Small business owners love what they do – there’s no doubt about that. You opened your business because you’re a master at your craft. You love helping people, solving problems, and contributing back into your community or the world at-large. But your desire to work with everyone is actually what’s hurting your small business, not growing it.
Not The Best Clients
When we market to everybody, it means we are going to get clients in the door who aren’t a great fit for us. When we work with clients who aren’t a great fit, they will often become problem clients. These are clients who cause a lot more problems than they solve, they create more headaches than relieve, and they often demand more than they pay for. Ultimately, we call these the “joy suckers.”
To identify who your best type of clients are, look through your current client list and identify those whom you enjoy working with, but also those who invest with you the most. We want to get more clients who are just like them. Next, take them out for coffee and ask them why they sought out your business in the first place, and what problems were they looking to solve. By asking them questions about why they came to you, it will help you better understand the types of things these ideal clients are looking to do. Then, just do more of that, with people like them!
Not Getting Results
Marketing to everybody and bringing in the wrong types of clientele means that you most likely will come across people who won’t get great results by working with you. It doesn’t necessarily mean that your service isn’t great or can’t do what is written on the tin, but instead, these people were most likely not ready to work with you in the capacity you needed them to. When we don’t get great results or solve our customer’s problems, it sets up a series of chain reactions that are also not great. More problem clients to deal with, negative feedback, or maybe not getting referrals or reviews.
Instead, when we work with people who we know we can best help, it means we can go all in on helping them. It means they will be receptive to our help, they will follow through on the steps that are required of them, and when they do get the results they’re looking for or the problems solved that they needed, they’ll be more likely to spread the good word about us.
Not Talking About You
As stated above, when we don’t have a great experience with these less than ideal types of clients, the negative consequences escalate. They may provide bad reviews that were unwarranted on our business’ social media pages, or they might even tell their friends about their negative experience. The saying goes: If you give the customer a great experience, they’ll tell one of their friends. But if they have a bad experience, they’ll tell ten of their friends.
While we can’t control the type of reaction our customers have, we can control who we work with. If we strive to work with only those that we know we can help the best, the chances of a positive wave is that much higher. Happy customers will shout from the mountain tops about their experience with us, and they’ll be the first ones to tell their friends and family about us. Word of mouth is one of the best forms of marketing, so we want to make it count in this arena!
Knowing exactly who you can help the best is incredibly powerful to your marketing strategy for your small business. Take the time to learn who your best customers are, and how you can best help them. Then, put time and energy into finding more of those people. The pay-off for that time spent is worth immeasurable ROI.
If you’d like to nail down your niche and your offer to help your best clients, click here to learn more about our next intake where we help small service businesses get to $30k months, consistently, to free up more money, more time, and more mental space from their businesses.