One of the best tips I give to companies I mentor is for them to spend a huge amount of time putting themselves in the shoes of their customers.
Don’t just give this lip service. Give it the needed time and attention.
Recently, my team at the SBSA and I have been doing some of this work. We have had a successful few years, but 2 weeks ago we sat down and decided to go even deeper into our market space.
We have had a lot of success in working with a range of organisations and our previous niche of Business-to-Business professional service companies is still where we are strong. But we wanted to get stronger. We wanted to add more value and, I will be honest, we wanted to be able to move our prices upwards.
So we sat down and decided to do 3 things.
Firstly, we looked at our customer base over the last 2-3 years.
- Who were our best customers?
- Who did we enjoy working with the most?
- Where had we added the most value?
- What impact had we made and how had we done it?
We then started to look closely into the persona of the person whom we had the key relationship with.
- What role did they play in the business?
- What were their typical demographics (age, location)?
- How did they go about investing in new services?
- What were their key goals and aspirations?
The final part of this work, once we had identified our ideal persona was to really start to think like them.
We sat down and went through a minimum of 50 problems that we think they had. We asked questions such as:
- What is causing them to lose sleep at night?
- What really frustrates them day to day?
- What are they doing right now to solve this problem?
- What could attract their attention and make them want to know more?
The outcome of this work was a list of 50 problems that we think our ‘perfect target customer’ has.
We are not done with this work yet but as a result of going through this task, so many things have become much clearer to us. We now know exactly who to target and what messages to use which will resonate with them. We know who we aren’t right for and can be honest with those who approach us and share that whilst we are happy to help, we may not be the best fit for them.
The whole ‘refocusing’ approach gives clarity and allows us to focus on our plans for the next 6-12 months. It will also allow us to add more value and ensure we are able to create content that can make potential customers think ‘these guys are helpful and valuable’.
Creating those types of thoughts in the mind of potential customers before you engage with them, IS the route to selling high-value business services!
So if you are struggling with raising your prices or increasing your margins then use the above approach. My recommendation is to do it with a big pad of white paper and maybe even a glass of nice wine to help get the creative juices flowing!
Wishing you a wonderful week ahead and a successful March!
