If you're a coach, student coach, business owner or someone with a desire to get into business, take careful note of the powerful tips and development strategies presented within this series and GET READY to make the leap to ultimate success.

Knowing your clients
Marketing is the process by which you articulate and espouse the attributes of your business and products to prospective clients. But before you can effectively market your business it’s critical that your service and product offering are in alignment with your target clients’ needs and desires. If they aren’t, you can spend an enormous amount of time, money and effort promoting your services without ever knowing why you get an extremely low take up rate.

The first step in the process of alignment is knowing your client. The more you know about your client the better. And the fewer assumptions you make to get to know your client the better. When we say ‘client’ we’re referring to the specific profile of the type of person, people, business, or organisation that you want to work with. This profile should be as laser focussed and detailed as possible.

Remember that it’s literally impossible to meet the needs of everyone. Get a picture of who you are aiming to serve, your ideal client.

You need to build a profile that includes both Demographic and Psychographic details.

Demographics are all the external facts about your clients:

- Their socio-economic group;
- Their geographical location;
- Gender;
- Age;
- Education;
- Income;
- Profession;

Attributes affecting your service/product:

• Are they Executives?
• Are they Business Owners of a certain type of business?
• Are they Families?
• Are they overweight/underweight?
• Are they adolescent underachievers/high achievers?
• Are they new mothers?
• Are they Single Parents?
• Where do they congregate or are located?
• What technology do they use?

Psychographics relate to the clients’ character, their personality, philosophy and their behavioural tendencies.

- What attributes do they have in common?
- What interests, hobbies etc do they have?
- What other products/services do they as a group use?
- What common challenges do they face? And what is the cost of those challenges to them?
- What common desires or objectives do they share?
- What are they hoping to achieve?
- What are they afraid of?
- What values and beliefs do they hold?
- How will they search/find your services? IE What mediums do they commonly use (Newspapers, national or industry specific magazines, internet, radio, free to air or pay TV)?

The value of this information can not be overstated. Large corporations spend exorbitant amounts of money developing profiles of their clients. And for good reason. This information will ultimately determine:

- How you promote your services;
.Type of language you use to communicate with them;
.Where you place your promotional/advertising message;
.What your message looks or sounds like (the visual and auditory cues you use);
- Where you promote your services;
- How you formulate your sales plan and process;
- How you develop and innovate your products;
- How you deliver your services;
- How you price your services;
- How you package additional services;
- What businesses you approach for affiliate and added value services;
- How you differentiate your coaching business over other coaching businesses.

Every successful business is customer focussed. And the only way to be customer focussed is to know the needs of your customer intimately.

Whilst this advice sounds very obvious, the actions of most business people that espouse having this knowledge demonstrates otherwise. Most businesses are established because the business owner recognises a personal need, challenge or desire that they set out to fulfil. They then think “well, if I needed this, so must other people.� The process of imposing your own desires on other people is a dangerous assumption in business.

Be customer driven. Develop your products and services in accordance with the needs of your customers, not your personal needs (or assumptions).

"One of the biggest mistakes, probably the biggest mistake people make in any business is that they fall in love with the wrong things. They fall in love with their product, service or company. You should believe passionately in your product, service or company. But you should fall in love with your clients"
(Jay Abraham, Getting All You Can Out of All You’ve Got)

There is no marketing technique that is more effective than genuine, sincere, passionate concern for your prospective client and a true desire to help them in solving a problem and reaching their goals.

Most people in business ask themselves, ‘What do I have to say to get people to buy?’
Instead you should ask, ‘What do I have to give?’ ‘What benefit do I have to render?’

It has nothing to do with gimmicks or hype but everything to do with what benefits you can offer your clients.

This article is an abstract from the Ultimate Coach Business Development Program, a comprehensive 24-month eCourse designed to walk coaches through the process of building flourishing businesses. If you'd like to learn how you can access the entire program email us at info@lcia.com.au.

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