Dream 20 Neighborhoods

The old saying, “if you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone,” is definitely true. That’s how I operated the first five years I was in the business – I tried to be everything to everyone. But it just is not possible. What became clear to me once I started pulling reports from our POS is that our top 20% of clients gave us 70-80% of our revenue. And that is who I should be everything to.

Knowing who you should be everything to brings incredible clarity to your client acquisition process. For a Kansas guy, it allowed me to shoot out of a rifle instead of a shotgun. Very targeted. Very focused on fulfilling the needs of a particular group. But the missing link was the common denominator of the group. People attach to all kinds of groups – their kids’ schools, their church, their work, their interests, and socio-economic class to name a few.

When going after new clients, it is very helpful to go hunting after a group instead of an individual. And what I found was the most reliable common denominator (group) for our clients is their neighborhood. Another saying, “birds of a feather fly together,” sums this up perfectly. Where people live has become our #1 grouping when going after new clients. And to prove to you how well it works, I can tell you that we get 30-55 new clients per day across our 13 retail stores. Yes… per day.

My strategy is always to have your top 20 neighborhoods that you want to penetrate deeply into. And know them well. The best way to do this is to plot your Top 20% of clients on a map (we use mapalist.com) and determine your top neighborhoods from there. If you offer pickup and delivery, this will be extremely valuable because your drivers will spend less time driving, and more time picking up and delivering.

Then start poking around on Zillow.com and determine the average home value in those neighborhoods. You will then get a mailing list from a mail house of all the zip codes (or carrier routes if you get super granular) and only include homes over a particular home value. You will also suppress your current clients. And that, my friend, becomes your list of “target right-fit clients.”

Don’t have a relationship with a mail house? We can get the list for you. How’s that for an EASY BUTTON? Just reach out and send us an email. What you are doing with this process is getting in front of ideal targets most likely to behave like your existing top 20%. And then you can mail them an irresistible offer they can’t resist. Something like $14 Comforters. Any size. Including Down. For most markets, that is truly irresistible. And you don’t mind giving that great deal because you know you are talking to a right fit client!