The Ideal Client – Part 2
(Second in a three-part series)
There are two main reasons why many professionals don’t have their ideal clients. The first is that they don’t even know what to look for, the second is that they don’t understand the process of finding, cultivating, and retaining them.
As we’ve already seen, the ideal client is defined as the one who exactly needs your unique Giftings. Put inversely, the ideal client’s unique Needs are precisely what only your Giftedness is able to satisfy. The more focused your Giftings, the more precise the Needs will be that are addressed.
Now that we understand what the ideal clients are, let’s turn to the next question: how do you find, cultivate, and retain them?
While we’ll wrestle with this question in more detail next week, suffice to say for now that the simple answer is: show respect. The Golden Rule applies – treat your clients as you want to be treated when you are the client. It’s for this reason that many professional advisors tell their professional clients, “Be a client, and learn. Seek out advice and service from another professional, and think about your experience, your reactions, the billing, the reporting, the support staff, the paperwork….”
(Next week we drill down more fully into the “how” of cultivating and retaining the ideal client.)