Search Your Past Clients
When I was just starting out in my business, I performed like many people do — the same way that I was taught. However, at some point, I hit a crossroads. Have you been there?
You feel stuck with what you are doing. You are in a rut and don’t know if it’s really what you want to be doing anymore. When you are at a junction in your career, it can be a huge turning point. For me, it was no different. When I found myself at that point, I decided to search for a past mentor of mine, who reignited my flame of passion for business and performance and set me out on the discovery process of my purpose in my niche in the events industry.
This course of action led me to research my past clients, finding out everything I could about them. I wanted to know what made them tick, why did they decide to choose my service, other event services they were searching for, and what my business could provide for them that they couldn’t find in another. In researching my past clients I wanted to identify which ones I thoroughly enjoyed working with. In business, this is called your ideal client, and it is important to identify who that is for you. In its simplest form, your ideal client is one that you do your best work with.
If you want to truly understand who that is, there is one more step beyond simply combing through your past clients.
What traits, qualities, or interests do you find in yourself? Now consider if you share any of those same characteristics or traits with your best past clients. How can you find this out and analyze the similarities and differences you share with them? My answer: study personalities.
There are all kinds of different personality types and ways to study them. The characteristics and traits you are observing all go along with different personality types. I have taken the Myers-Briggs assessment as well as created my DISC profile. However, the easiest system to understand and apply that I have found is explained in Vickie Musni’s book Personalities For Business. In it, she outlines the four different personality types and breaks them down into easy to understand language that will assist you in the sales process.
NUGGET: Understanding personalities will help your business.
Take a few minutes and go to vickiemusni.com/the-basics and read the brief overview. While you are there, take the short quiz on the home page and see how you score for each color. Understanding personalities, researching your clients and defining your ideal client go hand-in-hand. Understanding your own personality and the personality types you work with best is really helpful as you aim to define your ideal client. Complete the following rehearsal and then read the last portion of this chapter to get a better understanding of who your ideal client is (and is not) and how to better market to them in the future.