Who purchases your products and services?
What do they look like?
How do they interact in your marketplace?
These are just some of the questions you need to know the answers to when you seek out your ideal customer. For the small business or niche business, your ideal customer is not everyone that walks through your door. In fact, even for the larger companies, their ideal customer is not the everyman. Instead it is a very specific person/demographic.
Does that mean you are chasing away dollars? Not necessarily. If you do not have an identified ideal customer you are more than likely to attract customers that are actually a drain on your business. You know who these customers are. They are the loudest complainers and hog your valuable time and resources. These “service hogs” take up so much of your time that they destroy your profit margin and make you lose opportunities with customers that actually appreciate your products/services.
How can you identify your ideal customer?
Get a pen and paper and start writing out what they look like. Review your customer files and find out who provides 80% of your revenues. Conduct surveys with your best customers asking them about their business and decision making process. (Hint: ask them why they chose you!) Conduct market research and utilize free databases to add more meat to the sketch you have your ideal customer.
Without an ideal customer, you will never achieve your goals for your business.
Erroin A. Martin 
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