Where's Your Client Sweet Spot?
Updated: Sep 24
How well do you know your client sweet spot? It's the first key to an unmistakably unique coaching brand.
I know what some of you are thinking. "Oh, he's talking about my niche. Well if I do that, I'll exclude clients I could serve."
Or "I serve too wide a variety of clients. I don't need a niche."
There's a lot of baggage associated with that word "niche." So rather than trying to sort it, let's start with a whole different idea: your client sweet spot.
Any tennis players here? In tennis, the sweet spot is the specific area on the string bed where hitting the ball gives you the best mix of power, control, and comfort. It's usually located just a little bit above the exact middle of the racket head. You can feel the difference when you hit it.
In other words, a sweet spot is the optimal intersection of factors where performance, comfort, or results are maximized with the least amount of effort or negative trade-offs.
Your Client Sweet Spot
Your individual branding sweet spot optimizes these intersecting factors:
Your capabilities: who your skills and experience best equip you to serve
The actual felt needs of who you serve: as they experience them
Your intrinsic joy: who you most love coaching
Your contribution: who best matches the difference you want to make to others and the world
Your desired lifestyle: and, yes, who best helps pay the bills and organize your time to provide the lifestyle you want
This isn't about demographics alone. It isn't about putting people in boxes. And it isn't about excluding anyone. It's about the intersection where your ability, joy, contribution, client needs, and meeting your own needs comes together.
Here's my point in a nutshell: the more specifically you can describe your sweet-spot client, the easier it becomes to communicate a message that feels relevant, personal, and unmistakably for those right-fit clients.
Why Getting Specific Matters
Our brains respond more deeply to specifics than to generalities. Which of these two. sentences is more memorable and makes a deeper impression?
A dog followed me home.
or
A ginger cocker spaniel puppy followed me all the way to my door.
What we can picture evokes a feeling, and we remember it.
Yet I see so many coach websites filled with vague generalities like "fulfill your potential" and "achieve your goals." Maybe true. But not evocative. And not memorable.
A Juicy Example
A few months ago I worked with Lena to identify possible sweet spots for her new coaching practice. One strong candidate that emerged was:
Achievers who've lost connection to their Joy.
Isn't that juicy? Do you see how powerful this is? How evocative?
Lena herself is naturally an achiever. And she's struggled with recovering joy in her own past. So she understands from the inside the complex satisfactions and struggles achievers experience. (Like how irresistible goals can create tunnel vision — for better and for worse. Or how achievement without relationship can feel puzzlingly empty.)
Achievers who've lost connection to their Joy.
What might seem like a narrow description actually opens a wide doorway to a broad swath of right-fit clients for Lena who recognize themselves in this clear, simple statement.
That's the power of a client sweet spot. The more specifically you understand someone's world, the more personally they can experience your message.
Reflect on Your Own Sweet Spot Client
Think about one individual who represents your dream client, someone you absolutely know how to coach. And would love to.
Not a demographic.
Not “women 40–60 in transition.”
An actual person.
Then dive deep to answer:
What specific problems are they experiencing? What does this person deeply desire that they don't have? Get as specific as possible.
What's their biggest frustration?
What's the fear underneath that frustration?
What's really at stake for them (in their mind)?
What solution do you have for this person? (What belief or frame needs to shift?)
Get specific enough that you can picture this person and the concrete situations in which they bump up against their frustrations, fears, and desires.
The goal here isn't to create a smaller audience. It's to make your message impossible for your right-fit people to ignore.
And a funny thing often happens. Other clients — who may not strictly fall in the innermost circle of your sweet spot, yet who are actually a great fit — start showing up too. You can absolutely take them on as clients as well.
Badassity works primarily with master transformational coaches who want greater impact. Yet last year we successfully worked with a physical theater performer/director/producer/teacher (literally a clown) to develop his own artistic brand. See www.marc-frost.com.
Own your badassity.
Dan
