Profiling Exercise

You have heard about racial profiling, criminal profiling, and terrorist profiling. I want you to have some fun and create a customer profile for your business. If you were an FBI agent, how would you profile typical customer that fits your business? Here are some of characteristics you must include in your profile:

Demographics •Age, sex, location, homeowner, etc Buying habits •How many are there •Where do they shop •How do they shop •When do they shop Buying motivations •What problem do they want solved •What benefits do they want from you •What features are they looking from your product •What do they like and dislike about your industry •What special circumstances must be present for them to buy from you •What guarantee do they need from you Follow up services •What do they want from you after sale •What do they expect from relationship to remain loyalty to your business

To help obtain answers to these questions, think about your last ten customers, or ten of your best customers. If you want to add real depth to your answers, call up five of your best customers and ask them question directly. Tell them you are trying to improve your business and you need their help. Give them some small token of your appreciation for helping you with this task. Let them help shape your business! They will be honored that you asked for their help.

If you have other employees or sales persons in your business, ask them to complete same exercise and put together a profile of your typical customer. There are level and levels of details to these profiling questions. That is why you periodically need to come back to same questions and add more details.

Conclusion

To move your business forward, you must have a through knowledge of your buying customers. Completing profiling exercise of your best typical customer is a fun and easy way to establish a solid foundation for next stage of your business. For a longer, free report on targeting your customers, send an email to al@hanzal.com with subject “Free Report on Targeting Your Customers.” Copyright Al Hanzal, 2004. All Rights Reserved

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in package. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy extra add-ons.

9. Sell gift certificates for your products. You'll make sales from purchase of gift certificate, when recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site.

10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order.