Are You Clear On Who You Serve?

The serve component is the very first of the four stages of our Pro  Growthmap.

We are all in business to help someone solve a problem, accomplish a goal, or a completed job, and those are the three ways that we add value.

Knowing who you serve is important because if you do not know who that person is, you cannot know what their problem is, and so, you cannot know how to solve the problem. 

If you want your business to grow, then you should start by first knowing who you serve, and what their problems are. 

Then, and only then can you start solving their problems with your products and services, and watch your business boom!

When you are trying to figure out how to launch a new product or service, or frankly if you’re in a rut and trying to remember why you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing, ask yourself;

• Who am I trying to serve? 
• What are they like? 
• What are their needs? 
• What are their wants? 
• What are their problems? 
• What are their aspirations? 
• And where are they in your community?

Why?

Because this is the first step to developing the kind of empathy that’s going to help you become more profitable and distinguish you from other businesses in your neighborhood that may be more interested in selling their products and services over trying to serve customers and solving their problems.

Are You Launching a New Product or a New Business?

1. Know who your target customer is.
2. Understand their problems and find ways of solving them.

1. Know Who Your Target Customer Is

Know who your target customer is, what kind of demographics and psychographics they’re. How they make buying decisions, their interests, where they spend their time online and offline, etc. As clear as you can get about who this person is.

How are you going to find the best person to serve?

• Group your customers into segments and pitch them your very best offer
• Build an email list
• Set up a Google business profile

Group Your Customers Into Segments and Pitch Them Your Very Best Offer

Group your customers into sections, let’s call them segments.

Start with segment one, and pitch them your very best offer.

Work with a couple of those customers in segment one and see if you like them, and if not, then go to segment two and give that a try as well.

At this point, you’re just launching a new product, without a clear product-market fit or service market fit. So your services may not adequately match the desires of your targeted market, and that’s okay.

Opportunity

The opportunity, however, is for you to figure out how to offer your clients exactly what they need.

Build an Email List

At this particular point, it’s about people and it’s about relationships.

As soon as you can, you should get some kind of email software and start building an email list.

It is only through an email list that you will own the channel of communication with your prospective customers.

I recommend you email your list at least weekly, and probably no less than twice a month.

Opportunity

You’ll have more clarity and certainty as regards your target audience because people will now forward your email as a recommendation.

Or they’ll start to unsubscribe from your email list which is a signal that they weren’t a good fit in the first place.

Set Up a Google Business Profile

A Google business profile facilitates direct interaction with your customers and prospects online through Google reviews.

Opportunity

Using the Google reviews, you’ll know what works well for your target market and what influences their purchasing decisions, as well as fix what may not be working well for them.

2. Understand their problems and find ways of solving them.

Having found your target customer, now go out and try to find ways to demonstrate competence to this particular market now, and if possible, you should niche down and focus on just that one segment.

Why is this important?

At some point, you can be all things to all people, maybe depending on your industry. But out of the gate, you can’t start there; you don’t have the cash, the resources, or the time.

So you’ve got to figure out one group of people that you want to focus on and then just go as hard as you can trying to serve those people, whether that’s in a certain neighborhood, a certain demographic, or any type of market segment.

Whatever it is, find that one thing and go hard at it for a little bit to generate the case studies reputation, competence, and resources to be able to then serve the next segment.

Needs at this stage

From a technology standpoint, at this stage of the game, there’s not a lot that you need, a simple DIY inexpensive brochure website is all you need.

Why?

Because at this point, you aren’t clear on who you’re serving and what you do.

You might feel like you are, but ask anybody who’s been in business longer than a year or two. And they will tell you that the business that they’ve got in year two or year three is very different from the business that they started or that they imagined when they started in year one.

Are you clear on who you serve?

Every business starts with getting clear on who you want to serve, why you want to serve them, and how you plan to serve them.

Then go out and work your network. See if you can find your ideal customer through your relationships, and draft out the personas.

Build an email list, because, the sooner you start building one and start building a relationship with your list, the easier and the sooner you’ll get profitable. The easier it’ll be for you to start to find who the ideal people and persons are that you want to serve.

And on finding them, demonstrate your competence to them using simple tools such as building a simple brochure website.

This is your digital storefront so that you can then spend your energy and time going out and leveraging your relationships, getting introductions to the people you need to meet, and trying to find as many people as you possibly can serve. until you can close in on the one that you want to serve the best.

Links and Resources

• The Pro Growthmap Webinar
• Online persona generator
• The “Perfect” Google My Business Profile