Are you focusing all of your energy, time, money and marketing efforts on out-playing, under-pricing or out-shouting your competition, when instead you should be playing an entirely different game than everyone else by focusing only on your favorite clients?
When you’re rebuilding or growing your business, there’s a sequence of steps you must follow.
Here are the first two critical steps:
First, relabel yourself. What is it that makes you unique – your Unique Selling Proposition [USP]. You have to set yourself apart from your competition.
A unique selling proposition (USP) is your unique answer to these questions:
• What does your product or service do that your competitors doesn’t?
• Why should I buy from you instead of anybody else?
• What guarantee can you make that nobody else can make?
Here’s an Example of a USP:
When Domino’s Pizza first came on the scene, they had a game changing proposition – “hot, juicy, delicious pizza – delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less – or it’s absolutely free.”
They were specific, 30 minutes or less and they gave a Risk-Free Guarantee.
AVOID platitudes like the plague.
Like they could have said: “Best pizza in town delivered to your door.”
“Best pizza”…anybody could say that.
“delivered to your door”…good, but how many questions does that raise?
How long will it take? Will it be cold and soggy when I get it?… What happens if it isn’t?
Look around your market and see how many businesses say similar things to what you say.
Platitudes mean nothing!
Second, is to identify your ideal audience, AKA: your favorite customers & clients – the 20% that generates 80% of your revenue, profit and cash flow. During this same phase, you are identifying the diseased clients in your midst that you have to stop serving. Only by identifying and firing the deadwood will you ever free up the time, resources and staff to under-promise and over-deliver through innovative systematization.
Here is the criteria to use to help you identify your ideal customers and clients:
1st: rank by their monetary value to your business – revenue and/or profitability.
2nd: Now cross out those who make you cringe (character, attitude, likable…). These are the people that when you see their number on caller ID, your stomach churns.
3rd: We identify and rank for each of the following qualifiers:
- Cash-is-King: Do they pay on time or better yet early?
- Frequency: Do they purchase on a regular basis?
- Potential: Could they generate a significant amount of revenue for you in the future?
- Communication Skills: Do they communicate with you well?
- EBA: Is your Emotional Bank Account high enough that if/when you make a mistake they give you chance to fix and forgive?
4th Now we rank by secondary qualifiers – here are some ideas. Each business owner is unique and may have their own criteria to add as well.
- Opportunity: Does working with them give you opportunities you would not otherwise have?
- Referrals: Do they refer others to you?
- History: Do you have a long history of working with this client making you feel confident you clearly understand how they will behave in all situations?
- Add a blank column for your own personal unique qualifiers
5TH: Finally, we help you identify your personal Immutable Principles. These are the principles you WILL NOT compromise.
When you hire us, we start with our 80/20 Assessment Analysis and have a unique way of grading each of these so that you know, beyond a show of a doubt, who to keep and who to let go and clearly why you should do so.
We get you only the right people, your favorite clients – the 20%’ers who generate 80% of your profits by creating marketing, strategies and systems so that your business works for you instead of you working for it.