Episode 13: The “Ideal Client” Lie

Why your dream client might be nothing like the avatar worksheet said.

Transcript

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Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

You're listening to Awesomely Off Topic, the podcast where we talk books, brand, business, and everything else we're not supposed to say out loud. We're Taz and Asha, ex-journos, now coaches, creators, and chaos navigators. Let's go! This one is called The Ideal Client Lie, but before we go there, Asha, what have you learned from the last podcast episode for anyone wanting to perhaps run their own podcast? Well, the last two we've done

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have been quite long double the length they should have been but we've had some great questions from people I love that and actually just going for it with the answers not rehearsing anything just going with it I think that's what we need to do more of being brave to actually go with it even if there is a bit of waffle in there hopefully there's some little bits nuggets of gold that you can pick out there that will be useful for you so that's one thing I've just learnt that just speak from the heart and just see how it develops you know and I think the fact that we can chat in that way and hopefully bounce off one another with some you know fairly reasonable reasonable responses that might entertain people yeah it's good it's been good fun I've enjoyed it today me

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too and of course I've no idea how these almost an hour long episodes are going to be are going to go down until we get the feedback but we're still aiming for between say 15 and 30 minutes but we've had two we've had two anomalies that's

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a big word anomalies anomaly oh dear okay so remind us Taz what you can start the discussion Just

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laughing at what we've just done. is like nine foot tall and blue.

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You always like using that one. I do think that's a great visual. It's a great visual. It is.

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Yeah. I wouldn't mind being one, you know, the whole riding the dragon-y thing and the connecting the tail thing. That

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would be really cool.

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Yeah.

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And I'd at last be tall and thin. Yeah, but you'd have to have long hair to connect it with the tail. That's alright. I could work with that. Yeah. Yeah, I've had

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long hair before. Yellow eyes would be cool, wouldn't they? They would. Without being jaundiced. Yeah. Anyway, so that's number one issue. Number two is I think something when we focus on creating an ideal client avatar to that extent we can get too niche with it and we can miss opportunities so here's the example i always give let's say that we run a pet trade business and we have some really lovely really expensive big thick leather collars and leads and so we decide that our ideal client avatar is jeff jeff is He is a geography teacher. He walks through the park every morning at just before 8am with his Great Dane, whose name is Marmaduke. Geoff has a neatly trimmed beard, dark hair. He wears... I

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think it's salt and pepper hair, actually.

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It's starting to grey at the time, of course, but it's dark. He has tortoiseshell thick-rimmed glasses. Okay. He wears a kind of hacking jacket. Oh, that was me hitting my bracelet on the desk. He wears kind of a hacking jacket, one of those hound tooth jackets with suede patches on the elbows. Okay,

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yeah.

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And jumbo cords. Oh, jumbo cords. Jumbo cords and highly polished brogues. Okay. And every morning he... There's a

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lot of brown, isn't

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there? There is a lot of brown. There's a lot of brown. He needs a good woman to help him dress a little bit more. Or a good man to help him dress a little bit more. Or a good person of any gender, anywhere on the spectrum, to help him dress a little bit more. Let's cover all bases while we're at it. Anyway, this person is really focusing on Geoff and Marmaduke because Marmaduke is a really big dog and therefore Marmaduke is going to need lots of food. High quality food, probably. He's going to need these really big, thick, heavy leather collars and the leads to match. And Marmaduke, because of his sheer... size is going to be worth a lot of money if they can just get Jeff as their client however they're so busy this is not stereotypical at all the characters in this feel free to I am being a bit of a stereotype they're so busy focusing on Jeff and Marmaduke that they totally miss Chantal who skips through the park every morning it's about 8.30am just after Jeff Chantal has 12 children Chihuahuas. She has 12 Chihuahuas. Chantelle has 12 Chihuahuas and they all have the most beautiful soft leather diamond encrusted pink collars. She feeds them only on the highest quality caviar style food for dogs. She dotes on them. They all have their nails trimmed and painted regularly. Do

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they have coats as well for when it's

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cold? They have little coats for when it's cold. They all have their own individual individually designed dog beds with their names on them. They all have their own bedroom. Okay. She dotes on them. Chantal drops thousands of pounds.

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Do they have their own sort of paddling pool?

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Probably. Chantal drops thousands of pounds on these dogs regularly. But because we're focused on Jeff and Marmaduke. Not a sauna, by

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the way. It's not good.

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Heat. No. We miss Chantal. Yeah. So there we go. Heavily stereotyped. Just a bit. Well, so that you can paint that picture in your head. Yeah. we've got it we've got it so that's why i would much rather see you focusing on a sector rather than an ideal client so i would much rather one of the techniques i take people through is focusing on the top three sectors you'd love to work with focusing on say five to ten individuals within that sector at a time and getting in front of them getting known being able to measure the results of each sector you're focusing on and then moving on to another one so you have a number of key sectors that you work on and also when I say individuals within that sector I mean getting to know your sector that you want to work with so well that you can actually name not only the businesses you want to work with but the individuals by name within that business because if you have a rolling list of five potential clients by name that you want to work with or whose radar you want to be on, then you can really focus in on getting to be known by them and getting in front of them and in being able to really work that list. And every time you either secure one of those people as a client or it's going to be a hard no, that name drops off and another name goes on. If you just focus on a list of five key clients people again specifically by name not people in their 40s who want to feel better about life not women between the ages of 45 and 65 who are going through empty nest syndrome and don't know who they are anymore and have lost their identity

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can i play play

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yeah advocate

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so yeah but what about if you've got it's okay saying that but isn't that plain small just having individuals if you like, rather than widening that out. No. So how does that work then?

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If you have individual names on that list, specifically, you've got Bob Smith and Karen Jones and whatever the name's, Alex Boblington. It's a good name. It doesn't matter that there are people outside of that. It doesn't stop you from getting business elsewhere, but it does make you hyper-focused on going and working with those specific people

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okay that makes sense

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yeah whereas if you are just there are too many people who are pissing in the wind and nothing is sticking they're just their own

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peas coming back

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yeah they're focusing on this something that they're thinking is a niche but is actually a great big wide chunk of the pie and they're not getting anyone

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yeah

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they're just throwing shit at a wall and hoping some of it will stick so you've got to get more specific but not one pretend imagined person specific. Okay. Get to know the industries and the sectors you want to work with. Get to know the people by name. Get to know, I want to work with this company and the person I need there is the marketing director and that person's name is this. That's where LinkedIn can really be your friend or Google or your networking circles or just ringing up and saying, can you tell me who is in charge of this, please?

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I think what you're really good is getting people to really drill down so you don't allow people that it's very easy to hide behind you know that procrastination and say if I'm aiming for a particular person in this sector between the ages of a woman between 30 and 55 in this sector and being generalizing it yeah you can very easily hide in that data or at lack of data can't you to actually say well I've tried this and it just doesn't work you know nobody's buying but if you've actually got real names it makes it really it brings you into the attention of actually I've got to put that phone call in or I've got to send that message I've got to try them on WhatsApp or wherever it may be or through a LinkedIn message and you can't hide in the kind of you know the kind of oh well I did try I've sent X amount of messages now now

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you might know those of you who've been listening to me for a while or working with me for a while will know that I'm a bit of the anti-nisha

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really I can't imagine that

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because I think there's a lovely Kenneth Williams quote that goes a lot something along the lines of sooner or later we're going to be experts in smaller and smaller niches to the point where we become experts in sweet for cool I'm not a big fan of niching it doesn't mean that you can't niche but if I had to niche then it would be either be a speaker either be a speaker trainer and then you could super niche within that for only training certain types of speakers or I only want to train people to speak if their key interest is specifically in red lentils and how long to soak them for before you cook them. And then knit your jumpers out of them. I think we can niche too much. There's nothing wrong with niching, but I don't want to only be a speaker or only be a trainer or only coach people on business. I'm not on any of the live stuff that underpins their business. But

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doesn't that come back to, we've talked about this, I don't know we've done it on this podcast but talked about that when we were journalists we're still journalists but when we were writing for magazines newspapers etc that and also in PR we used to say well what's your specialty you know whatever I used to proudly say I'm a generalist and that gave me yeah but again it's the same with this yeah you can work with all sorts of people you've got to have some target and direction but if you kind of niche to the point of niching for the sake of niching then are you actually ever going to broaden your horizons and your for

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me the sweet spot is having a number of different areas I work in but I can draw a line through all of those and show you why one leads on to the other very very easily everything is connected but within that knowing at least always five specific people I want to work with the niching comes down in terms of knowing who you want to work with and what you're going to do for them yeah that's where the niching comes in yeah if I had 50p for everybody who who's told me i want to be a coach and i've worked out what my niche is all right what's your niche well i want to work with people who are feeling really disenfranchised with life and have lost direction right so you want to coach anybody with skin then that's not a niche okay well women who are feeling disenfranchised then right so you want to work with 50 of the entire global population who have skin then that's that's not niching it's not a niche so i don't don't think you necessarily need to have a niche as such but you do need to put your money where your mouth is and get super specific about the people you want to work with so for instance a lot of people want to suddenly launch group coaching programs and i'll say well okay how many people do you want on that well i want i don't know 20 okay and do you know who these 20 people are what do you mean do you know who the people are that you want on this program well yeah disenfranchised women That's not enough. Okay, disenfranchised women between the ages of 18 and 75. Yes, still not enough. Who specifically? Could you write me a list of people that you want to have as clients on that course? I could probably name one or two. Right, well, if you want 20, I want you to come back and bring me a list of 80 names so that you can approach those people individually. Because otherwise... everybody's launching coaching programs everybody is aiming for the same niche i.e. everybody you can't work in that way it will not work particularly since lockdown so many people have gone online with stuff that the market is flooded and you need to be able to know very very specifically who it is that this is going to help why it's going to help them how it's going to help them and why you want them on that program and then you need to make sure that you are matching the the expenditure in terms of their time, their energy investment and the income they believe they have available to invest in this with the right people. There you go. Ash was looking wide-eyed. No, I'm

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trying to have a drink really quietly. I'm just saying, I know I was because my throat was getting a bit dry.

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So when you were first launching your microbook coaching programme, Ash, I remember saying to you, all right, who do you want on it? And you were actually able to come up with a list of people that it would be perfect for and then go to them and say, do you fancy this? Yeah.

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And I think sometimes, particularly when you work for yourself, that can be a real kind of moment of, oh shit, if I actually, excuse you know have I got to actually have that conversation especially if you struggle with the whole selling aspect of things I know it was for me it was like have I got to have that conversation and actually it was pretty easy because they were already at some level hopefully bought into me and what I do and they liked the proposition they liked the idea that I'd got for them and so they signed up and it doesn't have to be that difficult we make it so complicated and sometimes it is just a question of having that list of that I know you hate lists but having those people in mind

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in that case I'll let you have a list.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank goodness for that. Thank you. That's so

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awful. I can't have any control over my wife.

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I know.

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But you also need to have more people. If it's a program you want to launch, you need to have more names on your list than you want on the program. There's no point saying, well, I've got 500 people on my Facebook friends, so that's 500 people that will come. No, it's a tiny percentage of the people that you're connected with who will, A, ever want to buy your stuff, and B, even more so, be ready to buy your stuff at the time that you want them to buy it.

SPEAKER_01: 16:29

Yeah, it's very often it's about time. I'm in isn't it yeah yeah so it might be you know I've had a few people on my latest micro book that said I'd love to come along but actually the time is not right for me can like you know let me know when the next one's coming put me down for that and that's the other thing isn't it something to be reticent about going back yeah we don't want to disturb people do you think that's a very British thing or is that just a lack of knowledge around sales and how you keep that person warm

SPEAKER_00: 16:53

I think I think it's both there are definitely some cultural um Habits, practices that pop up time and time again just as some cultures can be far more direct and some can be far more reticent. There's a middle ground that is beautiful and the thing is it's about building those connections and building your networking which is why again it's always good to have that rolling list of at least five people that you want to be focusing on and that you'd like to either be on their radar or you'd like them as a client. because that shows you who you need to get out there and build relationships with and build rapport with so that when you do then have something to sell that's right for you right for them they're going to come in

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yeah there's a classic example of that actually um talking to a potential client who i've worked with before but was thinking about possibly signing up for micro but we decided maybe it wasn't the right thing for them at that time but out of that conversation has come another idea for something else and doing something in a slightly different way so by having those conversations then going back to that conversation it's all the new ideas that come out of it for you as a service provider I've certainly had that a few times there's a great benefit to that isn't there if you go back and you know and again if you were niching would you have that opportunity in the same way if you were super niching I don't know but answers on a postcard well

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if you super niching I would hope that that niche is then small enough for you to be networking regularly within that sector and you'd already know the names

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yeah

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but if you know who it is you want to help and you don't know within that group of people who you want to work with first

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yeah

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then you've got more networking to do and more researching to do

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yep that's what i'll be doing then thank you very much so what else do we want to talk about Taz anything else that we want to talk about around this topic

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because I'm letting

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you lead

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today I think for me we've pretty much covered it but what about you the truth about avatars what about when somebody's writing a book because I've heard people give that advice before in the same way that if someone's delivering a talk imagine you're speaking to just one person well yeah you can imagine you're speaking to just one person when you're delivering a talk but then you need to move that person all around the room or you'll end up just making eyeballs with one person in the middle of the room all the way through that talk and make someone feel really under pressure potentially and everybody else ignored. So when it comes to writing a book, I've heard that advice before. Imagine you're writing for one person and write to them. Is that right? No.

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Why? I don't agree with that at all. I mean, okay, occasionally that might be the place, but I think, again, you're narrowing your audience to a point where you want lots of people to connect with that book at different points in that book. Why would you just want to connect with one person one type of person one that avatar why would you want to do that i want to have a book that actually speaks to me in one chapter it speaks to this demographic when over here it speaks to somebody else sometimes you do need to that it particularly

SPEAKER_00: 19:58

you still need to know who that book is for on a wider basis so that the the right people know to buy the book surely

SPEAKER_01: 20:03

yeah sure yeah of course absolutely but i think sometimes we can be so supernation just with one type of business or person it depends what it is if it's if it's semi-autobiographical for instance then that actually you've got a bit more leeway to kind of work with that and different types of people if it's a B2B book then yes of course you're going to have a particular type of customer in mind but there are going to be different points even in a book like that where you're going to possibly speak to a different type of person within that industry or that market yeah so it might be I don't know unless you're say you're focusing on sales or merchandising or something like that you've got to but there's different people within that sector aren't there and what you know there's going to be people in merchandising that are also going to be doing other roles within their...

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And you knowing who that book is for and knowing the people in that niche that you're writing for, in that industry you're writing for, that sector you're writing for, will really help you to market it.

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Yeah, of

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course. Because let's say that you drop that book onto Amazon.

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Yeah.

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You know from the software that you invest in for the

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additional... Oh, yeah. It's been an absolute godsend,

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that. For the bolt-on packages you give to some of your authors, that let's say a book is specifically... I don't know... can be a super niche, can be people who sell microphones, specifically a particular type. People who only sell road microphones, I don't even know if that exists. Then when you look at that and start searching for how many times that title is searched for or that topic is searched for on Amazon, it's going to come up with a bright red. They have a traffic light system on this program you use. It's going to come up with fewer than 100 searches per month. But then when you look at how competitive that category is, you've probably got quite a high chance of getting a bestseller in that category because there aren't many others. So if you know that there are going to be fewer than 100 searches of that category on Amazon every month, you need to know who it's for even more so that you can get your PR sent out to the relevant publications and websites so that you can send out mailers potentially to the right people. people so that you can drop information about that book to the right people on LinkedIn on Facebook on Instagram on TikTok on threads wherever you've still got to know the niche you're aiming out the set you're aiming up well enough for you to be able to give some extra battery power to your promotion instead of just dropping it on Amazon expecting it to do all the work it's interesting

SPEAKER_01: 22:35

because I've started using that particular piece of software only fairly recently certainly in the last couple of months but already you invested in it late last year yeah and it's and it's paying dividends because i've got my head around it and it's taken me a while to get my head around

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it good job you've got a geeky wife

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thank goodness for that because i mean you've been teaching me how to use it but actually once you get your head around it it's so powerful genius and it's something where you can just tap into it on a weekly daily basis for clients and then go back to it so for instance if you've got a book that you've published i don't know six months a year ago 18 months ago the keywords and searches you've got in there may not be relevant now they might not be quite so hot to trot as it were yeah you can go back in yeah and then look at how it's changed we can make a few tweaks and suddenly your book could be back up in that bestseller list again which I think often is neglected actually.

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Yeah we think we just put it out there and that's done. I used it late on last year when we first got it I used one of my books as a test case for that and went in and sure enough things had changed and I went back in and changed the keywords and changed the categories and lo and behold I started earning more from that book on Amazon again so that's one of the products you'll eventually roll out isn't it where maybe once a quarter you'll offer your authors the opportunities to have a report done on that book and its competitors and where your categories and keywords need to be I think as

SPEAKER_01: 23:50

usual what we've done with that isn't it going off topic slightly but we've basically test driven it ourselves to show that we're happy with it and how it can work and you've geeked out in the way that you wonderfully geek out which has enabled me to become more confident with it so that I can now introduce that and feel confident that I'm confident with it to bring it to my customers but it's a great it's a really easy way to keep your book out there you

SPEAKER_00: 24:14

know doing well and what does this have to do with niching and clients well it ties in beautifully because you know that your niche or your sector in this point is people who've self-published so you can go back to them and give them that advice that they might not otherwise have

SPEAKER_01: 24:29

nicely done i like that task i can tell you're a bit more confident in this than i am but i'm learning i am learning from your expertise thank you

SPEAKER_00: 24:38

so the ideal client lie yeah is that you have one ideal client and you market everything towards them 1990s wants its marketing back get clear on the sectors you want to be working with get clear on the individuals within that sector by Thank you. So until next time. See you next Tuesday.

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You've been listening to Awesomely Off Topic. Follow or subscribe to make sure you don't miss the next one. We're Asha Clearwater and Taz Thornton and we'll be back soon.