This is blog #5 in an 8-blog series about Powerful Answers to 7 important business questions. The series is intended to be an introduction to strategic intuition and planning.

 

Preamble:  There is a direct linkage between Question 3 and this Question 4. Question 3 is about Differential Advantage over competition and Value Proposition [both, as seen from the Clients' perspective]. Question 4 is about Target Clients or Market Niches. When faced with the question…Would you rather assume or know your Clients' needs? …everyone we talked to said he/she would choose to know, not to assume.

 

The challenge is - between assume and know sits a whole bunch of work. It's the sort of work Sherlock Holmes, Lieutenant Columbo, and those FBI profilers would be good at.

 

Some keys to doing that work are:

• Listening to what existing Clients have to say
• Listening to what prospective Clients have to say
• Working to understand people: in general and one-on-one
• Understanding psychographics [emotional drivers…definition below]
• Understanding demographics [physical things…definition below]

Question 4: Who REALLY CARES about what you do best?

 

Powerful Answer:  in the last blog, I provided a reference to Jay Abraham's website. Here are the first 15 words readers see when they visit that website…

 

'Welcome,
My goal for www.abraham.com is really very straight forward. To help you make money.'

 

Postamble: Embedded in those first 15 words is Jay's answer to Question 4. People who want to make money and need help…that's who Jay believes REALLY CARES about what he does best. In demographic terms, he is aiming at business people…ie, because business is about making money. Within the population of business people who want money is a sub-set of people wanting help getting that money. Wanting money and wanting help to get money - that's the general psychographic description of Jay Abraham's target market.

 

Footnotes:
Psychographics def'n: psychographic variables are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles
Demographics def'n: the physical characteristics of a population such as age, sex, marital status, family size, education, geographic location, and occupation

 

The next blog will consider Question 5: