’t mean that anyone who falls outside of the defined market can’t purchase your products or services.

    Defining your ideal market will allow you to create more effective marketing that will demonstrate to your customers that they should work with you versus the thousands of other wine educators.

    It is hard to make your business stand out in a crowd of millions with marketing that attempts to include the general population.

    I have included a couple video links that I think will better explain.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbXtC7xqLgI

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt78RL_qBe8

    Hope that helps!