The Secrets to Identifying Your Ideal Dream Clients in Sales

Discover the key attributes that separate dream clients from nightmares in the sales world, and transform your client portfolio today.

There are certain attributes of a nightmare client. Common attributes include not being a good partner, treating you or your team poorly, and not paying you on time. You may want to add other attributes to this list. The sooner you learn that your client isn’t the right fit, the sooner you can disengage.

What you want as a salesperson is a client with a set of attributes that define them as a dream client. This list will provide you with the ability to identify dream clients.

• Key Traits of Dream Clients in Sales: In the early stage of your pursuit, a contact and their team are highly collaborative. You will find that people who are collaborative make better clients, as they will work with you through the sales conversation. Later, you will have a much better time working on the changes they need to make. When you and your contact encounter a problem, a client that is collaborative will work with you to solve the problem.
• Strategic Partnership: You want a client that would never describe you as a vendor (like a person selling hotdogs at a ball game) nor would they choose to call you a supplier. When your contact introduces you as their strategic partner, it's your part to make it true that you are their strategic partner.
• Effective Commercial Relationships: There are a number of things necessary for an effective commercial relationship. First, you need to spend time with your contact. Second, you must create value for your contact and their company. Third, you have to care about the contact and the results they need. Your part here is to make good use of the time your dream client shares with you.
• Access to Client Meetings: One of my clients asked me if I wanted to join their weekly planning meeting. Without it, I would not have been able to understand how to become their strategic partner. When a contact is willing to include you in their internal meetings, you are working with a dream client. Once you are invited to the meetings, it will be incredibly challenging to be displaced by a competitor.
• Appreciation and Respect for Your Work: Your client is paying you to produce the results you promised and sold them. But when your contact thanks you for your effort and your team’s execution, their gratitude is hard evidence that you are working with a mature, grateful person. This is strong proof of a dream client.
• Adapting to Changes Together: Eventually, something changes, and you and your contact will need to make a significant change. A dream client will work with you to determine what needs to change, with both you and your client and your teams working to ensure your client is able to generate the outcomes they need. It's a bonus if your contact prevents their team from being negative about you and the necessary change.
• Timeliness in Payments: Most of us in sales don’t love collecting money. We believe accounts receivable is better placed to collect money. A client that pays on time, every time, means you never have to make a collection call instead of a conversation about how to optimize the results you provide your contact and their company. In any case, prompt payment suggests your contact and their team are dream clients.
• Client Referrals: When a client is willing to refer you to their contacts, it is proof positive that they are a dream client. The type of person that does this must have confidence in you and your ability to produce the same result you provided your dream client. (If you are in New Jersey, your dream client instead will say, “You need to meet my guy or girl.”)
• Expertise Recognition: A dream client will recognize your expertise and your credibility. Your part in the making of a dream client is that you give them every reason to respect your expertise. You must also use your experience and your insights for your contact to be able to take your advice and your recommendations.
• Open Communication: It’s much easier to work with a person who invites open communication and is transparent. It can be difficult to make change without the candid conversations that illuminate the obstacles you and your dream client face.

Maximizing Your Sales Success: Pursuing the Right Clients

Too many salespeople and sales organizations accept any prospective client with a checking account, only to discover they have a nightmare client. The nightmare client needs you far more than you need them. Because they are difficult to work with, you spend more time trying to make things better without being able to change these nightmare clients into dream clients.

You should endeavor to find your dream clients. There are plenty of mature leaders who are looking for a strategic partner who can produce the results they need. But if you spend your time with something less than a dream client, you will end up with a client portfolio that is mostly nice clients, a number of nightmare clients, and too few dream clients.

Keep this list of attributes of dream clients and notice which contacts and clients have these traits. But part of the big idea here is that if you want to build a client portfolio of dream clients, a large part of this is how you sell and engage with your clients. Your client can’t be a dream client unless you do your part to allow them to do so.

Leaving this article, look at your existing clients and how you might be able to convert them from nice clients to dream clients. Part of this is targeting the kind of companies that are mature and easy to do business with.