Choosing your ideal customer

by Travis Farnes

When running your service business, you’ll find that there are many different types of customers. There are some you’ll click with and others that you won’t care for. I want to challenge you start choosing the types of customers that you want to work with. Leave the problem customers for someone else.

Choose your ideal customer
Think of what your ideal customer might be. If you’ve been in business for some time, you’ll probably already have a good idea based on the customers you’ve dealt with already. If not, it might even be easier to think of what kind of customer you don’t want first and work backwards to determine the ideal customer.

Here are some things to think about:

• Your ideal customer might be someone that isn’t very price conscious. It’s a lot easier to work with people who aren’t beating you up about your prices. You can provide a valuable service to them while making the kind of money that you want to make.
• Your ideal customer may have a home that isn’t older than a certain age. I find that older homes tend to have more surprises thus making jobs take longer than expected. If all the homes in your area are older homes then you can’t really be too picky about this. I prefer to work on homes that were built after about 1990 or so.
• Maybe your ideal customer is a realtor. Realtors can keep you very busy if you find the right ones. They can also drive you crazy if you don’t manage their expectations from the beginning.
• Your ideal customer might also be a homeowner who lives within 15 min drive time of you. It makes it a lot easier to serve customers who are close to you.

Hopefully – you get the idea.

Don’t waste too much time on the rest
The problem with spending too much time on customers that aren’t ideal for you, is that you’ll end up being too busy (and worn out) to get to the best customers. Obviously, you need to stay busy so you’re going to have to service some not-so-ideal customers, just don’t spend too much time with them. Try to focus your efforts on getting and retaining your ideal customers and your business will be much more enjoyable to run.

Ultimately, you’re in control of the types of customers that you work with, so why not make your business better by choosing only the best customers?

For more from Travis Farnes on websites visit www.http://proservicesites.com/.