To find your ideal customer, you first need to know who you are as a company, according to speaker, trainer and strategic advisor Vincent Fournier. (Image: courtesy)
LEADER AND WORDS. If there’s one word that irritates speaker, trainer and strategy consultant Vincent Fournier, it’s “Mr. and Mrs. Everyone”.
The author of the book Grow your business hear it far too often from entrepreneurs explaining who their product or service is intended for.
“That’s the worst answer you can get. Why ? Because “Mr. and Mrs. All-the-World does not exist,” he writes in his book. According to him, this expression means not having a target clientele, which prevents you from positioning yourself well, “because if you try to want to talk to everyone, you end up talking to nobody”.
Here’s one of the pieces of advice he gives in his book, which he doesn’t see as a recipe but rather as a strategic guide.
“We have to pull off the surgical nose,” he said in a telephone interview. By thinking more strategically, we can accelerate our business. When we’re busy, we take action based on what’s happening now. But we will then make overly emotional or rational decisions that do not serve our goals.
The customer at the center of his priorities
The book is divided into five pillars. The most central is the customer pillar. “If the customer is not the focus of our priorities, there is no business,” the author simply summarizes in the interview. Nevertheless, he considers this basis to be neglected. Apart from the fact that he addresses his target clientele poorly, the entrepreneur often does not know them. Building a database to collect basic information (age, place of residence, gender, etc.) of its customers is therefore essential.
“I’ve worked in the business world for more than 30 years, a third of those as an entrepreneur, and I would tell you that the advice I wish I had had earlier in my career is this: find your ideal client,” he wrote . In doing so, she adheres to Pareto’s Law, which dictates that 20% of customers account for 80% of sales. So that means some of them need to be prioritized. Vincent Fournier believes SMBs can increase their sales by 30% simply by defining who they really want to talk to.
define yourself well
To find your ideal customer, you first need to know who you are as a company. This decisive step is taken in the guide column. Vincent Fournier quotes the American management expert Peter Drucker: “The most important reason for frustration and failure in companies is insufficient reflection on the raison d’être of the company or its mission.”
In order to develop his business vision, he claims that it must be precise in time; optimistic but realistic; measurable; motivating and inspiring; and explicit.
After this phase, which is the foundation of the house, as well as that which concerns the customer, the author proposes the pillar of attraction, that is, the one where the consumer must be attracted. He warns against the temptation to focus on the sale rather than the relationship with the customer. Why ? Because consumption through use has become the exception. “The one I now call the ‘consumption actor’ consumes for pleasure, for belonging, or even for compensation. He wants to live an experience and be an integral part of the buying process.” So the marketing approach needs to take that into account.
The last two pillars are operations and administration. On the one hand, it is about turning your potential customers into ambassadors for your products and services. It serves to maintain a flawless customer relationship. For the last pillar, the objective is to better define and achieve its objectives, which means ensuring close monitoring and appropriate measurement of its results. “A GPS without a final destination is useless,” says Vincent Fournier. With this book, the author hopes that the entrepreneur or self-employed person will have a more global vision that will allow them to be more efficient. So he invites them to work more ON their business than IN their business.
Grow your business is published by Béliveau Éditeur.