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When executives in cannabis talk of scaling the business, one of the first things that come up is a need for more capital. But what’s often overlooked is identifying who the ideal or dream client is. Understanding an ideal client’s demographics, psychographics, and pain points are critical to defining and refining who an organization needs to communicate its expertise and offerings to, and how its time, energy, and resources should be invested in order to scale correctly without creating more harm than good.
Here are three reasons why refining and defining who an ideal client is will help cannabis businesses scale more effectively and efficiently.
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1. You can’t be everything to everyone
When you ask a successful CPG brand, B2B enterprise, or a highly respected consultant what they do and who they serve, nine out of ten times they can tell you exactly who they serve, how they serve them, and what problem they are solving. More often than not, organizations that are always struggling to bring in more business and to repeatedly deliver success to customers and clients aren’t clear on their ideal customers because they feel the need to serve everyone. You can’t be everything to everyone and if you try to be, you won’t be of value to most.
2. Have more efficient SOPs
Having a clear vision and understanding of who it is an organizations serves, and more importantly how it serves them, provides the clarity needed to establish a set of SOPs that enable a team to deliver measurable, successful results at large, over and over again. This doesn’t mean that you can’t offer different goods and services, but the likelihood that an organization will be able to scale easier, faster, and more effectively if it’s focused on a particular niche versus trying to serve an array of verticals is much greater.
Dialing in a successful set of SOPs based on the framework of who is being served and how, puts you in a position to hire more effectively as well. Knowing exactly who needs to be hired to fulfill specific roles will significantly reduce turnover and negative impact to the bottom line of a company. In addition a company’s sales team will have an easier time explaining what its organization does, how it does it, and what realistic expectations should be.
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3. Promote more effectively
More effective promotion is probably what comes to mind first for most of us when we talk about defining and refining who an ideal client is for our businesses. When an organization has a solid understanding of who it serves, it makes it easier for team members to align with the company vision, talk about it, and promote the company. Understand who an organization needs to be communicating with and what message needs to be conveyed makes your investment into sales, marketing, and public relations efforts exponentially more impactful.
