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A Model to Describe One Ideal Customer

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Get Specific

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Our ideal customers — those folks who love that businesslike thing we love doing, that we do to serve them — they are the foundation of our business. Pick one of them.

One? But the marketing guy said . . .

Yep. One — only one. Get specific. Get up close. Make it a real person. Crawl inside his or her head.

From one real human being with whom you have had a success, we can extrapolate many facets of what will and will not work for a business. Think of the one you choose as your prototype ideal customer. Use this model to get closer to whom that customer is.

A Model to Describe One Ideal Customer

Use these questions to make sure you are specific because we’re building a model.

  • What job or group does this person represent? (designers, new mothers, undertakers, college students, used car buyers)
  • What is this one person’s biggest worry, threat, thing that wakes him or her up at 2 in the morning?
  • How does this one person see him- or herself? What is the value that this one person thinks that he or she brings to the world?
  • What problem did you solve for this person? How long did it take? How would you value what you provided? How would he or she value it?

Answer these questions. Then write, record, or tell a friend a description of your prototype ideal customer. You’re ready to explore what he or she needs, desires, and wants.

We learn as writers that individual readers share common interests. We learn as marketers to meet each individual where he or she stands. I learned as a publisher that a well-defined prototype is exact and as explicit as possible. A strong prototype is like a single stone in the water — we can extrapolate it in rings to larger and larger views.

Who is your prototype customer? C’mon describe one for me.

Next: How to define your niche market, moving from one to a group.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Sunday, July 24, 2005: Learning to Breathe

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Breathing Room

They say it takes 5 minutes to start a blog. Whoa! It sure didn’t for me. I had to walk in a crooked line through the virtual halls of Amazon for two hours at least. I had to look at blog templates for another three. And choosing a name, well, I wasn’t prepared for the fact that choosing a name for my son would be easier.

I started in the morning and published in the starlight.

I came to it as a writer. So I thought it was writing. I thought it was about structure and expression, content and presentation, and offering somewhere someone might find a place next to me on the riverbank under the old white oak tree. I was one third in the right direction.

Who’d know I’d be here a short two years later?

Who’d know what I’d discover?

Who’d know I’d hand over my head and heart?

I point to my first blog post — about 100 words. . It’s got stars, life, peanut butter . . . and a quote I still believe.

When I give my soul a little breathing room . . .
everyone I know gets nicer.

I came here to wonder and to find more ways just to be.

. . . and the people who greeted me taught me to breathe.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Blog Herald: Social Networking — Am I Person Or an Item?

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Flashback 1997 . . . Flash Forward 2007

For all of our conversation, for the ideas, time, and thoughts share in our comment boxes, I hope that you’ll head over to read this one. Please.

Verbal volleyball can be a kick. When Twitter used the term, people, to mean friends for an Internet second, I got a chance to type, “I’ll have my people call your people and we’ll do lunch.” I’ve always wanted to say that.

Cute, but off the page and forgotten, rightfully so, minutes later.

For the last few days, I’ve been thinking about the realities of going wide and going deep. It’s hard to have the time and the bandwidth to do both. It’s hard to keep up with it all. Every day it happens at a slightly faster speed. The wider I go, the shallower I get.

Read the whole feature in today’s Blog Herald by clicking the logo.

The Blog Herald

It’s about blogging and real life.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
I wrote at the Blog Herald about books, information, and relationships, making connections from the patterns she sees. I consider these keystone articles.
Authenticity and Transparency in the Real World
In the Real World — The Half-Full, Half-Empty Glass
The Universe of People, Black Holes, and Stars
Connectors and Mavens on the Tipping Point
The Writer’s Dilemma and the Blogger’s Secret
The Two Webs: Information or Relationships?
Social Networking: Am I Person Or an Item?

121: How Do You Get from Strategy to Execution?

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one2one blog post logo

An Execution . . . [grin]

Dawud, Do I hear you laughing from sending this question? DAWUD MIRACLE asked me (and you),

What do you feel is necessary to create an effective strategy to promote a business?

I shall rise to the challenge. I shall not be intimidated . . . much.

Strategy and promotion in the last question. Strategy and execution in this one. I’m wondering whether you stay up all night thinking of how to make me work?

Strategy and Execution . . . or Strategy and Tactics

This is a place I could write a book by talking. After five minutes, my husband would say, “Honey, don’t make me live it.” Most publishing projects I’ve worked on, including those I’ve been in charge of, have gotten this wrong in some way.

It’s almost impossible to get the transition from strategy to execution/tacitics just right . . . it’s like becoming a person. In fact, this particular challenge is one of the reasons that I get so jazzed about business. I believe it has made me a better human being — granted, it can go either way.

The main problem that happens is best described this way.

The project is over. Time to do the prototype.

My best tactic is to spend 80% of my time in strategy. I fight myself and everyone on a project to plan deep and build protoypes that are highly defined and agreed upon. Execution is a breeze when everyone knows what the definition of “good work” is, what direction to walk in.

So the way I get from strategy to execution is really to have a strategy, one in which outlines in detail what we are building. The next step is to look at three things closely– People, Quality, and Resources — and how to manage them on a daily basis — Process (information flow).

I actually draw boxes to show how the project will move from one phase to another. In the boxes I write what people and resources I might need to shore things up. I make sure I know what information comes together when.

By the way, I’m no good at doing this in my head or alone. The people involved have to talk it out to make sure that there aren’t gaping holes. When we describe a realistic process, we build in 10% more time for that problem that no one ever expects that always comes.

If I have a clean desk and a schedule for those boxes, when a strategy is planned, I’m more than ready to hit the ground running.

And since this is a one2one conversation . . . and I’m inherently currious . . . to Dawud, (and you too)

I’m sending the question right back.
What do YOU feel is necessary to create an effective strategy to promote a business?.

If you’re reading this, I’d love to hear your answer too.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

One2One is a cross-blog conversation. You can see the entire One-2-One Conversation series on the Successful Series page.

The Ideal Customer Test

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Pick One

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Who is your customer? Before you answer, if you are going to say “small business owners,” STOP. You can’t build a business foundation trying to read 25 million minds at once. Small business owners is not a niche it’s a population.

In my presentation at SOBCon07, I had a single slide that said

Choose your customers.

I didn’t spend nearly enough time talking about those three words.

The key to a successful business is truly connecting with the ideal customers for the service or product we offer. The process starts by doing what we love, because doing what we love makes good business sense. The next step is to find the folks who love what we do.

How do we do that?

Look to your past successes. Who has come to you in the past for what you love doing and then loved what you provided?

Make a list of the people who have already loved what businesslike thing you love doing for them. Now you have some idea of who your ideal customer might be. Use this model to see who on that list passes the Ideal Customer Test.

Ideal Customer Test

  • The ideal customer is part of a group. You don’t really want customers who are loners. Let someone else sell to the hermits and the recluses.
  • The ideal customer’s group is relational. They don’t have to sing kum-ba-yah by the campfire. Lawyers are relational. They talk to each other and ask what works. Even corporate clients check out the competition and do horse trading.
  • The ideal customer wants to be better . . . to keep up with the folks at the front of the group.
  • The ideal customer has money and the potential to make more.
  • YOUR ideal customer looks a lot like YOU.

It’s true none of us are a field test or focus group, BUT, pay attention to that last point. If you are looking for the folks who love what you do . . .

Your ideal customer is likely to think, act, and respond like you, because it’s human nature to think people who think like we do are brilliantly smart.

That’s how our customers look like us.
That’s why they love what we do.

Skeptical — huh?
Try it this way It’s unlikely that an information geek is going to feel comfortable working with me. I’m just not linear. I’d send him to my friend. Greg Balanko-Dickson the Remote Control CEO. He’s a self-proclaimed information geek. The chart at the top of his blog shows the difference immediately. Greg does what he loves and the information geek would love what he does.

Do what you love in service to those who love what you do. —Steve Farber

Who loves what you do?

Next: Questions to Describe Your Ideal Customer

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Life, an Onion, and Social Networking

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I've been thinking . . .

about life on the Internet and an onion.

Once a friend gave me a metaphor of the world as an onion.

Life in the comment box is what my friend called Layer 17.

“Imagine that life is like an onion,” a friend said to me. “Most people live on that brown papery stuff on the outside. That ‘s where they go about their daily routine. They’re born. They have kids. They die out in the sunshine on that brown papery thing.”

“Yeah, so.”

“You like to live be thinking and talking inside somewhere down near Layer 17. You come out and have fun on the papery thing, but you live near Layer 17.”

I have fun Social Networking on the papery thing, but the comment box here is Layer 17.

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