This is not going to be your typical fishing story. This article is about fishing for a whale and not the kind that lives in the sea. A whale is the type of client that can make a significant positive impact on your bottom line.
There are only three strategies you need to know to get a whale.
1.) Fish in a small pond. This means you would be using a direct hit list to search them out individually.
2.) Use a wide net. This is a place strategy and you look for them where they hang out.
3.) Use a wide net and attract them to your bait. This is lead generation.
However, before you embark on any of those three strategies, you first need to define what a whale is for you. Who, specifically, is that type of client that will make the significant positive impact on your business’s bottom line and add more profit in your pocket?
As you define your whale, think about what type of person/company you are seeking. We’ll use a person for illustration purposes. Create a target customer intelligence report. In other words, create a picture of your whale. How she thinks, where she hangs out, who she associates with and why, and even what vocabulary she uses. In more formal terms, demographics, psychographics, emotional background, current state of mind (her opinions), etc.
I see your eyes rolling up now and hear you saying, “You’ve got to be kidding, all this work?” My answer is an emphatic, “YES!” If you want to catch a whale you cannot just take off in a row boat with a jar of tartar sauce and expect one to just jump in your boat. It is work, but to me, it’s fun work. I learned this from one of my mentors, Dan Kennedy. Dan is known for his effective copywriting. His copywriting is so effective that his sales letters consistently attract and land whales for his clients.
The key to writing those successful letters and scripts, according to Dan, is his ability to get in the target customer’s head and see what he sees, hear what he hears and feel like he feels. It is the strategy that matters and that’s what you have here – the strategy.
One last thing to remember is that whales do not want to know how to do what you sell; they want to understand it and know for certain that you know how to do it.
Get busy. Select the strategy that should work best for you and your type of business. Then, implement it and refine it to get you closer to catching your whale. Contact me if you need any help with this process.
