5 Criteria to Fishing in the Right Pond being Important to Your Success
By Coach Simms, CFCWest Board Director
If you’re a small business owner, congratulations for having courage to pursue your entrepreneurial dream. According to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, there were 1.17 million businesses in Canada in 2015 of which 97.4% were small businesses.
You likely have many competitors. How do you stand out and attract your ideal customer? Is your ideal customer defined? What makes you unique among all other small businesses? Why should customers buy from you? The oft quoted axiom suggests you need to fish in the right pond to catch the right fish, but how? There are five criteria to fishing in the right pond which are important to your success.
One: Knowing Your Why. The author, Simon Sinek, suggests to ‘Start with Why’. He suggests you need to understand the deeper reason you’re in business. While you may say, ‘being my own boss’ or ‘making money, the reality is that those are not what likely drives you. Your why should be profound and motivate you and each of your employees to get out of bed. Your Why should drive your customers to want to care about doing business with you.
Two: Growing Your Business. Growth comes from defining clear targets and measuring key results. Ask yourself what are your growth goals? What key success measures are you tracking? Realistic goals create focus. Focus moves you closer to defining what makes you unique to your ideal customers.
Three: Getting Better Customers. In this key criteria area I’ve primarily asked questions. Exploring new ways of thinking requires thinking.
- What defines a better customer?
- What do they look like and how does it feel like to do business with them?
- Would they bring you greater happiness?
- Do you know why you’ve lost a customer? Do you measure lost customers and the economic impact?
- When customers are lost, is it a sad or happy day?
- How different would your business look with better customers?
Four: Who & Where your Ideal Customers are: Think here in terms of demographics and psychographics. Demographics help you look at hard data. Psychographics allow better understanding of your Ideal Client, how to relate to them and position your product or service for them. It is about making deeper connections. Psychographics can be thought of as Customer’s Core Cares: wants, needs, fears, thoughts, desires, likes, dislikes, frustrations, goals and aspirations. Examining the customer’s demographics and psychographics helps identify the ideal client where to look for them.
Five: Creating Relevant Value: Ask yourself, what makes your product or service uniquely relevant? Why you and not the competitor? Customers have more buying options today than at any time in history. How does your uniqueness and relevancy appear? What is in it for your customer? Not an easy task to determine but important.
As a small business owner you’re not afraid of hard work. Understanding the importance of the five key criteria to fishing in the right pond allows to define your ideal client and position your USP to meet your customer’s relevant needs.
