Look at your target market and ideal customer in the following dimensions:
Whose problem can we solve?
Define your customer by a problem that they have that you solve. Make a list of your product attributes and match them to the needs of that specific customer. Think of it as a table with two columns – product attributes and customer needs.
This is not the same as your Value Proposition.
In this case, you’re not describing the actually quality or attractiveness of the attributes; rather, you are simply listing attributes that match your customer’s needs – regardless if the attribute is particularly compelling, unique or special in any way. In other words, your offering may not be unique, but does solve a set of problems for a specific group of customers.
What type of company do we have experience working with?
Do you have a history of serving the customer category or type that you’re targeting? For example, networking equipment giant, Cisco, decided to sell their products to smaller businesses. They were used to dealing with some of the world’s largest businesses, with limited history of selling to the new target audience.
As many business product/services vendors discover every year, Cisco learned that SMBs (small and mid-sized businesses) are not simply “smaller enterprises”.
They (SMBs) operate with fundamentally different time-frames and decision criteria and cultures. Cisco acquired Linksys, a consumer brand, which helped them branch out into the small business marketplace. Linksys brought Cisco SMB channel and customer competency. When you’re looking at your ideal customer, you have to look at your own experience relative to giving that ideal customer a high degree of comfort – a sense that you “get it” for them.
This is not just an issue of credibility within a given market. Experience with a customer allows you to move quickly and with stronger results – because you really do “get it”.
Adapted from the forthcoming eBook, “Know Thy Customer” by Jose Palomino
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Thanks for this post! But, I had a difficult time viewing your post in Internet Explorer 8. Just wanted to bring that to your attention! Thanks.
Thanks for the heads up. We’ll look into it.
Do you mind if I quote you on my blog? Not sure what the rules are, thought I would check
You may quote from my posts (not the entire post, but a “reasonable use” quote) as long as you attribute and link back to the original post. Thanks for asking.