If your dream clients don’t know you, you have no way of creating or winning an opportunity. It is imperative that you are known. It’s even more important that your dream clients know you as a value creator. You do this by continually nurturing the relationships you need and relentlessly prospecting.
This is only one half of the equation. The other half is you knowing your dream client. Just as you have no chance to create and win an opportunity when you are unknown, you also have no chance when your dream client believes that you don’t them. Your dream clients want to work with someone that knows them.
What Your Dream Wants You to Know
Your dream client wants you to understand their business goals and challenges. They want to work with someone who has taken the time to listen and who understands what they need to move their business forward. They want to work with someone who understands the constraints of their business, and the business realities that make it challenging to produce the results they need.
Your dream client wants you to understand how things work inside their company. The way you help your other clients may or may not work within your dream client’s company. They need the value that you create, but they want you to know how to make it fit their distinct, specific needs. They want you to know how things work so you can apply your insight to them specifically.
Your dream client needs you to know the people that are affected by a decision to use you. They want a consensus that you are the right choice of partner. They want to know that everyone (or almost everyone, anyway) is bought in to you and your ideas.
It’s Personal
The contacts within your dream client only believe you really know them when you spend time face-to-face working to understand them and their business.
You can’t research your way to making your client feel that you know and understand them. Spending time face-to-face indicates that you care enough to listen, and you care enough to try to understand. It produces a trust that isn’t created any other way and is especially absent when your knowledge comes from the Internet and your trigger alerts.
You won’t create and win an opportunity if your dream clients don’t know you, and you also won’t create and win an opportunity if they don’t know that you know them.
Questions
Is it more important that your dream clients know you or that you know?
Why is it important that you know your dream client?
What do your dream clients need to you know about them, their business, and the people affected by a decision to choose you?
What is the best and most effective way to know your dream clients?