M8

Do you practice strategic thinking in your marketing efforts? Do you strategically develop a profile of the clients and customers you want to do business with before you start contacting prospects and clients? If you answered NO to these questions, you may want to rethink the way you are doing your marketing. My experience indicates that the strategic development of the ideal client profile and the development of a most desired client list is woefully underutilized and therefore a great deal of energy, time, talent and money is being wasted in marketing efforts.

It seems to me that if one takes the time to strategically think and plan a list of characteristics to define an ideal client and then uses that as a “filter” to evaluate prospects, the probability of success in their marketing efforts would be enhanced over the non-strategic efforts of thinking everyone is a prospect and chasing too many non-productive leads. You are basically spending some time “pre-qualifying” suspects and prospects before you begin your efforts to approach them. The characteristics of the ideal client will also provide information so you can strategically design your marketing message, contact method, call to action and follow-up.

This is a very popular and passionate topic with my business coaching clients and I have developed a list of the types of characteristics (which is certainly not meant to be all-inclusive) you may consider in defining the profile of your ideal client. Here is a list from your strategic thinking business coach to assist you in your efforts.