Oil Changes and Selling Steak Recipes to Vegeterians
At 10:00 am this morning I took my Honda CRV in to get my usual oil change at The Import Shop. It’s a locally owned car repair shop owned by a mom and son and as a small business owner, I prefer to spend my money at other small businesses rather than the dealership right down the road. They provide a great service at a fair rate and I’ve been a customer for well over 7 years. I asked Harriet today if they worked on other import cars or just Honda’s. She said just Honda’s. At one point named their company “The Honda Import Shop” but Honda’s legal department asked them to change their name in a nicely written letter.
So it’s very obvious market who their target audience is: Honda car owners. New Honda’s. Older Honda’s. Not Ford. Not BMW. Just Honda’s. Since they know who their target audience is, they know who they can’t help as well: non-Honda owners.
SO WHAT?
How many times have you spoken with a company or person and you asked who they serve and they reply “Everyone.”? That might be the case but for a lot of companies, it probably isn’t.
Don’t be a generalist. Be a specialist. I’m not the first person who’s said this. Know your specialty and niche.
Define your target audience. Be as specific as possible. That you way you know exactly who you serve and who you don’t.
At Connect 5000, our target audience is software, technology and consulting companies with high average sales. We pretty much know who we can help and can’t help. Is your average sale $500? Can’t help you. Is your average sale at least $25,000? Then we can probably help.
You can’t be all things to all people. Knowing definitely who your target audience is not only helps you, it also helps potential prospects and clients.
It doesn’t matter if I have the best steak recipe in the world. If I’m targeting vegetarians, it doesn’t matter how much of a good sales person I am if I am targeting the wrong audience.
Can you articulate your target audience in 2 sentences or less? If you can’t, that may be a problem.
Recently, we had a consulting firm in Texas that we found out after we started their campaign that they only had 4 clients total. Every client they obtained for their practice was through a referral. They were still trying to figure out who their audience was. Referral sales are great in all. But they couldn’t determine who to call on effectively.
We have a client in Cincinnati, Ohio and their target audience is the Head of either the Professional and Support Services team for Hardware and Software companies from $100M to $5B in revenue. Pretty clear criteria of their target audience.
If you need help defining your target audience for cold calling or prospecting purposes, we may be able to help.
I’m Ray Ruecker and we help technology and consulting companies shorten their sales cycle and multiply revenue by making meaningful introductions and profitable connections.
