Whether you market online or offline, you already know shot-gun approach to marketing brings few results. You will sell more products and services when you step back and set up a strategy to reach your targeted market.

Approaches That Set you Up to Pull Customer Orders

One: Develop a Specific Customer Profile

It's good to know whether your customers are primarily women or men. Remember, women buy 70% of books published. Then, figure out age range of your customer. One 25-year-old male coaching client aimed his motivational book at his age group. He had a lot of insight already because of his age. You may want to know marital status.

Is your customer married, single, divorced or separated? Does religion or cultural affiliation play an important part in their lives? Location may matter, but remember to think about vast market Online. These people subscribe to ezines and visit web sites for all kinds of information. Your product or service can easily be just right for them.

It's good to know as many details from these listings as possible.

Here's a Check List for your Target Audience: ---What are these people's biggest concerns/challenges? ---What do these people need and want to have a better life? ---Where does this person work? ---Where does this person live? ---Where does this person play? ---What type of store does this person buy from? ---What magazines or ezines does this person read? ---What newspapers does this person read? ---What radio stations does this person listen to? ---What TV programs does this person watch? ---What organizations does this person belong go? ---What kind of events does this person attend? ---Where does this person go to learn a new skill? ---Is this person teleclass savvy? ---Do these people attend seminars? ---What do these people spend money on? ---Does this person surf internet? ---Does this person buy online?

Two. Send a Casual Market Survey to your Friends and Associates

Make sure you don't pose more than 8 questions to this group. Reward them for taking time to respond to your survey. Give them a free eBook or report or a 1/2 hour free session on your service.

Companies are gearing up to begin hiring again now that economic downturn is taking a nice upswing. The great news for employers is that many workers see now as time to consider advancing in their profession. Those people, along with some exceptional employees who lost their jobs to down-sizing during recession, mean that employers have more prime candidates from which to choose than they’ve had in years.

That’s good news. The bad news is, it can be difficult to separate wheat from chaff, especially for small businesses where management often wears many hats in addition to human resources. Reviewing dozens of resumes and interviews can be time consuming, and even after that grueling process, there may be up to five great potential employees. How can you make sure you select right person for job so you don’t have to go through this long, and costly, process again any time soon?

It could be worth your while to implement a personal profiling test, like DISC Personality Profiling Assessment, to provide another valuable piece of information for consideration when making hiring decisions. Many companies, both large and small, find personality profiling to be a valuable tool to discover, hire, and retain cream of crop.

The upper echelons of corporate America is where personal profiling got its start, but now many human resources departments implement profiling for all new hires. The tests range from simple online tests to in-depth interviews with psychologists. Prices are widely varied as well, depending on depth of test. Inexpensive tests mean that even small companies can afford to implement an assessment.

Personality assessments not only help you hire right employee, they can help you keep them. Long-time HR directors will tell you that if you hire candidate best suited for job, but also for work environment, you’ll retain employee longer. Employee retention saves companies money and valuable time due to lost productivity and costs associated with recruiting and hiring.

The tests consist of questions a job candidate answers to help an employer determine more about candidate’s personality and attitudes. Most personal profiles evaluate a candidate’s skills or personality. The DISC Personality Assessment provides information about both. I like that because it gives you even more of information you need to make a decision.

DISC is an acronym that stands for:

•Dominance •Influence •Steadiness •Compliance

Learning about these characteristics of a potential employee’s personality help employers determine if they’ve got right person for job, both in temperament and in candidate’s ability to adapt to corporate culture. If a company is looking for a chief executive officer, a candidate needs to show some leadership personality traits such as ability to persuade others to follow a vision and skills to determine a path to achieve company’s goals. A chief financial officer, however, needs to have negotiating ability and skills to work with details.

I actually took DISC Personality Assessment to see for myself how valuable a personal profile could be. The first part of test consists of a series of questions that candidate takes online. I got back a comprehensive assessment consisting of 25 pages. The results were remarkable – my friends and colleagues alike agreed that online test nailed every aspect of my personality.

The second part of test consists of an interview with an evaluator to review results. I learned how my personality works with other people, how I can communicate better with others I’m working with and what organizational structure would best suit me. The same information revealed in my interview would help an employer determine if a potential new hire will work well within organization.

A business making a critical hiring decision often relies on first impression that an interview provides. Often, companies need to look a bit deeper to determine true substance and worth of a job seeker’s skill sets and personality, and how combination of two will fit in to organization.

For example, a new hire may have best skills in world, but if he doesn’t have communication skills to work well with your current team, he may not be best candidate. It may be in company’s best interest to hire a good communicator with average skills that can be improved upon with training instead.