“I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.” – Willie Mays

Wouldn’t it be good to know who the “ideal” prospect or prospects are before sending out email blasts, newsletters, Twitters, facebook fan page invites or webinar invitations? Assuming what most of us naturally assumes and that is, of course everyone wants to hear what we have to say or desperately want to purchase the service or product we’re selling. Found that to be true lately – be honest?

The Internet landscape is mapped with watering holes that attract all sorts of prospects. Some prospects gather around iTunes and YouTube while others congregate at blogs and community web sites. It is each business owner’s challenge to figure out where their “ideal” prospects gather.

It‘s time to come to grips with reality… not everyone wants our service no matter how good or cheap. Nor is every single person willing to purchase our products — there I’ve said it. Even though the buying public is moving to the Internet in droves to make their purchases, statistics bear out that only about 3% of people who initially visit a web site are ready to purchase. That means the other 97% are just window shopping, kicking the tires, gathering information or may be lost.

That means in simple terms for every 1,000 people that visit a web site only about 30 are actually ready to buy. Now a person might say, Wow, That’s fantastic, 30 new customers per hour or per month in some cases, but, not too fast. Let’s factor in the “bounce rate”. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors leaving a web site within the first 5 seconds. It is not untypical for a site’s bounce rate to be between 50-60%. So let’s subtract 550 visitors from our 1,000 and now our 30 visitors quickly drop to 13.

The best way to know one’s “ideal” prospect is to identify their habits their mannerisms, their wants, needs and desires. Don’t define the “ideal” prospect as a “male or female” living in the Continental United States who likes to fish. That’s way too general. The first characteristic “male or female” includes every one living today!

Let’s try and come up with a more exact picture of an “ideal” prospect. Suppose we are in the seminar business – small business seminars is our niche. Our “ideal” prospect might look like this:

• Self-starter
• Pioneer
• High energy
• Someone who wants to be their own boss
• Strong willed
• May be a workaholic
• Competitive
• Knows they cannot do everything

These characteristics start to lead us in certain directions on the Internet and begin to steer us away from certain Internet Watering Holes. For instance, small business entrepreneurs are less likely to congregate at MySpace.com than they are to assemble at LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn is a professional network of more than 40 million business people from 200 countries; a great place to establish relationships with people of common business interests.

People that know they cannot handle every obstacle that comes their way are more likely to frequent bookstores, Internet knowledge-bases as well as other educational opportunities — opportunities like seminars.

Businesses typically have several different prospect types. Make sure to isolate each of them with their own characteristics, wants, needs and desires. Being too broad only attracts a general audience and a company’s products and services won’t appeal to a massive group of people.