How a Target Profile Interview Can Save Your Business

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In a couple of recent posts I mentioned the concept of a Target Profile Interview.  My mastermind buddy Marina (aka ‘The Motivator”) is responsible for making me do my first Target Profile Interview – so when a few people emailed and asked me to write more about Target Profile Interviews I felt that it would be better for her to write about this important business tool than me. Fortunately for all of us she agreed with me!

(Please note that in accordance with my paid Guest Posting Policy this is the paid Guest Post for October.  Still looking for posts for November….read the guidelines on the main guest posting entry and send me a query if you’re interested in applying.)

OK – over to Marina….

Did you ever have an imaginary friend when you were little?  My imaginary friend was lots of fun to play with, but when I needed someone to give me a hug, she didn’t fit the bill.

When I needed a hug, I wanted a real, warm, cozy hug from my Mommy.   Thankfully, my Mom was a real person and she could give real hugs.

Fast forward to my life as a marketer and I find myself playing again with imaginary friends.  Or better said: I find myself creating stuff to sell to imaginary clients.    The problem is that imaginary clients pay with imaginary money… and that doesn’t work too well…

Imaginary clients pay with imaginary money

Thankfully, I came across the concept of the Target Profile, which helped me ditch my imaginary clients who weren’t helping my real business with their imaginary money.

The concept of the Target Profile is about finding a real person to help you with your real business.

A REAL person who has a REAL problem makes a great Target Profile

The Target Profile is a concept out of Sean D’Souza’s book The Brain Audit (a revolutionary marketing book, by the way).   A target profile is a REAL person, not a constructed persona (i.e. an imaginary “friend” with imaginary money);  a target profile is a person with a real, juicy problem who would gladly pay to buy your stuff to solve her particular problem.

For example, Jenny has back pain.  Not just any back pain, but the kind that nags her all day long.

But, in this example, how do you know that Jenny is a real person?  How do you know that I didn’t just imagine her?

You know it’s a real person when she can tell you exactly HOW it hurts.

A real person knows exactly HOW it hurts – not just “what” hurts
As a marketer, it’s easy to imagine problems to be solved (i.e “what” hurts).  But without a real person telling us HOW it hurts, we can’t get even close to imagining the details of a real problem.   A real person can explain exactly how the real problem affects her, why it affects her, and what you can do to fix it.

For example, Jenny, our target profile with back pain, would describe her pain like this:

“My back hurts constantly.  It’s a dull pain, but after I hunch down at my computer all afternoon, I feel a pinch right in between my shoulder blades that only goes away after I lie down on my back for a while… “

See how her pain is dull? And the pinch is right between her shoulder blades, and it gets worse after hunching at the computer?  And the way to make it better is to lie down?

Jenny has given us a real problem full of juicy details
Jenny has given us a real problem full of juicy details, and notice that she even adds her solution on how to make it better.

As a marketer, I would have a hard time coming up with those details
I would probably write copy devoid of any juicy “hows”. My copy would probably look like this:

“Do you suffer from chronic back pain caused by computer work?”

Which words would be more attractive to you if you suffered from back pain?
Mine? Or Jenny’s?  Even if you didn’t share Jenny’s exact symptoms, you would probably identify with hunching down at the computer, or perhaps you’d be interested to read more about her “lying down to make it better” to see if you could learn more about how to soothe your own back pain.

When you use Jenny’s own words to communicate your message to others, you find that those exact details attract a lot more real people who identify with Jenny’s pain.

As they say: “The juice is in the details”
Getting juicy details on a real problem is the first way how your Target Profile can save your business: by helping you attract more clients like her (or close enough).

The second way how your Target Profile can save your business is by telling you how to solve her problem.

Your target profile can tell you how to solve her problem
Knowing how your target profile wants you to solve her problem will save you from offering a product or service which few people will want.

Perhaps you had this grandiose idea of a big, mean, stretching machine to soothe people’s back pain.   But when you ask Jenny how she soothes her back pain, she says that she simply lies down for a while.   So you prod some more and ask her if she’d want to use your big, mean, stretching machine.

“A stretching machine?  Oh, no… I don’t want to stretch!  What I want is a massage.  I’d love a small, soft, massage mat!”

Oh, oh.  (It’s a good thing you asked her before building the big, mean stretching machine! )

Instead, you can ask her for all the details of how she’d like her small, soft, massage mat (a “mat”?  What does that mean?).

Remember the juicy details Jenny shared with you to describe her pain?
Well, here’s where the juicy details come back into play – but this time, they are for describing her ideal solution.

To start with, she doesn’t describe it as a “machine” but rather as a mat.  And she uses the words “small and soft”.   Going on, she tells you that she wants to use her massage mat to put underneath her while she lies down, emit gentle vibrations (avoid machine-like kneading), and she also wants it to warm up her back.  Oh, and if it could also play music from her iPod, she would be ecstatic.

Whoa – I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty nice massage mat to me too.    And that’s again the power of a real person sharing with you real details. The details attract other potential clients into wanting the same solution.

And think about it, if Jenny doesn’t like your original stretching machine, there’s a good chance that many others won’t want it either.

Real details can save you from offering an undesired solution
So you see, you were kind-of on the right track with your business offering a solution for back pain, but without a real person giving you real details, you could be way off track.  And after a few months – or years – of struggling to get your stretching machine to sell, you would be wondering why it’s been so dang hard to succeed.

What do you do if you already have a solution you can’t change?
Of course, if you already built that big, mean, stretching machine, then Jenny is not your ideal Target Profile and you’re better off finding another real person, say, Peter, to give you the details that could help you describe how your machine helps him soothe his back pain, and to paint your stretching machine with the right words to attract others like him.

But the point is that the right target profile can save your business:
•    First by giving you details about her problem, and
•    Second, by giving you details about her solution

By now, I’m sure that you’re dying to get going on your own Target Profile interview, so check out the following three tips.

Conducting a Target Profile interview is painless if you follow these three tips:
1. Listen!
2. Keep the conversation going
3. Record it and transcribe it

Let’s look at each of these steps one by one:

(First, you ask a real person to agree to an interview.  This person could be an existing client (one you like), or even a friend. If you can get together in person, that would be ideal. Otherwise, a video Skype chat is best. However, even a phone call (or Skype voice call) will do.)

Okay, now you are ready to listen.

1. Listen!
When you interview your target profile, the most important thing is to LISTEN.  The reason why it’s best to do the interview in person or over video chat is that you can nod in agreement and stay as quiet as possible.  Let the person talk and take breaks, and then let the person talk some more.

Most importantly, “listen” as in: Keep an open mind. If you go in to the interview thinking you’ll get the exact answers that you are looking for, you’ll be very surprised with the results.  Just listen for those juicy details. Try to forget about your preconceived ideas of what you think the problem is, or what your solution does.  Just listen.

Of course, it is an interview, so you do get to ask questions. This is where point 2 comes in.

2. Keep the conversation going
You will probably want to have a few questions planned to guide your interview.*  But the most important thing is to keep your target profile’s line of thought going on and on. You want as many details as possible.

When you are ready to ask a question, make it an open, follow-on question such as: “Tell me more about …”, or “How do you envision…”.

What you will get from this conversation is pure gold… it will save your business, remember?  You don’t want to rely on your memory to remember all the details and the exact wording that your Target Profile used.  For this, you record the conversation.

3. Record and transcribe the interview
The first thing you need to remember is that you have to ask for permission to record it.  If it is ok with your Target Profile, then you use anything you have available for recording.  You only need the audio, so anything from an old tape recorder to your iPhone, or getting a plugin for Skype will work (please test your setup first!).

Once you have the recording, transcribe it, and read it as many times as possible until you can really understand what your profile meant – and not what you wanted to hear.

And there you go: your business saved in three easy steps
I say this from personal experience, as well as from seeing several of my mastermind buddies have one of the biggest Eureka moments in their business-lives:  Doing a Target Profile Interview is the best thing you can do to save your business.  Even if your business doesn’t seem to you like it needs saving, you wouldn’t believe how much time and effort you’ll save after you gain the insight from a Target Profile interview.

But don’t take my word for it.  Ask Paul how it changed HIS business. (And boy, did he resist doing that interview for so long!)

Better yet, do your own interview and come back and tell us how it’s changed YOUR business.

Marina Brito is based in Fairfax, VA (near Washington, DC). She is exploring content marketing for her real estate website www.HomebySchool.co .  You can find her experiences and thoughts on online marketing at www.defeatthecousin.com.  Marina is also the author of “Cómo Comprar Casa En USA”, which you can find here on Amazon.

Your Shout

If you’ve got any questions for Marina or me about Target Profile Interviews fire away in the comments below.  (And honestly, this is a critical tool in your business armoury!)

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Tagged as: guest post, Marina Brito, sean d'souza, target profile, target profile interview, The Brain Audit