Knowing Your Customer is the Key Component to Success Says Multi-Business Owner Jonte Wells
(Photo : Knowing Your Customer is the Key Component to Success Says Multi-Business Owner Jonte Wells)

Regardless of the type of business you're running, or even the industry that you're operating in, success always comes down to being able to get the right message in front of the right person at precisely the right time.

It's a mistake to assume that when it comes to something like marketing, you're "only" trying to sell to people. The world moves too fast for that approach these days. People are already being bombarded by marketing messages from all angles, nearly every moment of every day. We see them on television. There is a constant stream of advertisements on our phones when we browse the Internet. We've grown numb to this "old-fashioned" approach - which is why for most brands, it simply isn't enough to get the job done any longer.

Instead, you need to focus on forging relationships with the people you're trying to reach. You need to make establishing yourself as an authority a top priority. You need to provide them with something of value without asking for anything in return. But the only way you're going to get to that point is if you know your customer as well as you know one of your own family members - which is truly what running a modern-day successful business is all about.

Why Knowing Your Customer Matters

Even going beyond the idea of marketing, it's important to know your customer to create the types of products and services that will resonate with people as much as possible - this according to Jonte Wells, successful multi-business owner and long-time entrepreneur.

Without a product-market fit, you're not releasing something of legitimate value. You're essentially spending your time building a "solution in search of a problem," which isn't how you improve someone's lives.

By ignoring this product-market fit, many entrepreneurs find themselves in a position of trying to solve issues that simply don't exist. They may also be solving the wrong issue or trying to solve an issue with a solution that does not align with what the users and/or audience members are looking for to begin with.

This is especially evident in Jonte Wells' work in the field of greater purpose management - a significant part of everything he's doing these days. It's an effort that began with him having an athletic background of his own - he's always kept close contact with a lot of athletes via the gym and other means, so he's very aware of what they need help with on a day-to-day basis.

"What we do is we work with the player's agents and the players themselves. We handle most of the day-to-day elements for them. We let the agents handle the contract negotiations of course, it's just that I felt like my background allowed me to relate to what these players actually need a lot better than other people could have."

Indeed, it's that idea of understanding not just the customer but the customer experience that has contributed to much of Wells' success up to this point. He didn't decide to shape his business around the world of sports - quite the opposite, in fact. His inspiration was born out of his unique, personal knowledge of this particular field and decided to build an organization around that.

"In today's game, the players are trying to do their own Instagram, they're trying to build their social media presence, they're creating their own personal brands," said Wells. "Likewise, with the new rules with the NCAA athletes, there are always name image likeness issues. So college athletes can now have representation to help them get an income off of their name, image and likeness."

Wells continued: "Once those new rules became official, that's when I knew it was time to officially get out there and launch the business. I leveraged my knowledge and my connections in order to do it."

Absolutely none of this would be possible without a deeply rooted knowledge of what young athletes want and, more importantly, what they need. In terms of Jonte Wells and his athlete management efforts, the only way he can help people with their careers is if he knows exactly what that entails. He has an understanding of what their post careers might look like. He knows the ins and outs of brand management, advertising and more.

"Some of the athletes are much more demanding than others," he indicated. "You have some that are very low maintenance and who don't need much. Some of the others have a lot of foundations going on and things like that. A person like Akeil will require a more hands-on approach than other athletes, simply because he has so much more going on."

But don't make the mistake of assuming that this is only an approach that works in the world of talent management or Greater Purpose Athletics. Far from it. If you run an independent music store, you need to understand the types of bands that people in your target audience listen to in order to make sure you always have what they want on hand. If you run a grocery store, you need to understand the people who live and work in the surrounding community to provide them what they need on a daily basis.

It all comes back to the idea of knowing your customer - insight that will ultimately allow you to build a better business. You're not trying to appeal to "everyone and anyone." You want to appeal to the right group of people and then offer them the type of personal, valuable experience that they're not going to be able to get anywhere else.

This is why things like market research are ultimately so important - these efforts give you the actionable information you need to make the most informed decisions possible at the moment. Even with this type of research, success is not always a guarantee. There may come times when you make incorrect assumptions. However, by trying, will put you significantly farther ahead than any of your competitors - and it will pave the way for ongoing success at the same time.