At least 2 thirds of our team are Irish. As an almost all Irish team, we were brought up in the fine tradition of storytelling. One of my favourite tales is that of the man who catches a leprechaun in a wood. Knowing the leprechaun has to reveal his pot of gold upon capture, he demands to know the location of the gold.
The leprechaun obliges and ties a red ribbon around a tree deep in the woods to signify where the gold is buried. He assures the man that the gold is there, all he needs to do is dig it up. Satisfied that a leprechaun is not lying, the man lets him go and goes home to pick up a shovel.
On his return, the leprechaun had tied a red ribbon around every tree in the forest and the gold was safe.
In business, we all face the same challenge. There are thousands of ideal customers who could benefit from our service out there, the only problem is distinguishing them from the millions of companies they are hidden amongst.
I’ll be blogging about ways to find your ideal customer, but a vital first step is to write down what your Ideal Customer Profile looks like.
Ideal Customer Profile for Procurementexpress.com
| Company size | 50 – 200 people |
| Industries | Charities, Marketing organisations |
| Pain Point | COO / Manager spends > 2 hours a month signing PO’s |
| Financial Status | Have challengers with cashflow |
| Current System | Paper based |
| Values / People | Open to using new tools to improve business ops |
Writing ideal customers attributes down like this feels somewhat restricting. We could be missing out on a whole swathe of people who could benefit by limiting our targeting right now. No doubt we are. But for this quarter, this provides us with a good focus. If it isn’t working for us or we are finding it hard to grow, we can revisit the target profile and see how it needs to be changed. It does, however, allow our sales team to focus and do one thing well rather than spreading ourselves too thin.
Do you have an Ideal Customer Profile? Has it helped you?
