Your Ideal Dream 100
To understand The Ideal Dream 100 Strategy, it’s first important to understand that there are several types of clients:
- Good clients
- Great clients
- Ideal dream clients
It’s common to have more “good or great clients” than “ideal dream clients” – but the reality is, your ideal dream clients will make up 60%–80% of your revenue. It’s the 80/20 rule in action: “80% of your results come from 20% of your clients.”
The Dream 100 Sales Strategy (originated by the late Chet Holmes) is a balance of attracting only good clients, great clients, and your ideal dream clients. With the latter being your primary focus so you get the highest rate of return (ROR) for your efforts.
How The Ideal Dream 100 Strategy Got Started
Chet Holmes worked for Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s business partner and one of the most celebrated investors in the world. Chet was a salesman at Charlie’s company, where he was tasked with making a hundred sales calls per day.
However, after doing this for a short season, neither was satisfied with the results.
Chet noticed that the top salesperson in the company was a woman making three times as many sales as the runner-ups. Chet wanted to learn the secret of what she was doing that was so different. What was driving her results? And he was persistent in asking her for help.
One day, (because he was so persistent) the woman finally decided to meet with Chet and took him to lunch. She explained to Chet that her secret was not complex at all. Simply stated, it was going “all in” on the ideal clients and nothing else – no distractions.
Chet was eager to succeed. So, armed with this new knowledge, he went through his list of 2,200 leads and chose 167 of the most promising prospects to focus on.
Chet researched the data and discovered that out of those 2,200 advertisers, 167 of them were spending 95% of their advertising budget with his competitors. So he identified those 167 accounts spending all the money as his best buyers. He then stopped marketing to everyone else. That freed his time and efforts to focus on those specific 167 accounts.
His outreach strategy involved sending out direct mail pieces every two weeks and then following up with a phone call. Twice a month he continued to reach out and make contact. He realized that because these were the biggest accounts, they would also be the hardest people to reach but Chet kept going.
Fast forward, four months later… And Chet still didn’t close a single deal.
Surprising?
Charlie and Chet thought so too.
Charlie reached out to Chet to find out what was wrong, and when they met, Chet asked for Charlie’s trust and said he just needed a little more time. He called it “pigheaded discipline.” and promised he would produce results.
Shortly after, Chet closed the first major deal – Xerox. And in the next six months, he closed 27 more, including some of the largest orders in the company’s history. Chet doubled his sales over the previous year and went from number 15 in the industry to number one. He kept doubling sales for the next few years. By the end of year three, he had successfully brought in all 167 of his ideal advertisers.
Chet Holmes explains…
The goal of the Dream 100 is to take your ideal buyers through the following phases:
- I’ve never heard of this company.
- What is this company I keep hearing about?
- I think I’ve heard of that company.
- Yes, I’ve heard of that company.
- Yes, I do business with that company.
Chet went on to develop The Dream 100 Sales Strategy, a highly effective way to land dream clients. Years later he wrote the book, The Ultimate Sales Machine.
His sales strategy consists of seven essential steps…
Step 1: Develop a Strategic Plan for Your Dream 100
With a clear framework present, you need a strategic approach for finding your ideal clients.
The key here isn’t to come up with a complex process for the strategy. In fact, the very opposite is true. Keep things simple and straightforward to avoid bottlenecks and confusion.
Of course, a strategic plan isn’t a document that you create once and file away somewhere. It’s got to be a live document that you and your team consistently work from and keep updated. That’s part of the reason for making the plan simple, easy to understand, and convenient for all.
Complexity is the enemy of done. Simple is Brilliant!
You can use a range of CRM software tools to develop your strategic plan, a Google sheet or Excel. Or alternatively, you can go “old school” and use pen and paper. It really doesn’t matter how you approach it, so long as you have a clear plan and path.
Step 2: Determine Your Dream 100 Client Profile
As you work on defining your ideal clients, the downfall for many business owners is an over-reliance on the broadest categories like revenue, title of the decision-maker, etc.
While that data is important when it comes to your ideal Dream 100 clients, the more relevant focus is to personalize your message and continue outreach attempts. Track it all – the higher the follow up rate the higher the conversion rate.
Take into consideration the finest details of your ideal client’s life…
- What are their buying habits?
- What frustrations and stresses keep them up at night?
- Where do they go to solve their problems?
- What are the ultimate goals they set for themselves?
These are only some of the questions you must answer when developing your Ideal Dream 100 best client profile and avatar.
Of course, you should also focus on how your company can uniquely benefit them…differentiators are critical.
Go through your top clients and find out what characteristics make them ideal. For most companies, 20% of the clients contribute to 80% of the revenue.
What attracts such clients to your organization?
What other Ideal Dream 100 targets can you identify that would dramatically move the needle in your business?
Going forward, you’re going to focus on all of the things that make you want to work with these clients. It could be their story, persona, or even geographical location.
The point is, you should explore as much detail as possible while coming up with your best client profile.
Step 3: Create Your Ideal Dream 100 List
Having determined your best client profile, it’s time to make your Ideal Dream 100 list. This list should contain all the clients that fit your criteria.
As Chet Holmes said:
“If there were 100 clients that, if you’ve got them all, you could dramatically increase your business…”
Depending on the size of your market, you may not hit 100 companies that you want to work with… But the list can easily just have 20, 50, or however many businesses that meet the criteria. The number doesn’t matter nearly as much as the details attached to each.
This means that you’re going to have to use due diligence in defining those clients. On top of naming your ideal clients, you’re going to need information like:
- Contact person
- Title, phone number, email, mailing address
- Social media handles (like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter)
Also, try your best to gather as many other relevant details as you can, such as looking at professional bios to see what awards/recognitions a company or leader has earned, recent article mentions, books published, etc.
Doing so will inform you about who you’ll be talking to.
Get to know your ideal clients, and you’ll have a much higher chance of closing the deal.
Step 4: Design Your Ideal Dream 100 Marketing Collateral
Did you know that only 3% of your sellable market is ready to buy right now…
Because of this, you want a strategy that puts you on their radar, allows you to stay top of mind, and preemptively positions you as the obvious choice the moment they find themselves ready to buy what you have to offer.
This begins with your prospect becoming familiar with who you are…
To start, you want to retarget your entire list of Ideal Dream 100 clients (and those in the company that influence decisions) on social media channels as well as Google. The goal is to get them to say: “I see this company everywhere!”
Familiarity breeds trust.
Then you want to reach out to them using an omni-channel approach…
We work with our business coaching clients to develop a strategy that includes:
Email
Telephone
Direct Mail
Podcast Outreach
Social Channel Voice and Video Messages
We’re not suggesting a “one-size fits all” approach like so many lead generation companies suggest. Nor are we suggesting automated chatbots. Forget those!
For Ideal Dream 100 clients, you’ve got to get in there, do the work, get your hands dirty, do your research with an eye on making your marketing more enthusiastic, creative, personal, and inviting to them.
Step 5: Design Your Dream 100 Marketing Plan
Once you’ve defined your marketing collateral, it’s time to plan ahead. This means creating a firm marketing schedule for staying top of mind.
Your marketing implementation should be systematic, duplicatable, and repeatable.
The easiest way to make this happen is to create a document with all the primary tasks, prioritize them, and then create a marketing calendar and fill it with all your activities.
For example, for month one, you could pre-heat contacts with retargeting and engage with them (like/commenting) on social media. The next month, use email, a message through social, or a phone call. The following month send them direct mail and continue to engage. Whatever your marketing collateral is, spread it throughout the calendar and execute accordingly.
Make sure you create a lead list inside of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Several times a week, like and comment on their posts. This is an additional way to stay in front of them while, and at the same time, serve them and give them something they want (i.e., engagement).
Remember, this is a long-term strategy – you’re not going into this with the idea that you’ll land your Ideal Dream 100 client right away. But as the saying goes: If you are persistent you will get it. If you are consistent you will keep it.
Step 6: Train Your Staff on The Ideal Dream 100 Strategy
According to a survey, words account for only 7% of communication. The rest isn’t about what you say, but how you say it…
A big mistake that many companies make is not putting enough effort into training. If your staff isn’t fully prepared to handle your ideal clients, much of your sales and marketing efforts will go to waste.
Because of this, your staff should rehearse their roles, scripts, and standard operating procedures until they’re 100% confident in their skills. All members of your staff should be able to describe the vision and mission of the business with ease and consistency.
Remember, Ideal Dream 100 clients aren’t a one-size-fits-all situation… This strategy requires a deep understanding of the client and why working with you is the best decision that they could make for their business or businesses.
Step 7: Launch Your Ideal Dream 100
If you’ve executed the first six steps effectively, this step should be as easy as it gets. With a clear plan and path in place, you’re going to execute it, be consistent with it, and improve upon it periodically over time.
For the first six months or so, you’ll start to build the momentum. Patience is paramount here. So many businesses give up three feet from gold, just before their plan starts working.
Believe in your plan and stay faithful to the strategy.
Long-Term Planning
The Ideal Dream 100 Strategy isn’t for you if you’re looking for instant gratification. It’s for serious business leaders who are looking to achieve great things over the long-term.
There’s nothing complicated about the strategy. Time, effort, and attention to detail will be important. The Ideal Dream 100 Strategy is easy and simple but it will require die-hard determination and discipline. Keep working at it, keep climbing, and you will soar!
If you would like help executing the Ideal Dream 100 Strategy, contact us today to schedule a strategy session or consultation call.