Are You Shooting Blanks?
By Gerry Foster

Copyright 2003 by Gerry Foster

If you are clear on the precise, unique value clients receive from you – the specific problems you solve, the desired results you deliver, the incredible contribution you make, or the benefits you provide – then your next step should be to select a target market for your services.  However, many service providers take this step for granted and have no clear target in mind whatsoever.

A painting contractor once said his target market was “anybody who has something that needs to be painted.”  A chiropractor said hers was “anybody with a bad back.”  A real estate broker and investment firm said theirs was “anyone who has ever bought a home or is looking to purchase real estate as an investment.”  And a financial planner said he was targeting “any family with money problems and/or bad credit” (which is half the population or more of the U.S.). 

These service providers could not see that they were trying to “please anybody and everybody.”  Sure, they may offer a service that has a lot of value and does a lot of good.   And, on the surface, these targets may seem viable markets to pursue.

But it is for this reason that many service providers miss the mark when looking for new clients.  If you fall victim to the commonly held notion that “the world is our oyster,” you will end up shooting blanks because you are not getting in front of people who are most likely to use your services.

Marketing masters know that the best prospect to pursue is not necessarily someone who may need what you offer.  But rather, it’s the person who wants it. 

Suspects Versus Prospects

The choice seems so simple when we talk about it this way.  Because let’s face it.   Someone who might, maybe, or possibly need what you offer is at best a suspect.  But someone who wants what you offer today, and has the capacity to pay for your services and ability to make a decision now, is always a prospect for your services.

Here’s what I mean.

A suspect is an individual or organization who fits a particular demographic profile.  Demographic characteristics include the basic “name, rank and serial” qualities of a particular market.  If you’re marketing to individuals in the consumer market, they include age, income level, sex, marital status, occupation, and so on.  If you’re marketing to the commercial market, they include type of business, size of business, decision maker title, and so on.

So, for instance, do you service primarily middle age men?  Are your services skewed toward particular industries?  Is your market made up of family owned businesses less than ten years old?  And so forth.

In other words, analyze your current client base or clients of other similar businesses (especially if you’re a start-up company) and determine:  Who uses your services most often or spends the most money to use your services?

If you answer that question, then the obvious next question to ask is:  Who is your ideal client?

If your answer to that last question begins with “anybody or everybody,” then you will shoot blanks and fall into the proverbial “I am the Starship Enterprise” trap that so many service providers stumble into.  The fastest way to debtor’s prison is to believe that you are the mother ship and that people are waiting with baited breath to hop on board.

Instead, you must concentrate, take steady aim, and fire away at a specific target market.

Focus, Focus, Focus

See, I learned at a very young age about the power of concentration.  All of us remember how powerful a magnifying glass was when we played with them as kids.  I loved focusing the sun’s rays to burn small pieces of paper. 

As a mastery marketer, I’ve learned this simple “secret:” People will pay what you want them to pay for your services if you FOCUS on folks that WANT the value you provide.

The basis for concentration is a simple one:  people want to heal their WOUNDS.  People in business want their wounds healed; ordinary folks want their wounds healed.  And their wounds are spreading because the conditions, particularly in organizations, causing a desire for healing is growing.

From every corner of the country we hear or read about people and organizations in pain.  How sales and profits are down.  How stock prices, shareholder value, and credit ratings are plummeting.  How people don’t want to be hassled or have worries.  How corporate leaders are doing everything they can to improve productivity, boost employee morale, reduce labor costs, eliminate inter-team conflicts, and so on.

Likewise, people want to achieve their GOALS.  Buyers are always on the lookout for something faster, or bigger, or different, or better, or whatever, that will help them get where they want to go.  A buyer’s desire for gain right now or a return to past greatness seems higher than it’s ever been.

Psychographics Are The Key

Markets are much too crowded today for service providers to ignore the buying motives of their best “A-type” clients.  In order to pinpoint a target market as precisely as possible and thus generate better leads, you must know what the psychographic characteristics are of your best clients.  That is, WHY they use your services, WHY they hired you instead of a competitor, and WHY they use your services at a specific point in time.

Other factors might include their hobbies, interests, associations to which they belong, previous purchases they’ve made, other similar and/or related services or products they’ve bought, and so on.

You are then in a position to focus, concentrate and aim all of your time, energy, and money on targeted groups of people with similar buying motives.  These are the folks who will generate the highest return on your marketing efforts because they are eager to use your services.

To illustrate the importance of knowing how to separate suspects (someone with a need for your services) from prospects (someone who will want your services), let’s look at the insurance market:

Agents selling life insurance policies cater primarily to “married couples with or without children.”  Simply put, families specifically are often the primary target audience because the breadwinner (most often the husband) may need to make sure his family will be taken care of, or the house will be paid off, or estate taxes will be handled, or whatever, in case of his death.

Psychographics, however, go a little further and separate the prospects from the suspects.  In this example, the target market for insurance agents are breadwinners (married men) that not only need to take care of their family but also want to take care of their family – since not all of them do (the same thinking applies to single parents by the way).  It’s a matter of choice – people are allowed to have no life insurance.  It’s not against the law.

See, what we think we “need,” has nothing to do with what we want.

Think about it.

If you were a life insurance agent, would you consider ALL married couples or ALL families with children or ALL single parents as potential clients?

Or, let’s say you sold group health insurance policies.  Would you consider ALL organizations with policies that are going to expire in the near future as prospects?

I hope not.

However, if insurance agents and brokers took psychographic traits into account, they might unearth prospects that have both the ability and desire to pay for a new insurance program.  By identifying common qualities amongst the ideal or best “A” clients they service, they may discover what attracted those clients to them in the first place.

Let’s look at group health insurance again.  Upon inspection, the insurance broker might discover these psychographic characteristics:  his (or her) best clients had specific complaints at the time (they felt the old policy was too expensive), or concerns (not enough coverage with the old policy), or upsets they wanted to get rid of (they never heard from their agent until it was time to renew) which caused them to switch brokers.  Or, he might discover that there were previous purchases made of a similar nature (such as having a financial or 401K plan already in place).

Once done, the insurance broker can find out what the points of contact are for his “A-type” clients.  He might identify groups and organizations they belong to.  There might be newsletters or other publications they read whose subscribers might be high tech CEOs, for instance.  Or, maybe there are trade shows, conferences, and events they attend on a regular basis.  The opportunities are plentiful.

Bottom-line:  Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate … aim, aim, aim  … then fire.  Arm yourself with as much useful information as you can about your ideal client – who they are, where they are, and what makes them tick – then target others just like them.  While you can’t appeal to just anybody, you can appeal to somebody.  And that somebody is someone who is motivated by a want for a service that will heal their wounds or achieve their goals.

My wish for you and your business is that you are able to reach those prospective clients that produce the maximum result possible from every effort you make, every minute you spend, and every dollar you invest on marketing.  Helping you select the right target market is part of what I’m all about.  Contact me directly by phone at 949.499-1174 or by email at gerry@masterymarketing.com if you I can be of any assistance in this area.