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The Story of YOUR Ideal Customer
September 10th, 2007 · Filed Under: Success Toolbox · tell powerful stories
Have you ever stopped to write down the story of your ideal customer? Whether you are a business person wanting to attract the perfect customer, a non-profit director seeking the perfect grant funder, or a person seking to attract the perfect mate, what I am about to share with you will help you.
How can you attract the perfect customer or mate or whatever if you do not know your criteria?
This sentence right here will pull you up a level:
“I only want the customers who want ME!”
Frame that and repeat it like a mantra.
This is something I did a year ago thanks to the mentoring of Glenn Dietzel, but I decided it was time to do it again for 2 reasons. For one thing, I have reached a higher level of income, so I am a new person and it is time to re-evaluate my ideal customer. it has changed as my standards have taken a huge leap, and it is good to take stock from time to time anyway.
The second reason is that I am part of BookWise and one of the challenges I accepted was to complete this exercise.
Since you are reading this because you love stories and are growing your own influence in the world, it is an activity you will want to do as well. If you’d like to see another post about this, Tracy Repchuk also did this exercise and blogged about it.
Take out a piece of paper and a pen, go into your power place for thinking/planning:
Ask yourself who you want to attract into your life, and then ask yourself these questions.
1. Who is your perfect customer? Give at least 3 traits of this person.
2. How do you want to spend 80% of your time? You want to spend most of your time in your areas of strength…so you’ll be writing your strengths. This actually helps you attract your ideal customer because you will work FROM your strengths.
3. What services are you passionate about offering?
4. Create a story for yourself about an ideal day in which you offer your best service to your ideal customers all day long. You can write this or talk it into a recorder or make a picture or whatever.
If you would like, you can share your story (#4) by responding to this post. Even if you don’t share your story, I would love for you t o comment and let me know what happened for you when you did this exercise.
attract your PERFECT customer and watch your influence and your following grow exponentially!
Make it happen!
Ronda Del Boccio, The Story Lady of www.Storyation.com, author of The Kama Sutra of Storytelling: Positioning, Power and Profit
Tags: , success, storyation, mentoring, Blog Talk Radio host, spiritual tradition
2 Responses to “The Story of YOUR Ideal Customer”
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Insert Audio CommentRonda Del Boccio, The Story Lady of Storyation.com is an author, dynamic speaker, author coach, story coach.
She is the author of I'll Push, You Steer: The Definitive Guide to Stumbling Through Life with Blinders On
The Kama Sutra of Storytelling: Positioning, Power and Profit
and her upcoming book...
The Geometry of Success: 5 Simple Shapes that Shape Your Life
September 10th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Finished the exercise in about ten minutes. It was easier than expected. I was surprised what I put to paper. Not what I expected at all. It is amazing how the mind wonders in a different direction once you get in the flow.
One of my long term goals is to achieve my ideal day. I will make it sooner than later.
Thanks for the suggestion. It was well worth it.
Mary Kay Miller
September 18th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Ronda, thank you for this wonderful opportunity to get clearer about the kind of customers I want to attract and to share my story, put it out there in the Universe!
My ideal clients are people who have started to have an inkling that their personal wellbeing and quality of life depend on the overall wellbeing of Planet Earth, so they know they have an interest in taking action to improve that overall wellbeing. They just don’t know where to start and how to achieve the greatest possible benefit.
They are open-minded people who are willing to be very honest with themselves and arrive at new insights that initially go beyond their comfort zones. They are willing to commit to following my advice and implementing unconventional ideas, and to trust the process.
Here is an example of what a day spent working with ideal customers would look like for me:
My first appointment is with a family that recently moved to the Big Island of Hawaii from Portland, Oregon, with the dream of jumping out of the rat race and living a sustainable homestading lifestyle in paradise. They first contacted me about six months ago when they were still living on the mainland and their plans were beginning to take shape. We started off having some very thorough vision building sessions to help them get clear on issues like the following ones:
-What exactly were they expecting from their new situation?
-Would the real conditions in Hawaii match their expectations, their personalities, their passions and their degree of fortitude?
-How strong was their commitment to integrating with the local community and contributing to the wellbeing of the whole island?
They had come through this part with flying colors as people who had the will and the capacity to develop a mutually very beneficial relationship with this land and its people. (During the same period, another couple approached me with similar ideas. For them the conclusion that came out of this process was almost the opposite. I had much reason to believe that were they to embark on this venture, it would turn out disastrously for all involved. Yet they were ideal customers too, because they had the honesty to accept the outcome of the process and create a new lifestyle vision that was much better suited to their real needs. Thanks to that, I was able to help them save tens of thousands of dollars and countless headaches on their quest to live their dreams.)
Back to today’s appointment: it’s been a couple of weeks since my clients closed on a five-acre property they selected with my guidance, after we had worked together on a statement of vision and purpose for the whole undertaking. Today my job is to walk the land with its new owners and gather all the necessary data for the first draft of a comprehensive design and management plan for the property. A plan that sets up all systems to provide optimal benefits to personal, local and planetary health and profitable agricultural enterprise all at the same time.
Because of my clients’ passionate desire to succeed in the most holistic sense of the word, they set to assimilating the requisite skills and attitudes with enthusiasm.
Next up is a session with the owner and staff of a small development and construction company who are working on making all their business practices more ecologically sound. They also want to develop the first “eco-neighborhood” project in the region. What I really like about this company is that unlike so many other businesses, they’re not just trying to “greenwash” the business for image’s sake, they are really going through every aspect of their operations and genuinely making them green to the core wherever possible and trying to get everyone on board.
The first tangible result has been that employee retention increased to way above average for the area.
People really want to work here. They know their creative input is valued, their health and safety cared about, and their efforts are going into an excellent, cutting-edge product that caters to an increasing demand.
Today I am proposing various modifications to the plans for the eco-neighborhood that would significantly reduce its impact on the surrounding ecosystems and integrate the project harmoniously into the landscape. The team is remarkably willing to consider these changes and gain understanding of why I’m proposing them. With more and more community opposition to out-of-control development they know their strategy of solid integrity will be a great advantage in the long run.
Next I’m off to check in on one of my health coaching clients. She was nearly at the end of her tether when she first hired me. Owner of a small gift store, her health had been mysteriously deteriorating for a while and with it went her productivity in her business, down to the point where she hardly had the energy to work at all anymore and had to hire a full-time assistant to run the store for her. Down went her income, up went her weight and her medical bills and insurance. A string of dubious diagnoses and treatments, attempts at following various kinds of diets, nothing gave any relief. At this point she agreed to try a completely different approach, following my recommendations.
At first she found it hard to believe that the very simple steps I advised could make any difference at all, but experiencing the first slight improvements encouraged her to follow through with my program.
Now, almost a year later, she is running her store at least for half the week again and is tweaking her health in preparation for a physical exam that should help with negotiating a new health insurance deal, with premiums reduced by 75%. She is feeling more empowered and comfortable in her body than she ever has before, she has taken her health back into her own hands.
When I get home from my appointments, I file my notes of the day to have them handy when I write my next newsletter or ebook chapter. Then I spend the rest of the day doing fun things with my 12yo son.
Nicole