An interesting observation I invite you to make for yourself is to watch what happens when new businesses open up in your local town. Typically they'll open their doors and wait for customers to come in -- and because the business is new, they often do. And the owners, because business is pretty good, confine their marketing activities to placing a few ads in the local press, and then... they just wait to see what happens.

Unfortunately, the story unfolds with an unhappy ending, and six months later, the business is closing down and the unit stands empty until the next one comes along. I don't know about you, but I've seen that happen over and over again in every town I've lived in, both here and in Britain.

The saddest thing about it all is it's all so unnecessary -- there is practically no business problem you cannot fix with good marketing.

So that's the first mistake business owners make: not marketing. The second mistake they make, is they don't really have any idea whom they're supposed to be marketing to. I was talking to a client recently and I asked him who his ideal client was; and he replied, "anyone with a credit card".

And this is a huge mistake.

The truth is you do not want just "anyone" as a client. You'll discover the more discerning you are about whom you target as your clients, the more you'll enjoy doing business with them, the more fun you'll have in your business as a whole, the more money you'll make. Moreover, you'll also find you'll have fewer clients paying you higher prices and fees -- meaning you can devote more time to giving them great service and products.

It really is a "win-win situation", as the management consultants like to call it.

So how do you do this? How do you get your business into a position where you're dealing only with the people you want to be dealing with?

Well, it depends on what kind of business you have now.

If you're a new business you have a certain advantage because you're starting with a blank sheet of paper. You also have the disadvantage of not having any clients yet. Not to worry. That's easily fixed. I'll share with you exactly how in a second. And if you're an existing business you have the advantage of having existing clients to help steer your thoughts... but then you have the disadvantage of having to dish out some bad news.

Let me explain.

The first thing to do is look around and decide what kind of people you want to be dealing with. The more specific you are, the more profitable your business is going to be. This is a hard one for many business owners to swallow because they're afraid if they don't include everyone in their sales message, then they're going to lose business.

And it's just not true. The reverse is the case, because when you try to be all things to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone. If you doubt me on this, I invite you to consider the prices commanded by ordinary "general" toy-shops and those commanded by the speciality model shops. I have a client who regularly sells model cars to a chap in Malaysia for hundreds of Euro plus postage.

So, if you have an existing business, here's what you can try: look at your list of current clients (and if you don't have one, quickly jot one down) and note down a few things about them: now much they tend to spend with you, what you like about doing business with them. Things like that. If you're a new business then draw on your past experience if your new business is in your old line of work, or look around at the other businesses in your industry and see what kind of clients they have. Failing that, you'll have to use your imagination.

Once you've done this I bet you're going to see something pretty amazing. You're going to see a hugely disproportionate amount of your income coming from a small number of your clients -- this is the 80:20 rule, which broadly says 80% of your profits come from 20% of your clients (and on the other hand, 20% of your clients give you 80% of your headaches).

The good news is most people who do this exercise find the top 20% of clients are also the ones they enjoy dealing with the most. This is a good thing.

Because the next thing to do is to draw a line under those top 20% and concentrate your marketing efforts on getting more clients just like those. I'll share exactly how to do this in the coming months.

If you're really brave -- I routinely advise clients to do this and everyone who has done it has been eternally grateful, although it's not compulsory -- you can take positive action not only to get more clients like the ones you want but actually to lose the ones you don't want.

This sounds extreme but it works wonders.

How do you lose them?

Experience has shown me a polite letter referring them to someone else -- a competitor -- usually works well.

Guess what?

Your client is pleased because he's still getting his products and services. Your competitors love you because you're giving them business (if they really knew what you were up to they'd probably think differently!). And you'll thank yourself because your business is leaner, fitter, more profitable and a lot more fun to run.

So that's your target market. Easy!