Sales & Marketing Success€¦ · Sales & Marketing Success 2 Introduction - Who Is Your Perfect Customer and Why Does It Matter? ... sales tactics going away and looking for new,

Sales & Marketing Success

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Sales and Marketing Success:Targeting Your Perfect Customer Who Will Buy & Buy

By

Tara Jacobsen and Rebekah Welch

The Marketing & Media Monsters


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Introduction - Who Is Your Perfect Customer and Why Does It Matter?

Who is your “Perfect Customer”, the one that will buy everything that you have to sell and tell all of their colleagues and friends about your products or services?

When you are getting ready to sell your offerings (or better yet, before you even spend one minute developing them) you should know EXACTLY who is going to be the optimal customer for it. The neat thing about this book and the process that you will learn is that you get to figure out exactly who you are marketing to and get a crystal clear outline in your head of what they want and why your product or service would be important to them.

This is not about customer demographics or profiling. Those tactics might work if you are Proctor and Gamble and have billions of dollars in advertising money and hundreds of salesmen out in the field selling for you. The “spray and pray” method of sales and marketing worked when there were only three TV stations and one Yellow Pages phonebook. Today you have to know where and how to reach the real people who are most likely to want what you are selling.

This book is for anyone who is looking to do sales or marketing, including actual sales people in fields like technology, medical, real estate, financial, direct and corporate sales. It is also for professionals who need to sell themselves before they can sell their services, such as marketing pros that need to be able to supply proven sales results, and small business owners and entrepreneurs who do not have huge budgets or inside sales help.

This worksheet and process has been years in the making. It started out as a very basic, five question form years ago and has been expanded as we found more and more areas of commonality among our target customers.

After four years of finessing, we have finalized a worksheet that walks you through

developing your “Perfect Customer ProfileTM

”. By filling out this worksheet, you are able to see exactly who you are selling to and how to position your product and market it to your best customers.

We have done this exercise with hundreds of small business owners one-on-one and in workshop settings and it is so fun to watch the light bulb go off when a business owner or sales person “sees” their ideal prospect for the first time. While we have grouped the different pieces together, there is some jumping around on the worksheet so we could fit all of the relevant items in. The process as outlined in this book is best for creating a cohesive profile and is how we fill out the form.


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Selling To Everyone Is Selling To No One

We are sure you have heard “selling to everyone is selling to no one” before, but do you really believe it?

In our circles there is a gal who sells cosmetics and her tagline, when asked who her customers are is, “anyone with skin”. It gets a big laugh and she probably feels that her customer base just opened wide up. She CAN sell to anyone with skin and now there will be hundreds of people out there who can refer her to their other, skin having human friends. Sigh.

While it is true that skin care products could be used by anyone, it is important to think about who would actually BUY them.

Let’s start by eliminating men. Now, we know that men do buy these products but the chances that she will be able to sell pink packaged products to the majority of manly men out there is slim.

Next let’s think about young girls and women in their 20’s and early 30’s. They do not necessarily have the disposable income or understand the value of anti-aging and hard core skin care routines so we can eliminate them and their already firm, glowing skin right at the start.

So that leads us to women around the age of 35. But there is one more BIG consideration. They have to care about their skin!

Tara (one of the authors) does not care about looking younger. She is relatively content with her skin and is not looking for the solution to a skin problem. Rebekah (the other author) has drawers full of beauty products, shelves lined with bottles of goop and is always on the lookout for a great skin care product.

They are both in their mid-forties, but one is a prime candidate for selling skin care to and one is just not going to even notice any skin care sales or marketing efforts.

How Does This Affect Your Selling Efforts?

If you are in sales or marketing, the biggest trap you can fall into is putting any energy at all into trying to convert someone who doesn’t need what you are selling.

In the old days, this was called pre-qualifying your prospects. You were supposed to make sure they had a need and could afford what you were offering before trying to pitch them.

Today, with all the channels to reach your target customer, you can set up “honey traps” that will bring them to you to sort out.


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Offer a free trial or a white paper that ONLY your perfect customer would be interested in and you have a true prospect. Grow a popular page on social media that appeals to the kind of prospect you are selling to while slipping in information about your products in every tenth time or so and buyers will put their hands up.

While this book is not about sales or marketing tactics, you will be able to see immediately potential channels and enticements that will appeal to your “Perfect Customer”.

Stop selling to everyone and start selling to someone who is clamoring for your product or service.

But Won’t I Miss Out On Sales To “Everyone Else”?

It is scary to think about becoming this specific about who your ideal customer is. Won’t you be leaving scads of money on the table by not trying to sell to everyone?

First off, no one has the money, time or patience to build out sales and marketing channels that would appeal to multiple, diverse audiences. We can think of at least 8 major social media channels off the top of our heads and growing a presence on each of those for multiple perfect customers would be a daunting challenge.

The best example of this comes from our Perfect Customer Profile for this book. We sat down to craft it and decided to make him a man in his 50’s who was worried about the old sales tactics going away and looking for new, exciting methods to try. We built a robust profile for him until…rats…we got to the part that this guy was old school. Old school is great, but an old school salesman would probably not be downloading an ebook off of the internet and reading it on a tablet device.

First off, had we written all the sales copy for the guy we originally envisioned, we would have sold far fewer copies than we will to the technology-aware, hard charging sales guys and gals we are targeting now.

Secondly, if there are multiple channels that could use your product or service, you can set up sales funnels and marketing pieces for each of them. Instead of having one generic message, you can have multiple messages that reach different perfect audiences.

One product that comes to mind which has multiple audiences is Botox and two radically different applications for it. The first use of Botox, reducing wrinkles, would appeal to our woman in the skin care example above. The second use, preventing migraines, is definitely for a different audience.

While we are sure that the FDA prohibits cross selling techniques anyway, common sense and the Perfect Customer Profile also say that adding verbiage about reducing pain and not sitting in a dark room would have no selling power to the Rebekah’s of the world who just want to look better.


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In this case you would want to create two distinctly different Perfect Customer Profiles for each marketing and sales channel.


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Using The Worksheet

To get started, take a look at or print out a “Perfect Customer ProfileTM

” worksheet. The remainder of the book is going to be going over how to fill out the form, describing the pieces of the profile, and determining the best possible prospect for your product or service.

The basic premise of this exercise is to walk you through the worksheet, allowing you to “see” and “know” one customer who will buy your product or service. He or she will be the “Perfect Customer” and you will be able to generate sales copy and know, without a doubt, that your sales and marketing efforts will have a real impact.

The first time we do this with any consulting client, they struggle with understanding why this exercise has such a huge impact, or how “making up” a pretend person will help them with sales and marketing. We have even had some grown men pout and refuse to play along, only to concede later that this is the most effective thing that you can do to make your products sell more and your marketing more impactful.

While it may initially seem counter-productive to zero in on just ONE customer, there is tremendous value in being able to speak to your prospect as if he or she were the only person in the room. When you approach as if addressing a “group” your marketing message loses impact and it is easy for your potential customer to “disqualify” themselves as a buyer of your product or service.

Think of times you have been at an event and the speaker addresses the group as a whole. You’ll notice people looking around at the other guests and you can almost hear them saying things in their head like, “that doesn’t apply to me”, or “that’s nice - I wonder who relates to that”. By contrast, when that same speaker zeros in on and makes eye contact with one person and speaks as if directly to them, somehow the recipient believes that the message shared was meant specifically for them. This causes them to hear the words in a different manner, pay more attention, and become more likely to act on what the presenter may be asking. They may even experience a sensation of “oh my goodness it’s like she KNOWS me! It’s like she’s in my head!”

Using the Perfect Customer Profile process is much like finding that one person in the crowd to make eye contact – and thereby a connection – with. By crafting your marketing in such a way that your perfect customer can easily see themselves as the person you are “talking” to you will weed out the people you can’t help, saving yourself a ton of time and money. In order to create that experience however, you must know EXACTLY who you are selling to and which words and images will resonate with them.


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Personal Information

Starting the worksheet you are going to develop personal information about your Perfect Customer.

Selling

We could write a whole book about how to become super clear about what you are selling (and we probably will), but for now we want you to pick one service, product, or product line that is very cohesive.

A great example is lawyers. The difference between selling family law and DUI representation is about as diverse marketing-wise as clients can get!

Let’s take it one step further and split up family law into divorce and adoption services. Just the graphics you would use for each are enough to “show” you that these can’t all be done in the same marketing piece. One might have a Dad or Mom alone with the kids looking somber, and the other might have one big, happy family with Mom, Dad and probably a baby, and maybe even a couple of toddlers smiling and living the dream.

No matter how much you would like to be able to sell to everyone, it is vital that you sell each separate product or service to its own Perfect Customer!

Name

We have to giggle because this one freaks out every client we do this with. You really do need to pick a name for your Perfect Customer.

When we are selling, it is easy to fall into the trap of generalizing and lose the fact that one person will be buying. And, while it may be a company that will ultimately purchase your product or service, it is still an individual person who will make the ultimate buying decision (or at the very least be a champion for the purchase).

Naming your “Perfect Customer” makes him or her human and will help you become more connected and attached.

The name of the Perfect Customer for this book is “Mike”. While we know that ladies are in sales too, we have found that many of our books are purchased by men so we went with the numbers on this one.

Surprisingly enough, if this was for our website or a live workshop, we would have named her Michelle, as those venues skew more female in our experience for our business. This is a perfect example of why completing the exercise and developing your Perfect Customer Profile is so important.


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It is key to your success to understand how vital it is to start tracking these distinct customer differences in your business. You can’t measure what you don’t track, and the most graphic illustration you have of how well your marketing is working is by knowing how, when, where, and to what your Perfect Customers are responding.

Age

Whoa, is this a big important one! There are so many different factors that relate to age. Are they a Baby Boomer or Generation X? Are they just graduating college or getting ready to retire? While initially these variations may seem irrelevant, the truth is these are imperative to understanding how your perfect customer will receive information and what they are tuned in to.

This is the one area that we do sometimes do a range. You could assume your customer is 35, or even 35-45, but 10 years is about as far apart as the range should be. Outside of that you are going to encounter problems with generation gaps in crafting your sales message.

Income/Revenue

Income for individuals (or revenue if you are selling business-to-business), affects the ability of your customer to buy what you are selling, and as you will see at the end, the customer’s worldview.

For B2C we tend to include the family income as the baseline amount. Salary, pensions and additional income sources are all mitigating factors in someone being able to afford what you are selling.

For B2B you can use the gross revenue that you think a company has. If they are publicly traded that information should be available in their annual report.

Occupation

Occupation is a tricky thing. You need to know what they call themselves for this one. This may not be as obvious as it would seem.

For instance, if you are selling to a company and need to reach the purchasing clerk, he might well be calling himself the CPO or at the very least the Director of Purchasing. Addressing him as a “clerk” may make him shut off before you even get a chance to talk.

For this book, we were looking for people who are in effect, salespeople, but most service providers and marketing pros would not self-identify themselves that way. We needed to make sure that there was verbiage in the marketing materials that spoke to them too!

If you are selling to consumers, it is still interesting to flesh out your customer by knowing more about him or her. The more in depth you can get your perfect customer profile, the more


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your person will come alive.

Marital Status

While this may seem a bit intrusive originally, an individual’s relationship status affects things like income (a two income home has more spending money than a single earner), time available, and bandwidth to notice your sales message. If you are selling an amazing product to a single Mom, you had better be sure that the options you give her can work around her budget and her kid-minding duties. Scheduling a live webinar with no replay at 7pm might not fit in to her time commitments.

By the same token, if your perfect customer is a married couple with small children at home, they will tune out messages that depict imagery of the party lifestyle. A newly divorced potential client or someone who is single by choice and likes it that way may not respond to messages and pictures focused on happy couples.

Kids

Whether you think so or not, kids are a big factor in developing your profile. Say you are selling to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Wouldn’t it be better to know that most of them are attending their daughter’s weddings rather than helping their wives change diapers?

Did you know that eighty percent of buying decisions for the home are done by women? Anyone who thinks that children are not a factor in how most women view the world is probably a little off base.

Now, you may be specifically targeting a demographic that doesn’t have kids. If your perfect customer is truly childless, simply identify this and move on.

Car

It is funny how much a car can tell you about a person. Targeting the luxury market or business power brokers, you might imagine they would be driving a BMW or Infiniti. Targeting moms and middle income, you are likely looking at a nice mini van with the movie screen in the back.

In the United States, cars are a reflection of our self image. If you are in another country and have gotten this book, the car question may not be quite as relevant.

Neighborhood

Where they live tells you a lot about them. If they are a family just starting out, they might be deep in suburbia and have a yard full of toys. If your perfect customer is young and hip, it’s possible they may reside in a loft downtown.


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You will want to know about neighborhood so that you can show images in your sales materials and online postings that reflect the correct impression.

Think about selling cleaning services to a stay-at-home mom. The slick lines of a modern loft, while beautiful, would not even register on her radar. Now, show a “lived in” mess turned into a beautiful and neat palace and you have something to sell her!

This can include places like condos, lofts, single family homes, upscale suburbia, waterfront, etc.

Reason For Working

If you are selling B2C (Business to Consumer), this one is easier. You want to know WHY your customer is working. Is your customer the main bread winner for his or her family? Maybe they are working to support extra curricular activities for kids. Perhaps they hold a job to get them out of the house a few hours a week. Maybe they work because they really want to make a difference in the lives of others, or gain experience in an industry they hope to break in to.

If you are selling B2B (Business to Business) this one becomes more important! The old saying that “no one ever got fired for picking IBM” is super relevant. If you are selling to a purchasing agent at a big company, your pitch will be very different than if you are pitching directly to the hot-shot CEO of a startup. In the first case, they want words like reliable, stable and steady and in the second case the verbiage might include innovative and cutting edge.

This can include things like support family, pay for college, gain experience, building an empire, family business, etc.

Financial Focus

Financial Focus is a category in and of itself. For anyone involved in a medical or financial industry, this is especially important.

Knowing what your customer’s financial motivation is can help in two ways.

First, it will impact their ability to purchase your product if you are selling B2C. If you are selling a high end product and they are worried about putting food on the table for their kids, guess who loses? You and your product.

Secondly, it will let you take a peek into their lives. Say you have determined that your Perfect Customer is a man in his 40’s, with an income in the $75,000 range. There are two things at play here. He needs to pay for his kids college (they are probably either in high school or nearing it) and he needs to save for retirement. His income will make doing both of


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those things simultaneously hard, so there will be a friction point that you can help with.

This can include things like retirement, building wealth, travel, college, aging parents, etc.

Hobbies

We can really dig deep with their hobbies! Think of a gal who is working 40 hours a week, commuting and then coming home each night to the kids and the husband. Her main hobby might be her twice a month “girl’s night out” at the wine bar. Or the businessman whose hobby is playing golf and buying drinks for everyone at the Country Club.

These two examples are very different in their location, but both involve your Perfect Client being social which would not be the norm if you were trying to sell to computer programmers who feel a good hobby is taking apart machines and putting them back together, in their basement, by themselves.

General

As you get more fluent at doing these profiles, you are going to start noticing characteristics that your real life customers share.

Say you are selling super high end motorcycles like the Orange County Choppers guys. While they have tattoos, many of their clients are high-earning business executives who also have tattoos. Their perfect customers are spending a couple hundred thousand dollars on a motorcycle and chances are they also have invested money in some really nice tattoos.

These nuances affect the imagery you are going to use in your marketing pieces. Take the above example. You would want to use images of successful looking men sporting wicked tattoos or on their custom built machine to appeal to your broader audience.

This can include things like tattoos, wears suits, drinks wine, wants to find love, is a fitness buff, likes going to movies, etc.


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Type of Buyer

This section, while taking just a moment to check mark, is really a pivotal one for writing your sales copy.

We have studied many different types of personality testing including the Myers Briggs (MBTI) and the DISC Personality Profile and find them all to be very helpful in figuring out ourselves, but not necessarily how to categorize our customers.

After trying unsuccessfully to pigeon-hole these standard types, we found that in sales and marketing there are three types of buyers; Fast Actors, Social Butterflies and Information Overload. As you are writing your sales copy and developing products, you need to know who you are marketing to.

Fast Actors

There are million names for these types of people, High D, Type A, but what they all boil down to is that this type of buyer is decisive. She is going to be able to make up her mind quickly and will not have a long sales cycle.

She will not be willing to read extensive sales copy or “learn more”, she will expect you to explain your product or service in simple terms and make buying easy.

Social Butterfly

The social butterfly is interested in other people, their opinions and having a good time. They want to make every kind of event a big party and will look to you to make sure that buying and implementing your product or service is easy and fun.

Like the Fast Actors, he will not be interested in reading long sales copy or studying your website, you need to make your point with strong calls to action and a lot of graphics that he can skim.

Information Overload

The last type of buyer is detail oriented and wants to know everything about your product or service before they can make a buying decision.

Long form sales copy is great! The more you tell him, the easier the close. The sales cycle will probably be longer, but once you get the sale, you will have a customer for life.


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Generational Selling

Again, this seems like a quickie check box, but it carries some social norms and themes that are unavoidable when dealing with different age groups.

Baby Boomers (Born 1946-1964)

Baby Boomers are far and away the biggest demographic out there! They have dominated the selling landscape for years and don’t expect that to change anytime soon. As the Boomers mature, they are going to need a tremendous volume of products or services.

When selling to Boomers you need to remember that their main focus is to stay forever young, not get ripped off and show their prestige through products. They are a huge consumer force and have spent their lives acquiring things so the sales process can be simple if you provide enough information and trust factors to get through their defenses.

Generation X (Born 1965-1980)

Generation X is a much smaller group who has lived in the shadow of the Boomers spending-wise for their whole lives. They are well educated and are now in the season of their lives where they are the bosses, parents and even grandparents.

Because they experienced the first recession and spent time as latch-key kids (moms joined the workforce and kids let themselves into the house each afternoon), they are independent and responsible, not relying on anyone else to give them the answers.

They are less status driven as a whole in their buying decisions and can be harder to sway with fancy promises and marketing jargon. They do buy when they can see the value of a product and understand why they need it.

Generation Y / Millennial (1980+)

This is another big generation with a lot of buying power. They have grown up with computers, technology and the Internet and don’t consider them to be the miraculous invention that more seasoned folks do!

They are extremely social and expect to be in connection with family and friends at all times during the day.

Unfortunately for marketers, they are also jaded to the ways of selling. Because they are exposed to so many marketing messages a day (we have heard upwards of at least 1,000 a day), they have learned to tune out external marketing and rely on word of mouth for many of their buying decisions.


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To reach this demographic in your marketing, you are going to have to be creative and make content, products and services that are worth sharing with their friends.


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Political Alignment

This one could be a little controversial and we are not saying that everyone in a political party has the same characteristics. That said, stereotypes have developed over time for a reason and for the purpose of this worksheet it is a very easy “shortcut” to use for some basic marketing planning.

While we considered not including this in the “public” version of this worksheet, we find that this is one of the touch points that makes our job easier.

Republican

Some of the themes if you think your Perfect Customer is Republican include having a business focus, fiscal responsibility, management, supporting capitalism and family values.

Some of the “Idols” of the Republican party include Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck.

Democrat

Democrats are more known for being socially responsible, labor, the environment and diversity.

Some of the “Idols” of the Democrat party include John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

Not Applicable

Political party is not important for every customer and if this is the case for yours, simply skip it and move on!


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General Beliefs

This next section is about general beliefs that your Perfect Customer has about the world and their lives in general. These are more building blocks for having a deep understanding of their lives.

Throughout this whole process, you are simply trying to get into their mind and “what they love” or “who their idols are” as a great way to find ancillary things that might trigger some selling moments (this is especially important when you get to the Social Media section).

What Your Customer Loves

This is in general and can encompass many different things. It could expand on some of their personality traits by saying that they love talking to people, or being social. They could love their kids, their wife, spa days, or Broncos football. Maybe they are passionate about certain causes, love DIY projects, or live to travel.

What Your Customer Hates

This can range from social injustice to donuts. Perhaps they hate waiting in lines, doing their own yard work, telemarketers, teenage drivers, the price of gas, or their neighbor’s dog that barks right outside their window at 3am every night. Think about your Perfect Customer and if, as a group, they have a common irritation.

Idols

We touched on Idols in the political section. Basically they are prominent public figures who we, as a society, have attached attributes to. Some of our Idols as 40-ish, business women include Oprah Winfrey, Zig Ziglar, and Seth Godin. These are figures in our lives who had impact and whom other people would recognize.

We did a consult with a business coach who was selling to 50-ish, men. The Idols that he listed included Ronald Reagan, John D. Rockefeller, and Warren Buffet.

This is where having figured out your perfect customers age range can be exceptionally helpful and relevant. By knowing which generation you’re selling to, you can easily determine whom they are most likely to hold in high regard.

There are amazing opportunities to leverage the power of your Perfect Customer’s idols when we get to the Social Media section.

Villains

This one is exactly what it sounds like! An easy villain is Adolf Hitler or, if your customers


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are Republican, Barrack Obama. We almost didn’t include this section because of the inherent problems that arise when you are holding someone up as a villain.

Let’s take President Obama. By calling his landmark legislation to provide universal health care “Obama Care” publicly, you are setting yourself firmly in the Republican camp, even though it is in the general lexicon. Slam him with “cute” pictures depicting him as the devil or anti-Christ and you can cement your fate with all the Democrats that might have bought from you!

The problem with holding up people as villains is that you are alienating all the other people who might have considered buying from you.

Democrats and Republicans are almost 50/50 in the United States. Christianity is large group here also, but globally it is only about 30% with Protestant, Orthodox, Muslim and

Hindu taking up the rest of the lion’s share.1

We tend to stay away from issues like political party, religion, sexual preference and drugs. That said, your product may be in one of these categories so we didn’t want to leave you hanging.


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Pop Culture

This one is super fun and leads to some great ideas for sharing on social media!

We are not going to break down each of these because they are pretty self explanatory (you want to pick movies and other pop culture items that would appeal to people of certain age).

What we are going to talk about is how to leverage this information and also how to use the “Other Experts” category later.

Say you are targeting CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies like we gave in a previous example. Doing a search on the internet for “what is the average age of fortune 500 CEOs” we found an amazing page that lists the statistical data for this group of people (CEO Statistics).

So on average, the age of these CEOs is 55 which means that he was born in 1959, making him embedded deep in the Baby Boomer generation (only 12 of the 500 are women).

The next thing we need to do is figure out what was popular when he graduated from high school (when many of our cultural tastes are established) so add 18 years, making our cultural date 1977.

Next we did a search on Google for “what was popular in 1977” and found a pop culture site that said these things were “hot” that year:

• Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days, Three’s Company and Charlie’s Angels• Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder, The Eagles, Hall and Oates, ABBA and Fleetwood Mac• Farrah Fawcett, Suzanne Somers, Lynda Carter and Cheryl Tiegs• Saturday Night Fever and disco were popular• Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd were on Saturday Night Live

If we were doing this for our own customer, we would try to find as many cultural bits as we could, but this gives us a good start for knowing what to post on social media that would attract the attention of this age group.

One side note, 52% identified themselves as republican so we can safely assume they would also appreciate quotes from Ronald Reagan, Warren Buffet and other, more senior white males that they probably respect.

Some things that we could post on social would include:

• Quotes with pictures from our Idols• Fun, “Throwback Thursday” disco videos• Steve Martin or Blues Brothers video clips or jokes


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• References to songs that are sung by artists in our list• Information about other Fortune 500 CEO’s (including salaries, snafus, and industry

news)• “Feel Good” stories centered on people in this age range• “Remember when” conversation starters

Because we “know” our Perfect Client, we can tailor all the things that we are using on social and in our content to make sure they will be interested in what we post!

Other Experts

This is the only one that is not quite like the others. When you are researching other experts, you need to look at the competition and see what they are doing.

If it is a big name player in your industry, there are two considerations. First, they are a big name so doing exactly what they do may not work unless you are also a huge name in your industry. Second, if they are “big dogs” they probably have the money to spend on research so emulating some of what they do and offer is probably not a bad idea.

You can check out what they are selling, how they are pricing it and even the graphics and sales pages they are using. We research and buy a lot of our competitor’s ebooks. We do this to know what they are doing, to see the quality of their work, AND to see what is popular and trending so we might be able to capitalize on it.

Never copy someone else’s work, but creative emulation can certainly not hurt! There is much to be said for not having to reinvent the wheel.


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Social Media and Internet

Social media, websites and blogs are a great way to reach your Perfect Customer. The key is to know which ones they are on and the types of content they will be most interested in consuming. The name of the game when using social marketing is to foster engagement, in other words getting your Perfect Customer to not only SEE you, but also to respond and take action on your marketing pieces so that you can start building a relationship with him or her. All of these suggestions are going to be based on common marketing knowledge, with one note.

Please do not pick a marketing channel or site just because we say it is good for your Perfect Customer. There is something also to be said for playing into your own strengths! If you discover your customer is on YouTube but you have a face for radio, don’t try to squeeze yourself into a medium that will be too costly to produce or that you will spend all your time avoiding. Choose the best one that fits your skills and then run with it!

Social Sites - Facebook

Your perfect customer may be using Facebook if they are mid 30’s or older (surprisingly enough to some people, “the kids” have moved away from Facebook except to connect with friends and family). There is no real bias between men and women, but because of the social nature of the site, women tend to share a bit more than men do. The one thing we can say overwhelmingly is that if you are selling business to business, your perfect client will not be looking for your product or service on Facebook. Social Butterflies from the Type of Buyer section love the interactivity of Facebook.

Some things that you can post on Facebook include:

• “Would You Rather” questions that open engagement and get people talking• Quotes, either by familiar icons or related to the problem your product or service

solves• Open ended questions related to common issues that your perfect customer may be

dealing with• Cute kitten, military “homecoming”, and flash mob videos (we KNOW you’re

probably sick of hearing this over and over, but these truly are the most engaged with items on Facebook)

• Photos or short video clips of your happiest, most excited customers. This can be them enjoying your product, but even better, you acknowledging them for winning an award, graduating, a promotion – the list is endless!

Social Sites - Twitter

Your perfect customer may be on Twitter if she is technology based or just likes to keep up with real time events (Twitter is a haven for real time talk about sports games, the Grammy’s


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and other pop culture events). While there is a social component for Twitter, she will be more inclined to share without talking to the other user. While many different types of people might be on Twitter, Information Overload people will probably not due to the brief nature of the tweets (only 140 characters is generally NOT a good fit).

Some things that you can post on Twitter include:

• Links to interesting industry articles• Sharing Klout with industry experts • Follow Friday posts that include your industry contacts and prospects• Quotes from your Perfect Client’s idols• Re-tweets of really interesting, relevant content others have shared

Social Sites - Google+

Google+ is a weird social network that attracts industries more than types of people. Your perfect customer may be on there if he is a photographer or creative. He might also be there if he is technology based. The Information Overload people will be much more likely to live here as they can post as much information as their hearts desire (think doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers and the like). What we want you to know about using Google+ is this; when your perfect customer is in search of something, where is he most likely to go to look for it? That’s right! He’s most likely to go to Google. And when he does, and you’ve done your Perfect Customer homework, he’s 14% more likely to find YOU. So prepare your Google+ profile and page with:

• Links to interesting industry articles• Quotes with pictures from your Perfect Client’s idols• Keyword targeted posts that lead back to your main website• Video reviews of sites, services, and products• Google Events to announce launches, open houses, new products, or any of your (wait

for it) events!

Social Sites - LinkedIn

If your perfect customer considers herself some kind of “Capital P, Professional” there is a good chance she has at least checked out LinkedIn and could be a power user. The corporate world has embraced allowing their employees to use LinkedIn so if she is in a highly regulated industry, this may be the only social site she uses publicly. Personal engagement is the key with all marketing but is particularly important when using LinkedIn.

• Post links to interesting industry articles in your updates and groups• Share Quotes with pictures from your Perfect Client’s idols• Share relevant Blog posts that lead back to your main website• Post your Event announcements or invitations with a link back to your registration

page in your updates and in groups


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• Share a problem you have recently solved as an update or in groups and ask for feedback

Social Sites - Pinterest

She would be on Pinterest if she is creative, intelligent and visually based. Pinterest is not as much a social site as it is a sharing site with 80% of users being women between the ages of 25 to 34. Pinterest is a highly effective playground for Retail, Real Estate, Travel, Crafting, DIY, Salon & Spa, Wedding, and Beauty and Fitness industries. If your Perfect Customer is a man, shy away from spending too much time marketing on Pinterest - unless you’re selling bacon.

• Share beautifully designed pins that tell a story and link back to your website or blog• Pin Quotes with pictures from your Perfect Customer’s idols• Create boards that highlight the benefits of or interesting things about your business

that would appeal to your Perfect Customer• Pin and share Seasonal or Holiday traditions, tips, and decorations• Share DIY projects or Organizing Small Spaces tips• Pin your “How To” videos and link them back to your site or YouTube channel• Share Fitness challenges• Pin “Dream” wedding, home, or vacation photos

Social Sites - Instagram

Your Perfect Customer might be using Instagram as a tool to post to his Facebook and Twitter accounts or may be an active user. Instagram is a pure photo sharing site, and delivers visual content quickly and easily, and allows you to share with other social sites. While originally it did not hold much marketing value, recently it has skyrocketed as a platform. Show your business being fun and include calls to action and this highly underutilized tool could work very well for you. It currently draws a younger audience (though not as young as Snapchat), but is quickly rising as a medium for the 30+ crowd.

• Take pictures of local business people or civilians, post and tag them• Take a picture a day of something interesting related to your industry• Create a photo contest with a fabulous prize from your business• Offer promo codes for discounts or freebies when they visit or purchase from you• Feature your current customers in happy pictures with rave reviews• Build a buzz for your event with photos of the venue, your set up, any goodies that will

be available to guests

Social Sites - Snapchat

Your Perfect Customer will pretty much only be using Snapchat if they are 13-25. Snapchat exploded on the scene as a 1-10 second photo sharing site that now has expanded to 24 hours. The downside is that it is one-to-one contact. It is currently impossible to group


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message your photos so understand that this is not a great marketing channel to reach mass audiences. The limited availability of the images however make it a perfect platform for delivering limited time offers to preferred customers and building a sense of urgency.

• Take a quick picture and send it to a friend or someone who is a prospect• Offer a “one day only” sale for your top customers • Do a giveaway and have your followers on other social sites submit photos to you via

snap chat • Sneak preview a new product or service before it is available publicly

Social Sites - Vine

Your Perfect Customer will be on Vine if he is looking for entertainment. The Vine platform is based on 6 second long looping videos that can be shared with Facebook and Twitter. While there have been some great consumer videos created by companies like Lowes, at this writing we have yet to find any small or mid sized companies that have cracked the code to marketing on Vine. However the purpose of this book is to get you marketing to your customer where THEY want to receive information, and if your perfect customer is an avid Vine user, now would be the time to figure out how to maximize and get in early.

Again, it may not be the right marketing channel for you, but if it were…

• Make a stop motion video• Create and share time-lapse videos• Show off your raving fans doing what they do (great for sharing!)• Display your work or venue• Offer amazing tips or trivia that resonate with your perfect client

Internet

Conventional websites. If you are marketing to an older crowd or people who looking for professional services, your Perfect Customer will probably be expecting a website rather than a blog. They are probably looking for all the conventional pieces of a website and are going to be less impressed by the “folksy” nature of some blog posts.

Blog websites. People who are researching topics and interested in learning more about your industry will be fine with the blog format. All of our sites are built on the Wordpress blogging platform, as are many websites today. The one-time stigma of blogs not being a “real” website is gone and they have become mainstream.

Videos

“How To” videos will appeal to a certain type of Perfect Customer, but are not for everyone. This can be a great way to reach people who are visually stimulated by seeing how things work or are seeking education or information about specific topics or processes. If your


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Perfect Customer is a self-proclaimed “do it yourself-er”, they are likely to be looking for this type of video.

Sales videos definitely have a place in marketing! If your Perfect Client is at a buying stage in the sales process, a sales video that shows the features and benefits of your product may just tip them over to the sale. That said, some industries have no wiggle room for a sales talk and you need to ease in more than hard sell to be effective.

If you are very clever, your Perfect Client will love your advertising videos (think about the Budweiser horses and the people who anticipate them every year at Superbowl time!) That said, great ads require production and big budgets that scare us. If you can only afford to make one amazing commercial, the chances that having just that one producing all your sales is small. Instead diversify across a broad range of marketing channels and leave the big-budget marketing to the huge corporations.

Search

While most people use Google as their search engine, your Perfect Customer might be using something else regularly without even knowing it!

If they start their internet sessions on MSN because that is where Internet Explorer starts, then they will be using the Bing search engine.

Additionally, they might use Yahoo (even though the results are powered by Bing, the affinity might still be there).

Knowing which search engine she uses can help when making decisions about where to spend your paid search engine marketing dollars.

Local

If you have a local, brick and mortar business, it is definitely worth-while to find out if Foursquare, Yelp or Facebook local is popular in your area. Here in Denver, Yelp is a market leader for customer reviews with Facebook contributing almost nothing. Foursquare is extremely popular for hyper-local mobile marketing allowing brick and mortar owners to reward users with incentives when their customers “check in” at their establishment.

It is always worth your time to make sure you are visible on Google local which is now connected to your Google+ business page. The majority of people will use Google to find and map local establishments. Having your ducks in a row here can be tremendously effective for attracting new business.


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Who Are You Selling To

We hope you are starting to really understand why when you are developing your sales copy and product descriptions it is so vital to know exactly who you are selling to! People want to be able to recognize themselves when reading about how your offering will enrich their lives or their business.

For this book we set the target customers as:

• Sales professionals• Financial sales• Mortgage sales• Insurance sales• Corporate sales• Technology sales• Pharmaceutical sales• Inside sales people• Entrepreneurs• Professional services (like doctors, lawyers and accountants)• Marketing professionals

First off, unless you are in one of those industries, you may not ever buy our book. It does not have mass market appeal like a work of fiction would, so we have to be very careful to make sure that it directly targets people who would want to read and BUY it.

Secondly, knowing who we were selling to allowed us to use relevant examples that would resonate with you and our other readers and give them ah-ha moments throughout the book.

Lastly, it showed us that we definitely needed to include B2B (business to business) and corporate examples in order to be relevant to many of our readers. One of the reasons that we recommend doing this entire process before you develop your products is that you can increase or decrease the scope of the offering depending on the buyer pool.

We could have written this book only for a specific industry like Accounting, becoming THE GUIDE for how to develop a Perfect Customer Profile for accountants. Now, because of the limited scope of people who would be interested in that book (right around a million nationally), we would either price it MUCH higher than this book, say in the $100 range, or give it away for free and try to get consulting clients. What we would not do is stay somewhere in the mushy middle.

Criteria For Who Will Buy Your Product or Service

There are a number of different ways you can determine exactly which people would be interested in your product or service and how to get in front of them.


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• It could be that you provide straight industry information to the cellular industry, real estate community, or another tight, cohesive channel.

• Your buyers might be people who hold an organizational title like CEO or a professional title like Dr.

• Maybe your product or service serves consumer groups like homeowners, expectant mothers or retirees.

• You could be targeting people who are interested in a craft or hobby like knitting or motocross riding.

• Perhaps you serve a specific, geographic area and your service would apply to people within 3-5 miles of your base location.

• Maybe your product or service is limited only to people who are planning a wedding or actively going to the gym.

• Or perhaps your offering would be a great fit for a new business owner who was just getting started.

The point being, there will be some commonalities among the people who would be the right customer for you. One really interesting way to find out who your target should be is to look at who is currently following your business accounts on social media. The results may even surprise you!

If you do search in the Facebook bar for “favorite interests of people who like Marketing and Media Monsters”, you will find out everything that our followers like including; hiking, the Denver Broncos, traveling, photography, marketing and jazz.

If we look at the interests of our followers on Twitter Ads, they like leadership, startups, job search, SEO and human resources. An inordinate number of our followers also like Alternative Care (healthcare) which seems strange but is interesting to know.

Once you have this kind of global information it becomes easier to go granular and develop your Perfect Customer Profile, so that you can “speak the language” of your perfect customer!


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Your Industry

Now we are getting down to some real nitty-gritty for when you are writing your sales copy or website content. Instead of thinking about your perfect customer, for this section you want to think about your own industry.

Hopes

Everyone buying something has a hope that this product or service will solve their problem. If they are buying a weight loss program, they want to solve a weight or body image problem. Hiring an accountant, they are solving a numbers problem.

So let’s take a look at some of the hopes that we address in this book and its marketing. Our readers, who are predominantly sales and marketing focused, hope that this book will make their life easier, that they will make more sales and have an easier time closing prospects. (Having used this method in our sales for a few years now, we have a really good idea that it will do all that and even more!)

Stigmas

Every industry has stigmas that go along with it and reasons that people might be hesitant to buy. If you are a Realtor, one stigma is that people can sell their home themselves (For Sale by Owner) and avoid having to pay the commission. A stigma for cable companies is that their customer service departments are heinous. And most people trying to quit smoking have failed at least once already.

It is important to acknowledge these stigmas when you are writing your sales copy! Call them out, take the oomph out of their sails, and address them head on. Your Perfect Customer is going to be thinking about them anyway and you can shine by countering with great content.


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Buying Triggers

If you are brand new to the marketplace, this one might be a little tricky, but anyone in business for any time at all knows at least a little bit why their customers “pull the trigger” and get out their credit card.

It might be that you have a sale price or limited time offer that is too good to refuse. It could be the pain of whatever they are trying to solve has just become more important than having the money in their pocket.

One example that comes to mind from our history is a potential blog client we had who was waffling. She understood the value of having it and knew she wanted a blog, but wasn’t sure she “had” the $750 to purchase it. She just kept asking us to call her the following month (sound familiar?).

We later discovered that the reason she didn’t have $750 was because she had just spent TEN THOUSAND dollars on a branding package that included some note cards and a personal brochure. Are you kidding me?

Come to find out, her buying triggers were presenting a professional front and being the “neighborhood expert” in her area. We were competing on price instead of talking to her in her language and never did make the sale.

If you are going to be selling your product or service for any length of time, it is vital that you poll your customers and find out what the ultimate tipping point was that made them buy. While it could be slightly different for everyone, there should be some cohesive themes across your customers that you can leverage.


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Worldview

Knowing your Perfect Customer’s worldview is the most powerful tool you have in your arsenal!

Worldview is how they see the state of the world, your industry, your products or even how to behave at any given point in time.

One amazing example of how worldview affects sales came when we were at a Seth Godin event in NYC. During the question and answer session, a man stood up and said that he was the owner of a luxury shoe website and he was having trouble gaining traction and sales. It took Seth about 2 seconds to say, “The women who are buying your shoes probably don’t think of them as luxury items, they think of them as a wise investment in fashion”.

That was the day that we began to see that our Perfect Customer’s worldview was THE determining factor in whether they could “hear” our sales message or if we would just be part of the noise.

As we said, we originally thought that we were writing this book for a guy in his mid-50s who was longing for the “good old days” when sales were easy and the expense accounts were lavish.

In his worldview, spending time at the country club and having two martini lunches is a great way to grow contacts and cement relationships. Some of the vernacular for this guy would be to talk about going belly-to-belly and perfecting closing techniques like the Ben Franklin Close and the Cadillac Close.

Fast forward to when we realized that he also would not buy a Kindle or tablet computer to read our book. At that moment this book became way more detailed, the online examples got more robust, and we knew that the age of our reader would mean that we wouldn’t have to explain every technology term we mentioned.

This Perfect Customer (someone like you) would know how to sell, but want to make more sales and increase his market share. He would want to know what to do next and understand that, while there are no selling secrets, there are things he can do to make his life easer and make success a repeatable process. We included verbiage to this effect in the sales copy and description for this book and it must have worked because you are reading this!

Two Realtors

We sell some of our product line directly to the real estate community (Realtors and agents who number in the couple of millions). With that in mind we did Perfect Customer Profiles to sell to two different types of agents. Not different real estate types, but different personal situation types. After we had done the profiles, it was eye-opening to see the differences in the worldviews of these two women.


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Both were women in their 40’s making about $100,000 a year in commissions, had three kids, but that is where it stopped matching.

The first lady we envisioned, Nancy, was married and had an annual household income of $250,000 with her husband’s income added. She considered herself a successful agent and thought that the trappings of the job were a benefit (she had nails and hair done regularly and drove a BMW). Because we were selling a product that was launching at the end of the year, it was vital to know Nancy’s worldview…that any money left over in her business account HURT her family because they would have to pay taxes on that amount. This opened the door for us to sell a higher end product during the holidays and have a successful launch when we used words like “you are worth it”, “make your business more successful” and “spend now and save on paying Uncle Sam”.

The other lady we envisioned, Beth, was divorced and drove a mini van. She still made $100,000 but was having a hard time getting alimony or child support from her ex. The end of the year was closing in fast and she had a lot on her plate with planning Christmas activities for the kids, picking up the tree and decorating everything herself. There was no extra money because tuition was due at the first of the year and she needed to make sure Christmas was nice for the kids since she didn’t know how involved their father would be. She had functionally stopped working at the beginning of December and would not raise her head back up until after the first of the year except to check a quick email or two.

Now, we could have marketed Beth until we were blue in the face, spreading sales and messages of joy throughout December but none of them would have registered with her. Knowing that we were marketing to a Nancy instead of a Beth meant that we could “talk” in her language and not have to try to appeal to a whole different type of agent.


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Conclusion

If you have gotten this far and not downloaded the worksheet yet, let’s make it easy, click here.

With hundreds of clients having gone through this process, we feel confident that you will discover some interesting bits about your Perfect Customer. It truly is narrowing it down to ONE PERSON who you are marketing to which makes the impact of this process undeniable!

Some suggestions to make filling out the form easier…

1. Do it with a friend. We never try to fill out the worksheet by ourselves. We always brainstorm it together and find that it is much more powerful than if we had done it alone.

2. Buy into it. Call your Perfect Customer by name and try to imagine them as a real, living, breathing person who you almost see.

3. Keep your Perfect Customer Profile beside you when you write your sales copy, free giveaways or web content. We kept a copy of the PCP for this book open beside the writing screen the whole time we drafted this book. It is super helpful to be able to look over and know what your Perfect Customer would want or need at any given moment.

If you are doing your PCP correctly, there will be complementary information on it as well as not so great character traits that your customers have. We thought about publishing the handwritten version of our profile for this book’s customer but then thought, heck no…there is too much raw, real emotion there to share publicly.

Our Perfect Customer Profile Outtakes

There are some bits that didn’t make the book including, our perfect reader loves Tim Ferriss and the idea of a 4 Hour Work Week, Jeffery Gitomer, Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins. He is a Republican who likes to be social and loves having the chance to spend time with the boys AND with his wife and their pals. He uses the company website as his main internet hub. He is working now to pay the bills but wants to move up the food chain and get more responsibility (and money). He is good at selling but not always sure why it works. He is trying to perfect his craft. Instead of two hour lunches, he meets the majority of his social contacts at the gym or at a coffee shop.

We have told you a lot about who we thought would be a great customer for this book. If you enjoyed it, we would love it if you would do two things…

First, leave us a review…we really do want to hear how you liked the book. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THIS BOOK

Second, If you like the idea of building your Perfect Customer ProfileTM

but are not sure


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where to start, please give us a call to schedule a one hour consultation. During this time we will

work with you to develop an amazing outline of your perfect customer who will buy and buy!

We have worked with hundreds of small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you and

can guarantee that the clarity and focus you will gain by selling to just one customer instead of

the whole world will make a real difference in your bottom line…we offer a 100% money back

guarantee!

Call today (727) 415-9165


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About The Authors

The Marketing & Media Monsters dynamic duo, Tara Jacobsen and Rebekah

Welch, are a power house of knowledge armed with a plethora of education,

experience, and real-life successes. With two distinctively different marketing

styles, The Monsters are true pros at recognizing the unique gifts and skills that

each one of their eager students and clients offer the world, and designing systems

and strategies completely geared toward and supportive of the things that come the

most naturally to those they lead. They don’t believe in tearing people down or

disabling what they have in place, rather they pull all the best pieces and show

their clients how to work with what the already have.

By employing this simple approach they are able to equip small business owner

with tools that they can feel comfortable using and will provide focused,

measurable results quickly.

Authors. The Monsters are in the process of writing a book a week for a year.

These are not “PLR” or copied content, but real, live written books on sales and

marketing each week. Though the schedule is a bit grueling, they have a rock-solid

system that produces results. Check out all their titles on Amazon.

Consultants. The Monsters work with select business owners and entrepreneurs,

by employing their combined decades of experience and systems to help owners

discover the perfect customer, position their products optimally in the marketplace

and then develop a plan to market the heck out them.

Broadcasters. The Marketing and Sales Success Hangout is funny and fast paced,

bringing up-to-the-minute marketing information straight to your computer or


34

phone weekly! Please give us a call if you would like to apply to be on the show

(727-415-9165).

About Tara, aka “The Wizard of Marketing Ah’s”:

Tara is a sought after marketing presenter known for her tell it like it is style and

giving 100 miles-an-hour presentations that will keep your audience engaged and

taking notes the entire time. Tara is an Authority Marketing expert with an innate

understanding of all things business and how to translate that into a highly

successful marketing system. Tara is the owner and fearless leader of

MarketingArtfully.com.

Tara is not just talking about marketing ideas from years past. She is actively

working with small business, Realtor and entrepreneur clients on a day-to-day

basis, implementing the latest cutting edge marketing concepts that work today.

Tara will give your audience concrete strategies that they can start implementing

immediately!

About Rebekah, aka “The Girl Behind The Curtain”:

Rebekah is a Broadcast Media Talent, Networking Expert, and master of all things

Social Media. Her passion is empowering entrepreneurs and business owners with

the mind-set, strategies, tools, and connections necessary to make a memorable

impact in today’s ever changing world. Rebekah is a Relationship Marketing &

Positioning Expert with a tremendous understanding how to reach massive

numbers of people in incredibly short periods of time.

Rebekah is the owner of TheColoradoConnector.com and a contributing author for


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the 2011 release of “Rock The World With Social Media” by Mike O’Neil & Lori

Ruff. Rebekah will give your audience real-life behind the scenes knowledge and

the inspiration and motivation to put their plans into action upon leaving the room!

The Monsters have a combined listening audience of over 500,000 people world-

wide. Their Google hangouts and podcasts draw a live, “standing-room-only

audience” where guests get great training and all of their questions answered. The

Monsters have a gift for putting their audience at ease and breaking down the

information they share into bite-sized chunks that are easily digested and

implemented. Because they are best-friends in real life, they truly enjoy working

together and are genuinely having fun – which translates to a great time for

everybody!

The Monsters approach is unique because they teach:

• How To Find the Perfect Customers Who Will Buy and Buy

• How To Do Marketing with Integrity

• How To Stay Focused & Work with a Plan

• How To Create and Execute Measurable Goals

• Task-Oriented Marketing Concepts

• How To Structure Your Organization So That Everybody Does What They

Do Best

• How To Create a Corporate Marketing Strategy That Fits Your Corporate

Culture

And a ton of other great marketing that can be customized for virtually any

environment or industry.


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Additional Titles You Might Like

Becoming An Authority: Stop Waiting For Permission To Dominate Your Niche And Start Making A Difference

Authority Marketing Manual: A Step By Step Guide For How To Turn Your Passion Into Profit


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Copyright and Disclaimer

Sales and Marketing Success: Targeting Your Perfect Customer Who Will Buy & Buy. Copyright © 2014 by Tara Jacobsen and Rebekah Welch

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission

in writing from the author. Reviewers may quote brief passages in reviews.

Disclaimer and FTC Notice

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

mechanical or electronic, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage

and retrieval system, or transmitted by email without permission in writing from the publisher.

While all attempts have been made to verify the information provided in this publication,

neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary

interpretations of the subject matter herein.

This book is for entertainment purposes only. The views expressed are those of the author

alone, and should not be taken as expert instruction or commands.

The reader is responsible for his or her own actions.

Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, including international, federal, state, and

local governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising, and all other aspects of

doing business in the US, Canada, or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the

purchaser or reader.

Neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility or liability whatsoever on the

behalf of the purchaser or reader of these materials.

Any perceived slight of any individual or organization is purely unintentional.

Documents

Sales & Marketing Success€¦ · Sales & Marketing Success 2 Introduction - Who Is Your Perfect Customer and Why Does It Matter? ... sales tactics going away and looking for new,