Ideal Customer Profile
Last night, I went to a fellow EO member’s grand opening of a his newest store in Buckhead. He runs Onward Reserve, a men’s clothing store. As you walk in the store, you can’t help but understand that the store caters to a particular look and particular clientele. Southern young men. Georgia boys.
Their focus is a huge strength. It helps them win. They know their ideal customer profile and design the things they do to serve their specific customers. They don’t dilute their targeting by trying to capture random other customers.
David Cummings has written about the importance of ideal customer profiles before: here (cold calling ratios start with a list of ideal customers), here (you’ll have more sales success if you focus on ideal customers), here (you should focus your website), and especially here (ideal customers are better than random customers).
At AccelerEyes, we have internally kicked around the idea of blocking IE browsers from visiting our website. We could put up a splash page that explains this. Users of IE are not ideal customers for our business. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but there’s truth in it.
SalesLoft’s business is squarely in the vein of helping people find their ideal customers. Check them out!
How do you find your ideal customers?