Customers are the
Life-blood of Your Business
So...Who and Where are They?

Good question.

Who and where indeed.

And here's the answer.

Your customers are people who are already buying your product.

Pardon?

Let me repeat and clarify...your customers are people who are already buying your type of product or service.

Hmm. Were you expecting that?

Here's why.

If you are selling mountaineering equipment, would you try and sell it to:

Option A - your next door neighbour who's got arthritis and can't go anywhere without a walking stick (but they're on your 100 Name List)

or

Option B - the members of the local hiking and mountaineering club who you don't know (yet).

Not a trick question, and the answer is very obviously Option B.

(You did get that right didn't you?!)

The target market - or customer - for mountaineering equipment is people who already buy mountaineering equipment, i.e. mountaineers.

If this seems a ridiculous example to you (and you're wondering if I shouldn't just go and lie down in a darkened room...well, probably I should, yes!), then think back to when you joined your particular network marketing company.

Weren't you asked to write a 100 Name List of Friends and Family so that you could contact them about your products and Business Opportunity?

And precisely how many of those are avid mountaineers?

Well, OK, so maybe you live in the mountains and all your friends are mountaineers, but on the whole the people that you know and love are NOT your potential customers. Granted, some of them might be, and it's definitely worth scanning a list of those that you know to see if you have any potential customers.

For instance, if you sell a health product range that has some excellent treatments for arthritis, you may well hop over to next door to tell your arthritic neighbour about them.

But other than the very obvious ones who leap out at you, leave your friends and family well alone. Click here to find out what to do with your friends and family. So, if your potential customers are not lurking within your 100 Name List, you need to go find them.

This means that you need to do some research and find out the answers to some questions, such as:

• How old are they?
  
• Male or female?
  
• Married, single, divorced, same-sex couples?
  
• With children? No children?
  
• Where do they live? - And how specific can you get with this? (e.g. by region? by town? by street? which end of the street?
  
• What do they do in their spare time?
  
• What magazines do they read?
  
• What newspapers do they read?
  
• What do they do for a living?
  
• Where do they work (eg from home, commute, small town, big city..where exactly?)
  
• What do they eat?
  
• Do they go to the theatre, the cinema, concerts...if so what type (rock, pop, ballet, the classics etc)
  
• Do they go the gym?
  
• What clubs do they belong to?
  
• Do they do any charity work?
  
• Where do they shop?
  
• Do they have pets?
  
• Are there shows and exhibitions that they go to?
  
• Why would they buy your product or service? (Don't answer this from your point of view, but from theirs).
  

So, let's just pick on natural health products for a moment (there's lots of natural health MLMs around!).

So, your target market for your products are already going to be buying natural health products.

Their profile might well be - someone aged 35-55, mostly female, married with children, professional with disposable income, tired and stressed because they work in the city and lead a busy life. They read the women's glossy magazines, and the broadsheet papers on Sunday (no time during the week). They try and eat a heathy, wholesome diet but are not always successful (because they're busy and tired), enjoy the theatre and go to the gym three times a week. They shop in the middle class supermarkets (or have it home delivered for convenience), but you'll also see them in health food shops. They go for massages regularly for stress, and regularly go to the beauty therapist, they look after themselves, and you'll rarely see them in the Doctor's surgery.

And so on. You can build and build on this profile. A useful exercise is to cut pictures out of magazines and stick them on a board so you, literally, get a picture of your target customer.

Now, when you go through these questions, you are very likely to find quite a few potential target markets.

So with health products you might find potential customers in the animal world, or with people who have particular health challenges, or people in the beauty or complementary health industries or are marathon runners, or professional athletes etc. That's OK - just ask the same question of each of them and build different profiles.

With financial services or legal services companies - again, you are likely to find lots of different types of customers at different stages of their financial or legal life. So they could be first time home buyers, or second time home buyers, or looking to remortgage their existing home, or looking to buy-to-rent, or a business owner who needs ongoing legal advice, or people who want to get divorced, people who want a nest egg for their children and so on.

Stretch your mind and brainstorm all your potential target markets. Don't just look for the obvious.

You are likely to have to do some research too. Use the internet, your local library, your nearest business library, or do your own. Doing your own means asking people...and not just "any old people", but those who fall into your potential customer groups.

The more in-depth your profile of your target customers, the better your marketing (and therefore your results) will be.

If you've built a profile of your mountaineering customers and discovered that they all go to the local hiking and mountaineering club in the next town every other Wednesday, where do you think you should be going?

And if they all read newspaper A instead of newspaper B...where do you think you should be placing your ads and articles? And if they train and get fit at the local private gym (instead of the local council one) - where do you think you should go and set up a stall and do product demos? (Can you demo skis in a gym??!).

Do they all go to Mountain Expo every September? If so, should you and a team of fellow distributors be there?

Do you see how 'suddenly' you begin to know precisely who your customers are, and more importantly, where they are?

And, now do you see how easy it will be to go find yourself some customers that will pay your prices, and drink your magic potions without prompting? They will, because they already know why they should.

And once you've understood their reasons to buy your products, you'll know what to say to them too.

So..guess what your Exercise is for this section?

You got it.

Exercise 4a - Know Your Target Market for Customers

Spend some time (this is NOT a 5 minute job) and profile as many of your target customers as you can.

Research them, ask people, read relevant magazines and trade journals until you know precisely who the target market for our product or service is.

So, when I ask you "Who buys your products?" or "who is your target market?" - you'll know prceisely what to say to me...won't you?

NB - when I did this exercise recently for a new product range that my company brought out, I uncovered a completely new, HUGE set of potential customers that no-one has ever spoken to!! You never know, you might just get lucky!!

Exercise Two

Decide which target market - or target customers - you are going to focus on.

If you're stuck - which area are you most passionate about or interested in?

Go from Customers Page to Prospects Page

Return to Target Market Page

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