What does your ideal customer look like?

This was one of the questions posed to a group of small business owners during a recent seminar I attended in Stamford, CT. It was sponsored by Tile America and the presenter was Jim Malski, the president of Action Coach, a private firm based in Westport, CT.  Action Coach is dedicated to helping small to medium size companies with all aspects of their business.

When Jim asked the question I (a sales veteran of 21 years) along with pretty much everyone in the room had to stop an think. Most of us were able to come up with a decent overall answer, but none of us had a iron clad, well thought out, and battle tested description. We blurted out the obvious answers like; our best customer is profitable, pays on time, values our work, refers us to their friends and buys several times per year. Needless to say none of the participants have done this exercise either alone or with our sales representatives prior to coming to the seminar. So I decided at my following sales meeting, to pose this to my Connecticut Business Systems team with sales experience ranging from fourteen years to three months. Here is what we came up with.

Our ideal customer is:

• Cost conscious and understands that process improvement leads to increased productivity and efficiencies.
• Invests time and resources in improving their business operations.
• Understands that leveraging their technology investments can assist in fulfilling the company's overall objectives.
• Views our account executives as trusted business advisors and uses us to solve business problems.
• Open to new ideas regarding cost reduction through technology consolidation and print management.

Oh yes, they also pay on time, value our work and give us referrals. Wow, what a difference! Jim did suggests that when we go through this exercise with our teams we actually start by listing the name of our best current customer. What about them makes them so good to do business with? This was one of the most productive exercises I have done with any of my teams.

We now have a clear picture of what our ideal customer is. We also developed questions to ask on every first appointment which test our suspects or prospects against the "model client". We went from asking questions like "How many copies do you do a month?" to "Can you tell me of a time when you leveraged technology investments to fulfill your business goals, mission and vision"?  Which one of your current sales people do you view as business advisors and not just sales reps"? Even when we get blank stares, the customer realizes that Connecticut Business Systems is not just interested in selling a "box" to push paper, anyone can do that. At the very least, early on in the sales cycle, our prospects will understand that we are a professional organization interested in helping them attain their big picture goals and not just add to the expense side of their balance sheet.

There are other added benefits to this exercise outside of creating great business questions. When we think about the ideal client we can easily recognize the ones who are not, which allows us to make the necessary adjustments and provide the right amount of resources for each situation. With this positive view of the "model client" we have a better chance of attracting the type of customer which appreciates our approach and views us as business partners. And the next time any of my reps are at a networking event and someone asks what type of accounts are a good leads for us...we have the "ideal" answer.

So what does your ideal customer look like?