AB Deep Client Understanding
Focus and foundation
Building Deep
CLIENT Understanding AUTHORITY
BREAKTHROUGH
As an authority, you’re an expert in your field…but… you must also be an expert in what your clients care about
We’re going to figure this out in two steps
“Brain dump” what you know about your ideal clients
Organise and analyse that knowledge to gain insight 3
use the “deep client understanding” workbook Brain dump - Who are the typical people who buy or influence the purchase of your products and services? - Write down what you know about them from your previous experience, and primary research (e.g. from validating your focus) or secondary research (e.g. any data you can find on them on the web)
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use the “deep client understanding” workbook Build an ideal client persona - Different personas represent different types of client or buyers - e.g an Executive coach may typically get hired by two different types of executive: “high potential” and “struggling” - By filling in the details of the persona you bring them to life and make it easier to understand what motivates them and how to market to them - You may have 1 or more personas for your business but it’s rarely wise to develop more than Based on Empathy Mapping from Business Model Generation a few by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur 5
Building an ideal client persona Step 1: Who they are - Write down what you know about them demographically - pick out any common patterns: - Typical age, sex, martial status, children - Education, work background - Their interests at and outside of work
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Building an ideal client persona Step 2: Their Problems, Challenges, Fears and concerns - From both a long term and short term perspective, what keeps them awake at night worrying? (e.g. worried about impact of new technology on future of business, worried about customer service complaints) - Look from both a business and a personal perspective (e.g. worried about profitability of business, worried about losing best staff, worried about being overlooked for promotion, etc) 7
Building an ideal client persona Step 3: Their Goals and aspirations - From a more positive perspective, what are the big goals and aspirations they hope to achieve? - Again, look from both a business and personal perspective. - For each goal, try to ask “why?” to get to a deeper motivation - e.g. want business to grow to > £100m turnover - underlying “why” is so that business can be sold 8
Building an ideal client persona Step 4: What do they need to know and feel to be ready to hire you - What rational and emotional criteria do they use when choosing to hire someone like you? (e.g. understands my business, proven track record of results) - What factors related to them need to be in place? (e.g. “I feel I’ll be capable of doing it”) - What objections do they often have to buying?
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Building an ideal client persona Step 5: What are their values? What are they for and against? - What do you know about their values? Do they value creativity and innovation? Hard work and loyalty? - This give you clues as to whether you’d be a good fit to work with them, and elements of your story to bring out to build affinity
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Your next steps This is a challenging, but very worthwhile exercise work through the workbook for your most prominent typical client if you have big gaps in the persona - consider whether you need to do a bit more informal research Share the persona you’ve developed on the team room for feedback you’ll be using the information you’ve gathered to help you know what content to create and how to frame it for maximum impact 11
Building Deep
CLIENT Understanding AUTHORITY
BREAKTHROUGH
As an authority, you’re an expert in your field…but… you must also be an expert in what your clients care about
We’re going to figure this out in two steps
“Brain dump” what you know about your ideal clients
Organise and analyse that knowledge to gain insight 3
use the “deep client understanding” workbook Brain dump - Who are the typical people who buy or influence the purchase of your products and services? - Write down what you know about them from your previous experience, and primary research (e.g. from validating your focus) or secondary research (e.g. any data you can find on them on the web)
4
use the “deep client understanding” workbook Build an ideal client persona - Different personas represent different types of client or buyers - e.g an Executive coach may typically get hired by two different types of executive: “high potential” and “struggling” - By filling in the details of the persona you bring them to life and make it easier to understand what motivates them and how to market to them - You may have 1 or more personas for your business but it’s rarely wise to develop more than Based on Empathy Mapping from Business Model Generation a few by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur 5
Building an ideal client persona Step 1: Who they are - Write down what you know about them demographically - pick out any common patterns: - Typical age, sex, martial status, children - Education, work background - Their interests at and outside of work
6
Building an ideal client persona Step 2: Their Problems, Challenges, Fears and concerns - From both a long term and short term perspective, what keeps them awake at night worrying? (e.g. worried about impact of new technology on future of business, worried about customer service complaints) - Look from both a business and a personal perspective (e.g. worried about profitability of business, worried about losing best staff, worried about being overlooked for promotion, etc) 7
Building an ideal client persona Step 3: Their Goals and aspirations - From a more positive perspective, what are the big goals and aspirations they hope to achieve? - Again, look from both a business and personal perspective. - For each goal, try to ask “why?” to get to a deeper motivation - e.g. want business to grow to > £100m turnover - underlying “why” is so that business can be sold 8
Building an ideal client persona Step 4: What do they need to know and feel to be ready to hire you - What rational and emotional criteria do they use when choosing to hire someone like you? (e.g. understands my business, proven track record of results) - What factors related to them need to be in place? (e.g. “I feel I’ll be capable of doing it”) - What objections do they often have to buying?
9
Building an ideal client persona Step 5: What are their values? What are they for and against? - What do you know about their values? Do they value creativity and innovation? Hard work and loyalty? - This give you clues as to whether you’d be a good fit to work with them, and elements of your story to bring out to build affinity
10
Your next steps This is a challenging, but very worthwhile exercise work through the workbook for your most prominent typical client if you have big gaps in the persona - consider whether you need to do a bit more informal research Share the persona you’ve developed on the team room for feedback you’ll be using the information you’ve gathered to help you know what content to create and how to frame it for maximum impact 11
