Hi,
Welcome to the July 2022 edition of Thryve Tidbits. This month’s tips will help you define your target market, build a business you can sell and connect with others.
Lessons Learned: Ideal customer
Over time, business owner’s often develop a model in their mind of their ideal customer. Your ideal customer’s characteristics could include demographics, location, size, service needs, pain points and personality.
Why is this process beneficial? You will spend less time chasing unprofitable or undesirable leads. You will be able to describe to referral sources the leads you are looking for them to connect you with. You will be able to target your brand and marketing messaging to those customers.
You can start the process by reflecting on previous or current customers that you enjoyed working with and were profitable. Jot down the characteristics they had in common. Try not to be overly specific or add trivial details.
Contact me if you are looking for a partner to brainstorm your ideal customer with.
Book: Built to Sell by John Warrillow
Built to Sell aims to transition business owners from running a lifestyle business to building a business with opportunity for a valuable exit. John Warrillow teaches his philosophy through a story about a young business owner. The owner starts off overwhelmed with work stuck with clients he does not want and leading a poor performing team. (Sound familiar?) His mentor guides him on a series of strategic decisions to transform the business into a focused, repeatable profit machine.
The key parts of this book for me were:
- Do not become the bottleneck in your business’ processes
- Focus on one or two products/services where you excel and differentiate
- Hire and develop a management team that would be able to run the business without you
- Envision your exit goal and ideal life, then create the business model to achieve it
- Your business is much less valuable to buyers if it is built around you
Questions for you to ponder:
- Do you sell services where you need to be involved in the sales process? What could you do to make your services more uniform where any salesperson could sell them?
- Have you envisioned how long you want to run your business and what you would do with the exit proceeds?
- Are you so important to the business that you would need to stay on after exit for an extended period? What can you change in your business to allow it to run on auto pilot without you?
Technology as a tool: Loom
Business use of video has continued to grow in popularity. Simply, your message is received quicker and easier through video than text. Although I am not commonly the first person to jump in front of a camera, the benefits of video are so compelling that even accountants are getting into the act. Consider using video together with text as part of your messaging repertoire.
Loom is a great app to use to communicate through video. The app uses your computer’s camera to tape your message. You can edit the videos to meet your needs. The videos are then kept in your library for you to use as needed. For example, I have produced short videos welcoming new customers and sharing business tips on Linkedin.
Wishing you continued success and growth this month!
Toby Kaye
Founder and CEO
