1. Define an ideal customer
2. Identify a preferred method of reaching the customer
3. Pick a product or service to sell to the customer

Task 1: Define an ideal customer

Who would you like your ideal customer to be?  A single mother?  A veteran?  A college student?  A restaurant owner?  The CEO of a private technology company? ...

Defining your ideal customer profile is very important for several reasons.  First, you will need to enjoy serving them, and second, you will have to be open to their feedback. It is virtually impossible to be successful in business if you don't like to deal with or listen to your customers.  For example, even if you create a perfect product for sales professionals, but don't enjoy working with sales people on a personal level, prospects for your success will be dim.  On the other hand, if you genuinely enjoy working with elementary school teachers, a connection with them will naturally develop, and you will be in a better position to service their needs. 

The more specific you can be about your ideal customer, the better.  Defining an ideal customer profile, for example, "Middle school history teacher with less than three years on the job" is better than just "Middle school teacher".   Over time, you can always broaden the criteria for your ideal customer, but it is very difficult to narrow these criteria, so be specific. 

Here are some examples to give you ideas about how to narrow your profile for the ideal customer:

• Executives or Managers
• Owners of sports bars in downtown Houston, Texas
• Engineering managers of RFID chip-making companies
• Principals of charter schools in Washington, DC
• CEOs of early-stage companies in the clean technology industry
• Domain Professionals
• Prospect research professionals for university endowments
• Senior high school physical education teachers who are also after-school coaches
• Statisticians who work for a state's department of labor
• Divorce attorneys in the San Francisco metropolitan area
• Bartenders who work at high-end hotel restaurants
• Consumers
• Teenage boys between the ages of 13-15 who practice karate
• Mothers of twin children who are less than 8 months old
• Retired professionals over the age of 60 who engage in commodity and foreign exchange trading
• Senior undergraduate college students who hold a full-time job to pay for tuition

Task 2:  Identify a preferred method of reaching the customer

OK, now that you have defined your ideal customers, how do you plan to reach them?

At the age of 24, Levi Strauss realized that his target customers were California's gold rush pioneers of 1853.  He reached them by opening stores next to the prominent gold mines.  Had Mr. Strauss failed to define his target customer or his method for making his goods accessible to them, today we would all likely be living in a world without jeans.

You may have the most amazing product or service to offer, but if your customers don't come across it, they won't buy it!

Once you have defined your target customer profile, you can begin to identify the most suitable means of making yourself accessible to them.

You can either reach your customer directly or indirectly. When engaging your customer directly, you or someone from your firm is interfacing and transacting with the customer without a third-party intermediary. Alternatively, you can develop an indirect channel to your customer, whereby you work with an intermediary who in turn interacts and transacts with the customer.

Examples of direct channels include:

• Knocking on doors and meeting with customers at home
• Setting up meetings at your customers’ place of work
• Meeting your customers at a trade show
• Speaking to your customers at home or work by telephone
• Gaining access to your customers at their places of interest, such as bars, spas, or industry group meetings
• Making contact with your customers by email
• Connecting with your customers via Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social networking sites
• Reaching and transacting with your customers on your website
• Identifying your customers via eBay or Craigslist
• Establishing a retail location for customers to physically enter
• Word-of-mouth referrals by other customers that propagate the value of your service
• Securing favorable analyst or industry expert reviews about your product

Examples of indirect channels include:

• Placing your product on the shelves of resellers such as grocery stores, salons or boutiques
• Partnering with movie or recording studios or publishers
• Working with installation, integration, or consulting firms who have established ties with their customers
• Working with home builders who buy appliances in bulk, and factor the cost in the ultimate home prices
• Offering advertisement space, on your website or property, to an ad agency
• Selling your merchandise to dealers who in turn resell it to the ultimate consumers

Of course, depending on the narrow profile of your customer, there may be unique and distinctive ways to reach them, either directly or indirectly. Think about a typical day in the life ideal customer and see whether you can identify several venues where you could formally or informally make contact with them.

During this first step, put your maximum effort in finding direct means to reach your customers, even if an indirect channel may eventually be more suitable. Why? Because aside from earning $1, your goal is to engage in a dialog with your customers and listen to them, and you can only achieve this by direct contact, without intermediaries.

Your selection of a channel to reach your customers greatly depends on your personal comfort level or technical skill.  For example, you may be very comfortable with knocking on customers’ doors and quite personable when engaging with them directly, in which case "door-to-door" outreach may be suitable for you. Or, you may be very computer-savvy with a broad network of industry-specific Facebook friends, in which case connecting with your customers online may be your best option.

Task 3:  Pick a product or service to sell to your target customer

Good job!  Now that you have formulated the profile of your ideal customer and decided on the most suitable method of outreach, you can pick a product or service that you wish to sell them. 

Do not, however, lose sleep over deciding on a perfect product or service.  To achieve your first goal of earning just $1, you can sell just about anything to your customer.  That's right, your initial goal is to earn only one buck, and you are sure to earn it if you successfully sell anything!   

From your first successful sale, you will gain firsthand insights about the needs and behaviors of your customer, and you will be in a perfect position to gauge their most pressing needs.  

STAY TUNED! Details about this step are COMING SOON!