WHAT IS AN IDEAL CLIENT AND WHY WOULD YOU WANT ONE?

By Jennifer Cramer Lewis

I love to work with committed, and productive entrepreneurs to grow their businesses to the next level of profitability, without blowing themselves up.  Part of that equation is to help them to look at the activities that help attract more quality clients, and have productive work time so that they can have a great inspiring personal life.  Which includes spending time doing the things that they love to do that fill them up, and makes life worth living. How does that sound to you?

​I have noticed is that there is nothing more frustrating for an entrepreneur, or business owner to think that they know what their ideal client is, and to discover that they have not a clue, and are spending real cash money not gaining any traction in their business.

When I go through the exercise of helping my clients discover their ideal client, I perceive there is a misconception that if the business owner only focuses on one particular segment of their market place that it will result in less sales or clients for them.  In fact, the opposite is true.

Energetically, if your attention is so scattered, you are shotgunning your ideal market place with so many messages about what you do, what actually happens is that you make no meaningful connections with anyone.   How frustrating is that?  For you?  Also for the clients who really need your special brand of services and awareness?

A few years back, determined to be more adept at talking about my business in a meaningful way.  I hired a professional coach to assist me with creating my signature talk.  One of the exercises in the program was to stand on stage and connect with the true audience for my message.  It was a profound experience.  The message I received was that if I didn’t get out there and connect with my “tribe” of people, that they would simply never get what they were truly looking for.  They would go years without my assistance, and struggle without it. It would make me selfish for not giving it my all.  Since then I have done everything I could to connect with my clients so that they could find me and engage with me no matter where I was in the world.

Today’s marketplace is global and our clients could be looking for us from anywhere.  So what do we do?  Let’s get to work!

Here are a few important questions to ask about your ideal client:
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• What is the name of your ideal coaching client? (personalize your ideal client by giving them a name)
• How old are they?
• Are they in a relationship or out of a relationship?
• Kids or no kids? Grandkids?
• A Career or Retired?
• Write out 4 to 6 words for the energy you bring to the table in the transformation that they will make by working with you?
• When they has all of these things who will they be then? (give them a new name)
• What are the words that are “HOT” or “POP” for you when you hear their name?
• Tap into (new name) and what they would like to be and to know about the planet and what their gifts are… how is their family changed? How is their personal life changed? How are their relationships changed? What do they eat differently? What do they do differently?

Connecting with your ideal client is a personal journey.

What do you get out of the relationship with the pre-transformation client, and post-transformation client?  What is your “win” besides “helping them”?  How do you feel?
Why is it important to you to continue this work?  How does it “fill you up”?  In my opinion, for any work to be sustainable, there must be a component (or even all of it) that fills up your soul and is profitable for you as the business owner.  People are intrinsically attracted to people that make them feel good.  You working in your business, and feeling great about the transformation is super attractive to a potential client, and can, and will change their whole lives if you let it.

For an extended version of this worksheet in an easy to use download format please go to bit.ly/ICBlueprint ​