Who is Your Bullseye?

So often, I will meet an entrepreneur and ask them about who they are targeting their product or service at. Nine times out of ten, the answer will be “Everyone.” “Everyone can use my product.” A realtor will say, “Anyone who wants to buy a house.” Or a personal trainer will say, “Anyone that could use a good workout.” I believe that this symptom of entrepreneurialism derives from the entrepreneur’s perception that if they don’t make their product or service available for everyone on the planet, then they may lose a sale. This is not true! If you narrow down who you are targeting, your success will be much greater.

Immensely successful entrepreneur and author Bill Glazer says, “When you are selling to everybody, you are selling to nobody.” This is the best way of putting it. While your product or service may be able to be utilized by everybody, it does not mean that you will be more successful by targeting everybody. Who is that perfect client? Think of that perfect client. This is the one that is just a joy to deal with. Every time you do business with them, you say to yourself “I wish all of our customers were like that.” They are a low risk, high reward client. Find out as much as you can about them and then go get more just like them. When attending networking events, form relationships with people and then when they ask how they can help you; tell them that you are looking for these kinds of people. When you can specify to people what you are looking for, it makes it a lot easier for them to give you better referrals.

When I had my restaurant delivery service, we had customers like this. One of ours is Kate. Kate worked for a large pharmaceutical company in Albuquerque and ordered catering from our business two to three times a week to her doctor office clients all over town. She tried different restaurants, she loved our online ordering system, she placed big orders in advance and she tipped our people very well. Our people loved Kate and strived to give the best set up and delivery experience every time. (Not that they shouldn’t have been doing this already) Your staff will enjoy their job better with your bullseye clients also. More motivated staff will make your overall business better.  Who is your Kate?

When we formed Just Dine In, my food delivery company, we did a lot of research to find out who the ideal clients are for a restaurant delivery service. To the general public, we were best known for delivering food to the house when people don’t feel like cooking. Where we made our money, however, was on corporate and pharmaceutical catering. It is quite simple really. Our success was based off of food sales. We worked for a commission on the food we sold for restaurants. The higher the food sales, the more money we would make. We could deliver ten orders to homes for $20 or deliver one corporate or pharmaceutical order for $200 and make the same amount of commission. Obviously, it’s more profitable to go after the larger orders.

When the business began, we knew that we could buy mailing lists for offices but pharmaceutical representatives were harder to reach. I set out to learn as much as I could about them. I made them my bullseye! I learned what their habits were, what restaurants they used already, which offices they were visiting the most and just about everything I could find out without being labeled a pharmaceutical rep stalker! I was even able to find a few offices that saw a lot of pharmaceutical reps who gave me some business cards of some of the reps that were regulars to that office. That is how I found Kate. Her business card with her Pharmaceutical Company was one of the business cards that was presented to me by a doctor’s office. I called her and left a casual, polite voicemail of who I was and what we do. Now, I could have spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on advertisements on billboards hoping that one day she would driving down the freeway, see the sign and realize that she needed our service. Instead, I went after my bullseye and was just as successful, if not more successful because I found a more cost effective and efficient way to earn her as a customer. I almost forgot to mention that we earned her husband, Jason, as a customer also. He too was a pharmaceutical sales representative and remained a customer of ours for many years.