Camp Brain-Sticky is open now, which means I’m
consulting privately with a few new clients. I thought
I’d give you a chance to eavesdrop on some of our
sessions. (Be sure to watch, btw, for my brand-new
”Eavesdropping Series” CD’s coming soon!).
So, there’s absolutely no where I can go with a client
until we determine who their target market is. I say to
every single client or student, “Your target market IS
your business. Switch target markets, and your programs
and information products change.” They must, because
they (services + products) must cater to the specific
needs, pains and desires of the market. In order, then,
to create or revamp those products and services, the
market must be clearly defined. This, believe it or not,
is much harder said than actually done.
There are 3 criteria through which every solo service
professional must pass their ideas for prospective target
markets: 1) Are you passionately interested in this market?
2) Are they hungry-to-starving for what you offer? 3)
Can they afford you?
If you cannot give an enthusiastic “two thumbs up” to
each one of these, you must go back to the drawing
board. Now, what does that mean?
Well, in many cases, it means that you scrap the market
you’ve been working with or considering. If you’re not
passionate about them, you won’t be able to sell them.
If they can take you or leave you (aren’t hungry), you
won’t be able to sell them. And if they don’t have money…
need I say more?
Here’s the process I took one client through yesterday:
I focused for quite a while on the first criteria: who is
she passionate about. I asked her these two questions:
1) What is the pain out there in the world that you would
most like to heal? She was aware enough to be able to
answer very quickly, and said, “Isolation.”
Next, I asked her, 2) “What section of the population
feels most isolated?” And to stimulate a strong answer,
I began taking her through human developmental stages
by “decades.” So, I said, “Are you interested in working
with children ages 1-20 on isolation issues?” She knew
she was not, so I moved to those in their twenties, and
because she had some interest, I asked her to answer on
a 1-10 scale. Then, to further refine things, I asked her
to discern whether she was most interested in working
with women or men in that decade. We quickly learned
that she wanted to work with women, so we continued
on through the decades, looking at her interest on a 1-10
scale, and ended the inquiry in the decade of the 70’s.
By doing this, we were covering the first two criteria
quite thoroughly. We began by my asking her the pain
she most wants to heal—which, in most cases, locates a
hungry market. If they’re in pain, they’re most likely hungry.
And then we addressed the gender question and the age-
range to see whom she is most interested in working with.
Her highest 1-10-scale score was for women in their fifties.
So, naturally from there, we dove into the precise nature
of their “isolation pain.” Every decade would have a unique
portrait of issues. We both felt that the pain for this decade
had everything to do with the “empty nest” syndrome, where
these women now feel isolated from their peers (no more
Booster Clubs to attend), have a recognition that they are
isolated from their husbands, now that the distraction of
kids has been removed. And they can very often come to
a realization that they are isolated from themselves: from
a knowledge of what they really want to do in the world.
Knowing the issues this group faces uniquely then enables
us to formulate the types of services and products this client
could offer. Do you see how different they would be if she
had chosen men in their thirties? Or women in their sixties?
The issues facing different markets is profound and it is
critical to ferret them out–in order to create programs that
are marketable; that will be bought.
After this work, I put this client in an incubation period of a
two days to determine if indeed this is the group she wants to
work with. If she sleeps on it and wakes up saying, “I just
don’t feel it”—then we have to go back to the drawing board.
If she does decide she wants to craft her programs around
this market, there is still more target-market work to be done:
diving deeply into the psychology of their wants and fears.
This information (which virtually no one explores) is crucial
to crafting not only the perfect program and product, but the
perfect marketing language that will pull that market out of
their reverie (i.e. denial) and into the program.
More on this later in the week!
Camp Brain-Sticky is still accepting applicants. Read
more here.