Who Is Your Perfect Customer? You?

Knowing your customer is critically important for a business to grow and prosper.  I work with my clients and students on this all the time.  In my book, So, Now What, I had dedicated a chapter and worksheet to helping business owners like you figure out exactly who the perfect customer is.  Every once in a while someone approaches me and they show me how they did the work, filled out the worksheet and it didn’t help them in their business.  When that happens, like any good business owner, writer or teacher, I start by looking in the mirror to see what I did wrong.  And in this case, as in most cases, it was something I did wrong.

Not Quite a Theater, a Great Media Room

When Mr. R called and went over everything happening in his business, and I could tell nothing had changed in three months, I went back and re-read the chapter in the book.  Everything looked ok there.  I revisited my notes from past conversations with Mr. R, nothing there.  Finally I looked at Mr. R’s notes on his perfect customer and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.  My wife came running in to ask what was so funny, and even my dogs where worried.  I had her read the information on the guy’s perfect customer.  We both immediately knew what I did wrong in teaching and in the book. 

As I went through the chapter yet again, I couldn’t miss it.  Since most of the book is about you, the reader and upcoming mogul, not your customer, mentally the readers like you are thinking about themselves.  This guy had perfectly described himself as his perfect customer.  The problem was, to put it in his words, “I wouldn’t buy my work, I just think it is cool.”  So his perfect customer won’t buy his product!  Do you see a problem here?  Funny isn’t it.

Clearly I forgot to add a couple of criteria for the perfect customer description chapter.  1. Make sure they are people who want and will buy what you sell (desire), and 2. Make sure they have the money to buy what you sell (means).  Establishing means and desire is one of the first lessons in many professional selling courses. 

Looking back, I made both of these mistakes when I had my Home Theater Business, so it makes sense that I didn’t see it missing in the book yet.   During those years, I marketed to people who wanted six figure theaters.  In truth, these were rooms that I neither wanted, or could have afforded at the time.  I liked the rooms, and they were cool but I was very happy with my “media room”.  A media room  is a very different price level.

Many owners in the high end home theater business are really in the same boat.  There are only a handful of owners who could afford to have a six figure custom theater in their home and even fewer who did.  A couple of the owners that I knew lived vicariously through their clients and it made them happy for a while.  Inside neither felt like they could achieve a level of success that would allow them such luxury, so it was there way of hanging out with it.  Like me, neither of these guys own their home theater businesses any longer.  With the down turn, they realized they could achieve success elsewhere and left to pursue it. 

Mr. R had the same problem.  He knew what it cost him to create is work, and just didn’t feel like it was worth much more than a couple times the materials costs and minimum wage labor.  Since he really was doing artist/craftsman quality finish work I told him it needs to be way more expensive.  Additionally, he wasn’t making enough money to buy his own product anyway, so he really didn’t respect the value of his work.

    

This lead to another thought I will save for later….Making sure you value your own work.

The big difference with Mr. R and the two home theater guys was that working on these high end projects wasn’t making him happy.  The fact that “they” had money and he didn’t was causing him stress and angst.  This is never a good way to carry on a customer relationship.

What I would add to the chapter on the perfect customer is this.  If you haven’t already had at least one perfect customer, that customer that was just fun to work with, paid on time and was profitable for you, then go find one.  Even if you have to go to a competitor to learn what one looks like.  Don’t consider the next guy that walks in the door the perfect customer because you won’t know if they are for weeks or maybe years.  Looking back, I had one “perfect customer”.  I would do anything for him and his wife.  Like me, they built a nice media room and automated a lot of their home.  But I never  marketed to my “perfect customer”.  Big mistake.

Why is really knowing the perfect customer so important?  Simply put you can’t make a living serving yourself.  You cannot be your perfect customer.  You will make yourself stressed out if you have bad customers just to pay the bills and finally referrals are required, and you can’t get them from bad customers.   My perfect customer was like me with one really big difference.  My perfect customer also had the money to pay for it, on time, every time.  Sadly I must admit that I could not afford to pay my company for the media room I had.  I did all the work myself at night and on weekends.  Crawling the attic in a Houston Summer isn’t fun even if you are your own best customer.   

Not knowing who my perfect customers really were was probably a factor in making me the ogre in the business I was back then.  But don’t worry I am cured now, having fun every day.  Back then I was marketing too and attracting the wrong customers!  How can you have fun if you are doing work you don’t like and working for people who aren’t having fun working with you?  My perfect customer had so much fun that one day he and I spent an hour playing Wii baseball.  That is a guy who truly enjoyed my work and for who I truly enjoyed working. 

In all truth, I don’t think the home theater business would have survived the downturn anyway, but it sure would have been a lot more fun if I had marketed to and served another five or ten perfect customers each year.  Yes they are out there.  I know because I have figured out who my perfect customers are for my online marketing business, and turn away anyone that doesn’t fit.   I don’t need the money or stress from customers who don’t really want my work.  If they tell me they just “need” it  why should I work for them?  There is plenty of money out there and plenty of perfect customers for you.  You need to start by knowing who they are first.  A few perfect customers are worth more than dozens of painful customers.

Who is the perfect customer for you to serve?