Strategy · Searching to Proving
Your core customer
You test who your company is for in conversations with customers, and describe them as one person once the market confirms it.
Does this sound familiar?
- You ask three people in your team who your customer is, and you get three different answers.
- Your marketing agency asks about your target audience, and you say 'SMEs that want to grow'.
- Every demo ends with 'nice', and still hardly anyone signs.
- Your website talks to the managing director, your quote to the buyer and your product to the user.
- You'd happily have last year's best customer ten more times, but you don't know exactly what made them so good.
Who it's for, and when
For founders who answer 'who's your customer?' with a target audience. In Searching you don't know yet: your core customer is a hunch you test in conversations, and you don't commit to anything yet. In Proving you can see who it keeps working for, and that's when you write it down. After that you keep it up to date, because once you're no longer talking to every customer yourself, your team needs to know who it is.
The model
On the One-Page Strategic Plan, Harnish asks who your core customer is. The Boldcaster canvas makes it sharper: one person, with a name, a situation and a problem. The idea comes from Alan Cooper, who described the persona in 1999: one made-up customer, built on real ones. 'Directors at SMEs' doesn't tell your salesperson who to call. A person with a name does: anyone in the company can ask themselves whether Sandra would want this.
How you find them depends on your phase. In Searching you don't know yet. You have a hunch, and you test it in conversations about what people actually did. You write it down as a hypothesis, with a date, and you cross out whatever turns out to be wrong. In Proving you can see which customers it keeps working for: they buy faster, stay longer and send others your way. That's when you write them down as one person, based on what those customers said and did.
Clayton Christensen adds a question: what job does this person hire you for? Someone's in a particular situation, wants to get something done and looks for help with it. If you know that job, you know why the customer buys and what else they're comparing you with. The lesson Your sandbox marks out the group you play in; this lesson describes the person in that group who feels the problem and makes the decision.
Verne Harnish, Scaling Up (2014), the core customer on the One-Page Strategic Plan; the persona with a name and a situation comes from Alan Cooper, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum (1999); the job someone hires you for from Clayton Christensen, Competing Against Luck (2016).
While you're searching: a hypothesis
Who do you think has the problem, when do they run into it and what does it cost them now? One sentence, with a date and 'hypothesis' in front of it. You adjust it after every conversation. At this stage, a persona with a photo and a hobby is a guess you'll end up defending.
Once you know: one person
A name, a job title and what kind of company. 'Sandra, office manager at a law firm' reads differently from 'decision-maker'. The name is made up, the person isn't: they look like the customers it keeps working for.
Their situation and the job
What's going on for them at the moment they need you, and what do they want to get done? Write it in their words, separate from what you sell.
The networking drinks test
Would you recognise them at a networking event? Where are they, what do they ask, what do they say when you tell them what you do? Can someone in your team name a real customer who fits? If not, the description is still too vague.
Pitfalls
Mistaking the user for the customer
The person most excited about your work isn't always the one who decides. Describe the person who feels the problem and makes the call. What the users notice belongs in their story.
Trying to keep everyone in
Harnish leaves room for more than one core customer. The canvas asks for one, because with three descriptions your team picks for itself who it's working for. Writing down one person doesn't cost you the good customers who don't fit it.
Writing it down and filing it away
A core customer that only lives on the canvas changes nothing. It has to show up on the website, in the quote, in the sales conversation and in a new colleague's first week.
Watch and read
How to ask a customer about what really happened, instead of what they think of your idea. You need that on both tracks: to test a hypothesis and to call your best customers.
Watch on YouTubeThe man behind the idea of the job you're hired for, with his milkshake story: why you need to know the customer's situation to understand why they buy.
Watch on YouTubeWhy not every customer is worth chasing, and why it helps to know who you're not doing it for.
Watch on YouTubeRead
Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't
Verne Harnish · 2014 · ISBN 9780986019524
The source of the core customer on the One-Page Strategic Plan, in the chapter on strategy alongside the sandbox and the brand promise. Published in Dutch as Scaling Up: de groeiformule (Business Contact, 2016, ISBN 9789047008682).
View the bookCompeting Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice
Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon en David S. Duncan · 2016 · ISBN 9780062435613
The book about the job a customer hires you for, with the milkshake and plenty of other examples. Useful once you've had the conversations and want to understand why your customer buys. Just over two hundred pages.
View the bookApply it
- 1
Do you already know?
Can you name five customers you'd happily have again, who bought for roughly the same reason? Then you're on the second track. If you can't, or they're five very different customers, you're still on the first.
- 2
Track 1: write down your hypothesis and test it
One sentence: who, when they run into it and what it costs them now. Put 'hypothesis' and the date in front of it on the canvas. This month, talk to people you think have the problem, and adjust the sentence after every conversation. How to run those conversations is in the lesson Searching: who really has the problem?
Searching: who really has the problem? - 3
Track 2: call two or three of your best customers
Speak to the person who decided to work with you. Ask what was going on when they started looking, what they tried first and why they chose you. Write down their exact words. Don't ask what they think of you. Ask what happened.
- 4
Track 2: write them down as one person
Use the template next to this: name, job title, what kind of company, what's going on now, the job and their own words. Five to eight sentences.
- 5
Do the networking drinks test and put it to work
Read it out to someone who works with customers every day. Can she name a real customer who fits? Then hold your website, your quote and your sales conversation up against it: are they talking to this person?
Examples
Template for the box
Track 1, while you're searching: Hypothesis ([date]): [who] runs into [problem] [how often], and right now it costs them [time or money]. What would surprise me: ... Conversations so far: [number]. Crossed out: ... Track 2, once you know: [Name], [job title] at [kind of company]. What's going on now: ... The job they hire us for: ... In their words: '...' Who else has a say: ...
A hypothesis that shifted
A founder with quoting software for the construction industry wrote: 'Hypothesis: estimators at building contractors lose a day a week to quotes.' After six conversations, that turned out to be wrong. The estimators were fine with the work. The owner was the one getting annoyed, because quotes went out too late and he was missing out on jobs. New hypothesis: 'The owner of a building contractor loses jobs because his quotes are a week late.' From then on, the founder talked to owners.
An IT support company that knew
At first the box said: 'SMEs with up to 100 workstations.' After conversations with its five best customers: 'Sandra, office manager at a law firm. She does IT on top of her real job. She gets the call when the printer stops working and when there's a risk of a data breach, and the second one keeps her up at night. She hires us so she doesn't have to think about it any more.' The salespeople stopped calling IT managers. Those firms didn't have one.
Do this in your own business
Everything up to here is free. What you fill in for your own business, you keep in Boldcaster.
- You write the Core customer section of your strategy, and it stays on your strategy page.
- You assign the lesson to your team and see who has done it.
- The quiz counts towards your progress, and you see which lesson comes next.
Four weeks free. You'll land straight in this lesson.
Quiz
7 situations. You need 6 of 7 right. You can try again at any time.
1.A founder fills in the Core customer box with: 'Manufacturing companies in Brabant that want to grow.' What's wrong with it?
2.You sold your first product six months ago. Your five customers are in five different industries. What do you put in the Core customer box?
3.The planners at your customers love your software. The contracts are signed by the operations director, who never opens the software himself. Who goes in the Core customer box?
4.At an away day, the leadership team comes up with a great persona. Sales don't recognise it. What's the best next step?
5.An accountancy firm thought its clients were buying the annual accounts. In conversations they keep saying: 'I want to know whether I can take someone on.' What do you do with that sentence?
6.You're writing down your core customer's problem. Which wording is strongest?
7.The core customer has been on the canvas for a year. New colleagues don't know who it is. Where's the problem?
Nothing is saved here. In the app, the quiz counts towards your progress.
Read next
- The DNA: the soul of your company · You write down, in two or three sentences, the bar you set as founder, so other people hold it when you're around less.
- Your sandbox · You write down where your company plays, by region, target audience and product, and what it says no to, even if you've just changed course.
Not sure where to start? Take the growth scan