Skip to main content

Who is and who isn't your customer

It's common practice for companies to identify who is their target market. Niche down to a sector with a good total addressable market you can win enough of to be profitable. Sounds simple enough... but if we just did X we could definitely win this customer. AND I was just talking to so and so and if we just did Y then we would Definitely take over that market.

The discipline to declare who is our customer also means we are drawing a line to declare who is outside the circle. Then we need the conviction to stand firm and say no to certain prospects. When you're chasing revenue one can often talk themselves into almost any deal. The problem then can become many. How much do you have to bend or splinter the roadmap once the assumed features are missing,  how you handle an implementation going off the rails. Once live, if you've sold customers that aren't really in your wheelhouse it will show in terms of their support or feature requests how they need to be supported. You have a customer peg with razor sharp corners for your round hole.

Understanding who isn't your customer requires a significant effort during the sales process to validate prospects and cull those that aren't a good fit. This becomes especially challenging is when leads are hard to come by. The ability to be picky can be a luxury, however when that's happening there's a different question of marketing or potentially the TAM and strategy itself.  Personas can definitely help guide this, the creation of personas require some analysis of referenceable customers. 

All solutions are opinionated to some degree finding like-minded folks that share your opinion is key and those that don't, should simply be avoided. If not you risk fractuing your focus and trying to please too many different people.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bad Behaviour and Tough Talks

It's back to school kids! read : Good News about Bad Behaviour by Katherine Reynolds Lewis I randomly came across this book at the library and picked it up ironically. Soon afterwards I was hooked. The book speaks to the underlying cause of kids acting out. Sometimes it's bad modelling or connection with parents. Often it can be just low expectations yielding minimal output. The book advocates we relinquish control in ordrer to let our kids reach their potential and unlock their own sense of agency. One of my favourite lines is "By doing things for children that they're able to do, we are robbing them of feeling capable." I know for me doing things the kids are capable of is an expediency thing, but if they never learn. quick : We are ruining childhood - Kim Brooks likens childhood to one long internship  just to get into the middle class. Overscheduling, no free time let alone free play. The idea of safety-ism means parents are trying to eliminate any and a...
Post a Comment
Read more

just let them play??

I never wanted to be a parent dragging my kids to all sorts of activities. Research is showing that being too scheduled can affect a child's locus of control. An internal locus of control means you feel in control of your circumstances. Being able to play improves your sense of self-determination which helps you feel more in control. read:  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-play-deficit My kids are like sponges and at this age their ability to learn new skills is incredible. I don't think I'm trying to keep up with the joneses, I feel like Im doing them a disservice by not exposing them to as many activities as possible. Another side effect is how this unscheduled time would be otherwise spent (Yes it's patronizing but I'm their parent). They're also passionate about these activities. I only have a few years of this until puberty hits and they want nothing to do with me. I really want them to have self-confidence some of that comes from accomplishmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Resulting

Continuous Refresh : NBA Free Agency had me fall off the social media wagon hard. Constant timeline refreshing, borderline obsessive. It came to an end when Kawhi signed with the LA Clippers. I've continued to fiend for a twitter fix. Social Media is the new smoking/standing/coffee etc. Kawhiiii: Nowadays if you build a quality basketball organization the stars will come to you. Unless they don't. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2844770-it-doesnt-matter-even-best-nba-franchises-cant-compete-with-superstar-whims Read : Thinking in Bets - This was a great read around better decision making. I love chess, but Annie Duke points out that chess is a game of complete information, everything is on the board. Life is more like poker where you have incomplete information and you must act  before you know everything.  Resulting is about judging the quality of your decision-making based on the result however there are many unknowns that affect the result. The key is to objectiv...
Post a Comment
Read more