Customer avatars! Without these, how can you truly know who your customers are?

I’ve heard it so many times before, in so many different ways, but never actually got around to doing anything about creating my own customer avatars. I have plenty of clients, they all seem to be happy with the service I provide and I’m happy working with them. They are nice people and – this is the crux of it – they pay me on time.

But is that enough to keep a business flourishing? Can I honestly say that the pipeline is always full?

I decided to spend some time working on my business and drew up a sheet on which I could add all the details about each of my clients – age (ok, I guessed at this), gender, business sector, needs and pain points, business aims – I even added notes on character, working style and how well they delegate to me. This way, I could find out who they really are.  And not just that, but who the good ones are. I mean, they can’t all be great, can they?

Using a method I had been told about a couple of years ago, I graded all of my clients from A to D. In case you’re wondering, that’s Advocates, Blooming marvellous, Could do better and Don’t touch with a barge pole.

I already knew who the D-grades were, and no, I don’t work with them anymore! The late-payers and indecisive time-wasters, although lovely people, were not good for business.

What did surprise me though, were the similarities I found between the A and B-graders. Not gender nor age, pain points and certainly not the business sector… but their working style which, honestly, was a sort of afterthought when I was creating the avatar sheet. I just chucked it in there to see what came up.  It seems I need to question my prospects to discover their style.

So if you’re decisive, driven, direct, disciplined and dynamic, please do not put yourself down as a D-grade – you could be my next A-star client! To learn more, let’s have a one to one.