How to Make Companies Beg to be Your Client

This is the third in a weekly series showing freelancers and business owners ways to spend an hour per week building a basic marketing program. Last week we showed you how to identify your best customers and prospects. This week we show you how tell your story in a way that makes customers want to work with you. These posts are meant to be short, sweet and actionable.

It’s not enough to be great

Harsh reality warning: No matter what you’re selling, offering or providing, you’re not the only one. Your future clients have options, and they expect you to be great.

You have to go beyond great. You have to give them the right reasons to do business with you. And to do that, you have to make them see, hear, or feel how they will benefit from choosing you.

It’s all about them

The first step toward making your ideal clients and customers want to do business with you is to understand they don’t care about you or your product or your service. All they care about is what you can do for them.

So, figure out what it is they really want that only you can provide. Get inside the mind of your best customers and look at your product from their standpoint. Go deep. It’s not enough that someone needs a new website. You need to understand not only why they want that new website, but also what criteria – conscious and unconscious – they’re going to use to select a vendor.

The following questions will help you identify hot buttons and unmet needs. To make it easier, you can download a free copy of the Messaging Worksheet we use with clients at Clicks ‘n Conversions.

Pull out your Ideal Customer description from last week and let’s get started.

1. Who will be involved in the decision to purchase your product or service? Does the buyer make the decision alone or does he/she consult others?
2. What problems, challenges, or opportunities are your ideal clients facing that your product or service can solve?
3. Why haven’t they solved these problems and challenges or taken advantage of the opportunities? What’s standing in the way?
4. What would a perfect solution look like for them?
5. How does your product or service help them solve their problems and challenges? How does it meet the description of a perfect solution?
6. What is the potential value of your solution? Quantify this if you can. For example, it’s not enough to say you save them money. How much money will you save them and how fast?
7. How can you prove it?

Once you’ve been through the process of figuring out what is really important to your prospects and how you can meet their needs, you’ll have a heads up on nearly all of your competitors. Few of them will have bothered to do this.

Now you can craft messages – verbal, written or images – that connect with your prospects, let them know you understand them, and make them want to do business with you.

Next week – Marketing Goals …..

In the last three weeks, you’ve set your website up to collect information about your visitors, identified your best customers and figured out how to make them love you. Next week we’ll show you how to spend less than an hour figuring out just what you need your marketing to accomplish.