Ideal Customer

You have spent the last 5-years developing, designing, and preparing your company for commercialization. You start making cold calls, sending personalized emails, getting a few meetings, but all this work does not seem to be paying off. The panic begins to set in as questions around your company’s value begins to creep into the back of your mind.

This struggle may not reflect your product or solution; it may be a reflection of who you are targeting as your ideal customer. 

An ideal customer is not someone who purchases your product once; it is the person who comes back for more support, renews their contract, sees the value in what you are offering, and will buy into your offering. Your ideal customer will ultimately become a seller of your product or service through their praise for the impact you are having. 

Who will receive the most value from your offering?

As an entrepreneur, it is essential to know as much detail as possible about your ideal customer, what they are looking for, what problems exist, and how your product/solution solves those problems.

If your product fits in more than one market, I would recommend perfecting your one customer profile before moving on to the next. Do not go for the “cast a net” approach, fish with a spear. Lock on to your target and design your campaign and product around their needs. Once you gain traction, move forward to the next group.

Sometimes you will pick the wrong customer from the start; you may think of being a direct-to-consumer company initially but find employer groups are more open to your idea. If you started as direct to consumer, learn from that past, adjust your product, improve it based on the end user’s feedback, and then pivot to the new market opportunity. In the end, even failure in a particular market helps improves the likelihood of success in another.

Considerations:

• Do not go too broad in your profile – your solution may help “everyone,” but will it be impactful for them? Identify the population where your product and solution will be most impactful. Be as detailed as possible; the more properties (age, sex, financial status, etc.) you identify, the easier it will be to target them.
• Your ideal customer is not only someone who will benefit from your service but also someone you want to work with
• Focus your marketing and reach out to your ideal customer’s specific needs. This is not just outbound marketing; the interaction you have online, in-person, over the phone will slightly differ based on who your ideal customer is.
• Your current clients may not be your ideal ones; it is okay to pivot and make changes based on your ideal customer’s profile

Get out your notepad and identify your ideal customer

• Know your product or solution – have an in-depth understanding of the capabilities of what you offer and the potential impact it may have on your customer. Look from multiple perspectives, not only yours but the consumers, a first-time interaction, and someone who is a “veteran.”
• What is the goal of your solution? Are you looking to improve A1c for Diabetics or reduce the incidence of hospitalizations for patients with heart failure? Be as specific as possible.
• Learn from the work you have accomplished to this point, failures and success have a lot to teach about the impact your solution may have on your ideal customer
• Draw out your profile; you can do this any way you would like; there are many great resources online to help. 
• Use the profile you created to enhance marketing and sales campaigns. Do not let this profile sit on the shelf and collect dust, take this information to begin targeting the customer who will excel your company to the next level