Who is Your Customer?

My Last slide from my presentation upcoming at the 2011 Fitness Business Summit in Anahiem, CA

Today I was preparing my presentation for this year’s Fitness Business Summit in Anaheim, California. I’ll be speaking there in about 6 weeks from now. I’ve really become known in my mastermind group for the systematic way I approach, execute and build my business. In the last few weeks working with new and old coaching clients I’ve been reminded of our (people’s) tendency to just jump into things without a plan, support or a foundation to lean on. It’s no wonder that more than 50% of new personal trainers don’t renew their certification or that the majority of small businesses fail within the first year.

I want you to complete this very important exercise. Who is the most likely customer of your business? By the time you finished that sentence I am sure many of you feel you have answered or know the answer to this question but you are wrong. Your answer should fill 2-3 typed pages.

• How old are they?
• Are they male or female?
• What do they look like? (Even better find a picture to represent them.)
• What are their fitness goals?
• What do they do for a living?
• Do they have kids? How many? How old on average?
• How much money do they make?
• Where do they live? (Suburb in relation to 15-20 min drive radius of your business.)
• What do they like to do?
• Where do they hang out?
• Where do they shop? What kinds of things do they buy?
• What kind of clothes do they wear?
• If you wanted to find a bunch of them in the next 30 minutes where are they likely to be?
• Think of even more questions to ask…

This may seem silly but the more you can think and put yourself in someone’s shoes the better you can communicate with them. Imagine the steps you would go through to try to communicate a complex idea to a small child (or maybe the dreaded parental sex talk for instance.)

By having this comprehensive word picture you can write an article that speaks to your desired client, you can use images that may appeal to them. You might place draw boxes, business cards, or co-op offers in the places they frequent. Your whole business should develop a razor like, consistent, ongoing focus and effort to communicate with these people. Like magic you should just always seem to be in the same place they are, coincidence? I think not. This will set you apart from your competition and immediately give you massive amounts of credibility with much less effort. Not only will you begin to quickly attract your desired customer but other segments too. Because you will begin communicating specifically and so intelligently to your specific group other groups will become immediately more receptive automatically increasing your value.

Ok you’re half done. The next part is equally critical. Now put the almighty internet to work for you, look for the census and economic statistics for your community. From the questions above compare as many points of data as you can. Home value, ages, gender, children, income, occupation etc to the customer profile you have developed. Soon you will have pretty accurate picture of just how many potential customers there are that fit your profile or who you feel you are trying to communicate to. As my coaching clients have found this can be suddenly very different than what you had originally assumed and big reason why you may be struggling to grow your business.