Identifying your ideal client

With the beginning of the year comes goal settting for many people, both professionally and personally. I'm no exception, and have been reading books and listening to audio tapes to guide me through this process. Lately, I've begun to notice some common themes, like the concept of identifying and choosing your ideal client.

Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling is a firm believer in this concept. As he writes at Nightingale.com:

Learn to live by the red velvet rope policy of ideal clients. By eliminating the painful negative energy and time spent worrying about challenging client relationships, you will dramatically increase your productivity, happiness, and client referral rate.

After all, how much time do we spend trying to convince someone that they need our services? I waste so much effort on prospect who don't understand how writing a brochure, press release or web page will save them time so they can concentrate on running their business. I get potential clients who believe that copywriting should be free or extremely cheap...after all it's only writing. They seriously believe that a brochure or web page should only take an hour - meeting time, research and brainstorming don't count, aren't necessary, and certainly aren't billable activities.

My ideal clients know they need my services. They value my time and efforts by accepting my hourly rate and paying me quickly. They know they can't do my job. And they know I save them time and money by helping them market their company more efficiently and effectively than they can.   

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide writes in his free online sample white paper:

Clients that don’t respect the value you bring, don’t pay on time, and don’t do their part, will drag your marketing business down faster than any other business dynamic.

Jantsch helps you identify your ideal clients by looking at your past history. Of your former and continuing clients, which are the most awarding professionally and financially? He then has you identify them by physical and emotional characteristics.

This reminds me how I help clients identify the audience(s) for their marketing efforts by assigning them a psychographic label. This technique quickly gives people a picture of who they're marketing to, for example a yoga mom or a young at heart senior. Assigning your ideal client a psychographic label will help you quickly determine if a prospect is right for you or not.

So who's your ideal client?