Where's Juli?
Upcoming Events
Social Media Panel
Date: Wednesday 26, 2010
Time: 5:30 to 7:30 PM
Want to learn more about social media? Come listen to this panel discussion with local social media experts.
Email me for more information.
Netmasters Training Group
Date: Thursday, May 27, 2010
Time: 6-8 PM
Location: Century 21 Building in Kingstowne (by Safeway)
5990 Kingstowne Towne Center, Alexandria, VA 22315
Cost: $15
RSVP to juli@1to1discovery.com
The topic this month: "The Psychology Behind Elevator Speeches"
|
I'm Blogging Now!Stop by my blog and check out more news and tips about networking. Feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to hear what you think. |
Juli Monroe
1 to 1 Discovery
571-220-1891
juli@1to1Discovery.com
|
|
Greetings!
I was working with a client on defining her ideal clients. As we were talking, I was telling her about profiling, and what fell out of my mouth was, "You need to profile your ideal client. You know, the way the FBI profiles serial killers."
Yes, I love reading thrillers, in case you hadn't guessed. But I realized there was a good bit of truth in what I said. When profiling, law enforcement professionals look at a lot of categories, including age, marital status, education, types of jobs, make and model of automobile and a host of other criteria.
So how can you profile your clients (who hopefully aren't serial killers)? Read on.
|
|
Client Profiling and Referrals
Profiling the client
Have you looked at your clients and asked these types of questions:
In what age range does your average client fall? Teen? Young working professional? Baby boomers? Retirees?
What about level of education? Is your offering going to resonate better with someone who has a college education? Does it matter?
Where do they live? Urban, suburban? Rural? Asking your referral partners to look in the right places makes it a lot easier.
How about income level? Clients who can't pay are no fun.
Self-employed or worker types? This can be very important for your triggers.
You can ask yourself the same questions the FBI asks. The answers will help you refine your thinking. The profile itself won't be the message you send to your network, but it will help make it more specific and targeted.
So what do you do now that you have the profile?
From Client Profile to Referral Triggers
I want to take a sample profile and show how the profile can lead to specific triggers you can use to generate referrals.
A lot of people ask for "anyone with skin" or "medium sized retail businesses." These aren't effective ways to ask for a referral because they are either too broad or too vague to generate a response. But to effectively ask for referrals, you need to know your clients and what they have in common. From there you can generate specific descriptions that will generate a response.
Let me walk through the process. One of my clients is a real estate agent. His ideal client profile looks something like this:
Age: 25-50
Marital Status: Married
Educational Level: College graduate
Income Range: $70K and up
Children: Yes
The list could go on, but that's enough for us to work with. First, why are these the criteria? He wants to target clients who are in transition, and that age range covers a population likely to be moving in and out of houses. Can younger or older people also move? Of course, but this profile is for a particular category of client. He could (and has) created a different profile for older couples who are downsizing. Married people tend to have a higher gross income than singles. College grads tend to make more money. And married people with children are likely to have a reason to move several times. This particular agent is interested in long-term clients, not quick sales.
Someone probably can (and will) argue with me about the criteria. But for the rest of my example, just go with it.
So how does my client take those criteria (which are pretty broad) and turn them into specific triggers to generate referrals? He looks for ways his network might recognize these types of people. Where do they hang out? What organizations do they join? What are life events that others might recognize?
For example, he could ask for an introduction to a homeowner's association to do a presentation on the changes in home prices in the area. He'd probably meet people matching his criteria at that meeting. He could ask people to look and listen for their friends discussing a need to up-size because of a new baby. He could ask for introductions to financial planners because they often ask questions that will uncover referrals in his target market. Perhaps he could network with influential people in local alumni associations.
See how it works? Establishing a criteria helps him to create triggers to generate referrals for clients. It also gives him ideas of other professionals he can partner with and pass referrals to and from.
So look at your client list. Create a couple of profiles for the different segments of your target market. And then use those criteria to develop referral-generating messages.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
