How to sell effectively?

Imagine what it would be like if your marketing was consistently bringing you exact replicas of your most profitable and enjoyable clients...
You don't realize it yet, but in a few minutes I'm going to share with you a wickedly effective process for measuring your prospects before you ever decide to bring them on as clients.
You probably know that to test the purity of a water source your testing equipment must be calibrated; without calibration there can be no way to produce accuracy. Likewise, business owners often are trying to gain new clients without any clear focus or intent.
You see this blind-spot everywhere, definitely not in your business, but just take a look around. In many PR, marketing or branding firms (sorry guys, its true…), you will see this lack of focus glaringly reflected in their online portfolio. Upon further exploration, you would probably discover a monster-sized range of different clients.
You probably know, maybe from your own experience, that these business owners rely on referral business only. Believe me, they would market if they could. If you asked them, they would probably tell you,"I would market, it’s just impossible to find where my prospects are located." OR "Paying for advertising is not profitable for my kind of business."
And they would be right because they have created this reality from a disempowered place of negligence. They have neglected to focus, to calibrate their marketing so that they can create a genius strategy that clearly shows which tactics will be most profitable.
Are you beginning to see how negligence could be impacting your business? But get excited, there is something you can do TODAY to get unstoppably focused. And it all starts with the ideal client profile.
The purpose of the ideal client profile is to help you focus on the prospects with the greatest likelihood of becoming your new stress-free clients. The ideal client profile will serve as your calibration device, showing you how to accurately spend your time, energy, and budget to demand the highest possible ROI.
Any business owner who is operating their business without a focused and clear ideal client profile is being negligent, but I would NOT say they are incompetent unless they read this article and do nothing to change it now.
Let's just face the fact that when we are starting out in our business often times we don't want to limit ourselves, so we keep ourselves open to receive as many new clients as possible. Saying to ourselves,"I'll work with anyone!"
But as you read on and begin to integrate this distinction you will learn that this "cash & a pulse" mentality will seriously keep you from making a certifiable killing in your profits.
Before long you understand how clarifying your ideal client profile can help you get even more focused. And that by doing so you actually take ownership for the kinds of clients you decide to bring on.
If this sounds like something you would like to know, check out this process for identifying your ideal client profile:
1. Rank. Create two different lists that rank your clients by; Most Profitable and Easiest to do Business With.
2. Evaluate. What are the characteristics of each client? Attempt to determine why the top five clients are on each list.
3. Identify. Think about the key attributes that your best clients and worst clients share. What characteristics link the best? And what characteristics link the worst?
After completing this process you will likely find that those at or near the top are accurate reflections of your ideal customer profile. Take the top clients and build a more detailed profile.
Populate the above profile with the following information:
You Sell to Businesses...
*Annual revenue
*Number of employees
*Level of contact you are working with and in what functional area
*Local, regional, or national
*Business situation, i.e., is the company in growth or decline?
*Psychographics (The corporate values, culture, philosophy, and leadership)
You Sell to Consumers...
*Age
*Gender
*Race
*Ethnicity
*Geographical location
*Annual household income
*Psychographics (How do they get gratification in their lives? What is their dominant justification for making a purchase? What are their top 20 pains?)
Having a clairified ideal client profile is one way to generate more business and save yourself valuable hours. The ideal client profile is but one piece of a larger lead generation system. I hope at this point you have expereinced the value that can come from working ON your business. If you have ever wanted help creating a strategy or focusing your energy to get more done in less time, then ask for help.