To give customers what they want, you first need to know who they are. There is going to require some research on your part to find out who they are and then what do they need. In doing so, you can develop your own personal niche, in a specific market. There are certain tips that can be used in developing your own niche. Of course some form of research will be necessary as well. In order for you to develop your own niche in the market, it is vital that you take time out to do an “ideal customer profile” to suit you and your business. So what is an ideal customer for me and my business I hear you ask? Good question and there are several answers to this. We are going to cover the two most important. From experience, I did all of my own prospecting, I did not use Mail shots, Advertising, or Telesales. I actually phoned the potential customer myself and said, “My name is Leslie Johnston, we haven’t met yet that’s the reason I’m phoning you. I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to see if we like and trust each other, and then decide which areas now or in the future we can make some money off of each other. Is morning or afternoon the best time for you and me to share ten minutes together”……….. My Question to the secretary or to who ever answered the phone was:-“could tell me who is the person responsible for the profitability of the company please?” and that got me to speak to the right person This approach got me a 38% success rate from all phone calls in getting to talk to the person that I wanted to speak to, and a whopping 84% success rate to getting the appointment with the people I did talk to. That to me was exactly what I wanted the appointment for, I was not lying anywhere in that script. The prospect knew precisely why I was coming, and they welcomed the honesty of the approach. If I was going to have a close working relationship with them, then I wanted to know if I could trust them or not. Do you really want to work with someone that you don’t like? This was exactly what the customer wanted to know about me as well, they had just never voiced it before. Have you ever met a business person that didn’t want to talk about the possibility of making money? I then picked on average 1 in 10 of the people that I talked to take on as a client of mine. Yes, you read that correctly, I Only Took 10% on Average of the People I Talked to as Clients of Mine. “Why”, I hear you ask? I only wanted top quality customers because the time spent on a small profit sale is the same as a large profit one so why waste time on the small sales? The second most important thing to look for in your ideal customer profile is:- Do they want your product or service? Do they have the authority to buy? Do they have the money to pay for it? Now let’s look at the first one –a customer who wants your product or service. When I worked in Financial Services I discovered very quickly that virtually everyone Needed Life Insurance, but very few people Wanted Life Insurance. We humans will find the money for whatever it is that we want, irrespective as to whether or not we need it. Our homes are full of stuff that we didn’t need, but things that we wanted. The simple way to find out what it is that they want is to ask them. It is very important that you find your ideal customer first, and then find a product or service for them. That is exactly the way that I did it, and then tailored a service to suit my customer in my chosen market place Have They Got the Authority to Buy? A question that I found worked the best was, “Who is responsible for the profitability of the company?” When I was doing my survey of companies and asking them what it was that they wanted in an ideal world. Two answers always came up. (1) To make more profit (2) To pay less tax. So I learned how to make companies more profitable and how to exploit the legal loopholes in order to pay less tax. One of the ways to make companies more profit is to show them how to sell more. So I started sales training. -Get the idea –Give them what they want. It really is that simple. There is at least one niche to exploit in every market and there are usually several So start looking for yours now dare to be different and you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams For more help on this, go now to www.thehandsontrainingsystem.com. and get my 5 part training program Yours in Success Leslie Johnston
Leslie Johnston has been in sales and Management since 1969 and during that time has worked in the Tire Industry until 1981 and then in the financial services until 2000.
He is a very entertaining and dynamic speaker and as a sales trainer he is truly awesome and highly motivational. Since the mid Seventies he has conducted hundreds of seminars and training courses during that time.
He has now retired from selling but keeps extremely active speaking and teaching others how to sell.
All of the sales training that he received in his early days he reckoned that some thing was missing and it was all what he calls “Product Bashing” and then spent the next 5 years studying and experimenting on how to “Problem Solve “ and his sales figures went through the roof.
Follow what he teaches you to do and just watch your income GROW!
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