Ten Questions To Ask When Profiling Your Customers.

If you were to build a thorough customer profile, would it take you an hour, a day, or a week? More importantly, how would you go about building this customer profile? It sounds simple, but do you REALLY know who your ideal customers are?  You should have a customer profile for each one of your products and services because it gives you a clear picture of who you want to sell to and allows you to develop strategies to communicate more effectively. This is a vital exercise for all businesses that need to niche down and focus on an audience that gets them.

This blog is about detailing the ten questions you need to answer when profiling your customers. Once you’ve followed the process detailed in these ten questions you’ll have more of an idea of how to go about profiling your prospective customers.

Question 1.  What keeps them awake at night?

All sales processes start with someone identifying a problem or having a problem highlighted for them. So when you’re thinking about your suspect, what keeps them awake at night. What’s giving them nightmares:-

• Is it cash flow issues
• Is it customer service problems.
• Is it supplier problems.
• Is it staffing problems.

Question 2. What are they afraid of?

We’re all secretly afraid of something even once we’ve reached an element of success and so it is with your suspect. If you’re an accountant could your suspect be afraid of the tax man or their cash flow situation? There will be a number of things that secretly scare them and it’s your job to work them out:-

• Is it their suppliers letting them down
• Is it staff shortages
• Is it the competition.

Question 3. What are they angry about and who are they angry at?

Let’s hope it’s not you that they are angry at, but it could be your competition or the market leader in your sector that is constantly providing poor customer service. They may well be angry about many different things, from high prices to poor service. It’s your job to begin to understand this and see how you can pour oil on troubled water, here are a few things they could be annoyed at and who they may be angry at:-

• Is it the tax man (again).                      Is it the competition.
• Is it their staff.                                      Is it their lack of customers.
• Is it high prices.                                   Is it lack of competition.
• Is it poor service.                                 Is it lack of choice.

Question 4. What are their top 3 daily distractions?

We’re all guilty of doing some things every day that we really don’t like doing and is probably a distraction from getting us to where we want to be. If you’re a bookkeeper this one is a great one for you. Let’s be honest who likes recording their mileage or doing their business expenses if you can communicate to your prospect that you can take this daily distraction away from them they’re going to love you forever. Have a think about the top 3 daily frustrations you can take away:-

• Is it lack of time to get everything done that they need to do?
• Is it lack of customers?
• Is it lack of staff / Staff training or other staff issues?

Question 5. What trends are occurring and will occur in their business and llives?

What do you know about the trends occurring in your industry, a lot I hope. If you can know more about the trends in your customer’s lives than they do you can stay ahead. Your communications will resonate with them more and you’ll be more relevant to them. So think about the trends that are happening are these some of them?

• Is their business moving online?
• Are their clients or customers getting older?
• Is technology a threat or an opportunity for them?
• Are they under threat from new market entrants etc?

Question 6. What do they secretly and ardently desire most?

If you know what your prospective customer desires most then quite simply you can offer it to them. Often what people desire is not always obvious but have a think about these:-

• Is it more money.
• Is it success (It’s not the same as more money).
• Is it more holidays or leisure time.
• Is it a legacy.

 

Question 7. Is there a built-in bias to the way that they make decisions?

As human beings we are subject to a whole host of biases when it comes to making decisions, everything from ‘Confirmation bias’ (where we go looking for information that confirms what we we’re already thinking) to ‘Recency bias’ (this occurs when people more prominently recall and emphasise recent events and observations than those in the near or distant past). Your prospective customer is no different, they are subject to biases when making decisions. Some particular industries and occupations have specific ways of thinking that bias their decision making. So for example:-

• Is it an engineering bias, where technology and features will be more prevalent in their thinking.
• Is it an accounting bias, where the numbers will be central to any decision making process.
• Is it an aspirational bias, where the outcomes are more prevalent in their thinking.

Question 8. Do they have their own language?

Lots of industries have their own language formed from acronyms and technical terms and you have to learn to speak it to successfully sell to them. Electricians talk about wire gauges, Plumbers talk about flow rates, Copywriters talk about optin forms and CTA’s (call to actions). The list goes on and on, you need to be able to speak to your prospective customer in a language that they understand. Far too much marketing is done in the wrong language for the target customer.

Question 9. Who else is selling something similar to them and how?

Success leaves clues. If you can learn the methods that someone else used to succeed, then you can do the same thing! So if you’re an accountant and looking to sell your services to small business owners, who is already selling to them and how are they doing it and are they successful?

Question 10. Who else has tried selling them something similar and how has that effort faired?

We all learn from failures, but the problem is that learning from failure can be expensive and time consuming. It’s far better to learn from others failures, this tends to accelerate the learning process and of course it costs a lot less. So as in the question above who is targeting the same customers as you and what is not working for them.

Of course, answering these questions is really just the first step you need to take. Why not check out my client profiling tool (https://www.johnolivant.com/free-business-building-resources/) for a more complete assessment tool.

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