9 Qualities of Your Ideal Clients

Let’s get right to the point.  As a business owner, we all want great, long-term clients.  This is where the adage “you get what you envision “comes into play.

Are you envisioning your ideal or best clients walking into your office or contacting you online?  OR are you running your business based on scarcity?

If you own a service business, your niche must be in a lot of pain, dealing with major challenges, frustrated, or sick and tired of the status quo.  Otherwise, they are not going to look for outside help, ergo, they’re not going to hire someone like you … at any price!

What Makes a Client Ideal?

I’m often asked, “What makes a client ideal?”  Here’s a list of the basic attributes I’ve noticed over the past 20 years:

1. They value your services because YOU can define the value, understand their pain, and provide the solution.
2. There is no price haggling.
3. You feel their trust (and trust grows).
4. They enjoy working with you and learning from you.
5. You enjoy working with them and learning from them.
6. They gladly provide you with whatever paperwork you need.
7. They keep their appointments (or reschedule the minute they know there’s a problem).
8. They can easily be found in numbers/groups.
9. They automatically refer others like themselves to you.

The list is seems simple enough. Right?  Yet most advisors and service business owners don’t have ideal clients who “fit the bill”.

Attribute List  – Dig Deeper

When you count your ideal clients, if you don’t see a minimum of 10%-20%, it’s time to back up and reevaluate your niche and current marketing efforts.

A problem I find with advisors and service business owners in general,  is that they want to niche, want to attract clients, want to have more and better clients.  They will do all the homework I give them to nail a niche they’re passionate about, but:

• They want to skip the harder work, which is defining the specific attributes of the niche.
• Most won’t change their value proposition, brand,  and marketing messages to clearly identify that niche to the public.
• Because  their niche isn’t coming to them right away, they backtrack and go back to selling to anyone who breathes.

To niche properly, besides the general area of people you want to work with, who need your services, you’ll want to know the nitty gritty about what makes them tick.  That means you want to know everything possible about their:

–Demographics

–Geographics

–Psychographics

–Technographics

–Marketing Preferences

(c) 2017, Updated 2019  Coach Maria