True focus is all about giving yourself a system, strategy or scenario that can lead you to understanding a key area of your business. Intuitively enough, figuring out what you want helps you get more of whatever it is you want.
I’m pretty sure one thing you really want is more new business. If you want to attract those new clients, you have to start at the beginning.
I’m guessing you spend a lot of time, effort and energy on marketing your business. However, there’s a key difference between sales and marketing. Marketing is all about getting bees around the honey pot, if your business is the honey. In sales, on the other hand, you get to choose your own customers, provided you actually go looking. The art of great salesmanship is like fishing. It’s all about knowing what fish you’re looking for, where to find them and what bait to use. That way, when you go fishing in the right place, at the right time and with the right bait, you’re almost certain to catch the right fish. That’s what process focus is all about. It’s about putting the subject of your focus right in your own hands.
We communicate and process information in so many ways that if you’re looking for anything and everything at the same time, you’ll find nothing. If you get specific in your search, you’re far more likely to spot opportunity.
Think about a time in your life when you’ve looked at buying a new car. Once you’ve decided what you’re buying, you can’t help but see tons of those vehicles everywhere you look on the road. I promise you, it’s not some kind of strategic marketing campaign from the company from which you were looking to buy. They were there already. It’s just that now you’ve subconsciously directed a part of your brain to identify, spot and look for them. This is exactly what you need to do to find more of the right kind of customers. So take time to consider precisely who your target customer is. How many are you looking for?
Consider how many new customers you’d like to acquire in the next 12 months. Maybe break that down to how many new customers you’d like to have per month, and then define exactly what they look like so you can go searching for them. Let me suggest some factors you might want to consider.
Where They’re Located
If you have an account management or servicing responsibility, look for customers in a nearby geographic area. That way, your ability to get face-to-face adds value for them, and so does their easy ability to access you whenever you’re needed. Consider whether you have enough of the right kind of customers purely located in your geographic region that you can service correctly.
How Big They Are
Are you targeting single-person micro-businesses? Are you targeting Fortune 500 companies? If your services don’t currently match the type of company you’re serving, you might want to make a change to the sort of customer you pursue.
What Industry They’re In
Getting industry-focused can really help you find what you’re looking for. Who exactly is the decision-maker within that type of business? It might be one person. It might be more than one person. Either way, really define exactly who it is, because what you’re looking for is more than just an organization or a type of organization. You’re looking for an organization in a certain location and of a certain size. You’re also looking for a certain person within that organization, because without that person you’ll never get to a serious decision.
The more focused you get and the more you define your target market, the more likely you are to realize that you actually have more than one target market. And once you know exactly who it is that you’re pursuing, you can share it with others more easily and they can help you to find more of the right kind of people.
