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Building an Outrageously Solid, Customer-Centered Model to Test All Business Decisions

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Me You Me You

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Are you still with me?
Here’s where we are.

We started inside our hearts and looked inside the hearts and heads of our ideal customers, as best we could . . . hopefully we’ll keep doing both. It’s not a spreadsheet. It’s personal, from me to you, to me, and back to you again.

Me you me you

Now that we’re used to that, we can work on the most basic decision model. Every decision that follows will have this model as a test.

Here we go. We started building it sometime last week.

Building an Outrageously Solid, Customer-Centered Model

the model that we’re building will test future decisions about a specific business. To do that we need to define the business by building these four parts.

  • An explicit description of the customer and the niche market he or she would be part of — The group will be relational and easy to describe The goal is to crawl inside the customer’s head and to feel his or her needs before he or she does.
  • A company named for the customer — will fit and appeal to the ideal customer “Call it what it is,” a wise man once said to me. A customer can find us more easily when we let them see who we are.
  • A tagline that does its job — will state what you promise and deliver It’s a promise that explains the value we offer to the people we want to serve.
  • A “do” statement — will be a few-word answer to “What do you do? This answer becomes easier to get to once we’ve reached the answers to the first three parts.

All parts work as a whole to define the business from view of the ideal customer. When all parts are defined together, this definition becomes the touchstone to which all future questions and definitions can be tested and verfied.

Does what I’m about to do fit within this model to make the business stronger, clearer, and more real to my ideal customer . . . or does what I’m considering weaken my plan and fogs up my message?

Use the model to be sure that future decisions support how we’ve defined the company.

What do you see here so far? What questions do you have?

More is coming I promise.

Next: The tagline

–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.

How to Master an Overwhelming To Do List

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Worse than herding Cats

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I admit it. To my thinking, one thing is worse than herding cats. It’s wrestling with the things I have to do. In my world, a To Do List can quickly get overwhelming. It can be filled with things I don’t know how to do, little things that are labor intensive, and too many things that are unrelated yet need getting done in the same time period. It always seems that part of the list is extremely URGENT and can’t wait for my learning curve. I can’t get to done that way.

How to Master an Overwhelming To Do List

To Do items are in the flow of things when there are only a few. When there are many, I have to get out of the details to where I can see to move them into a organizational groups. These are key steps to mastering a To Do List.

Every item I write begins with a verb. When appropriate, they begin with “Learn to” to remind me that they need more time and more steps.

  1. Brain dump. Write all of the items down a list in any order. Do it first thing in the morning, or last thing — to be able to hit the ground running when a new day begins. Get them out of your head and on paper or on computer. A spreadsheet works nice. It allows one item per box, and they’re easily movable.
  2. URGENT Sort. Group those things that are URGENT. Define URGENT as something of high consequence will be impaired, if this action does not happen in the next 24 hours. Calculate the amount of time these actions will take. If the time to do them is less than the time you have, get help now. Set the rest aside until the URGENT list is under control. Looking for URGENT items should be routine. Finding them should be rare.
  3. Action Sort. Sort all projects three ways to get things done. Group actions that are better done together. Two criteria rule this step: time sensitivity and power to make things happen.
    • HOT List. Sort everything about the most time-sensitive (HOT) project. List all related actions that need to be executed in the next 2-3 days. First apply these two questions to the HOT project. Then apply the questions to the whole list you have made.
    • What can I do in a few minutes that will get someone else working when I move on to the next item? List these so that you can do them first. Two people working move two parts forward.
    • What similar things can I do in series to save time? List like activities together, if doing them that way will save time. Blocking time to make all phone calls or writing all email related to the HOT project can save bundles of time. When is the best time in your day to do each type of task?
    • Quick Hits List. Sort short 5-10 minute tasks that are not HOT!! but need to be done in a timely fashion. This list is one to keep close. When a few minutes open up, or a piece of writing gets stuck, you’ll be able to grab the list to move something forward. Then switch back to regularly scheduled programming.
    • To Do List. Sort the remaining items. List them by their importance and time sensitivity. Then schedule them into the next 2-3 days.
  4. When new actions anitems arise add them to the list where they fit.
  5. Have a partner on call for emergencies. Some folks, like me, are drawn up to the macro level, we work well organizing strategy. We work best at the 30,000-foot view. Other folks are down to drill down to the beauty of details to build structure at the micro view. When time is short and a pile of action details demand attention, nothing compares to a working partnership — one person sorts the relationships, the other makes the lists.

Attend to the HOT List immediately. Attend to the Quick Hits as time opens — carry it with you to take advantage of opportunities wherever they arise. Attend to the To Do List when you have scheduled each item. Turn off interruptions when you’re working. Revisit your plan every morning to sort, list, and schedule the day.

You might think that three lists are more work than one, but in fact, three shorter lists allow focus and save time when scanning for the next thing to do. The key, of course, is to list everything that needs doing and doing everything on the lists.

Did I just confuse you?

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

How to Define Your Niche Market

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Yes! YES!

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Let’s take a minute to go back over the foundation — two key understandings frame and support a well-defined niche market.

A business that cannot answer those two questions specifically and explicity will define a loose, untargeted niche market. The end result will be an unclear offer — probably too broad — to customers they don’t know.

If you can’t describe what you do and who your customer is in one simple sentence each, keep working on those questions above.

When you know them like you know yourself . . .

A niche market is the group that your prototype ideal customer represents. That’s why it’s critical that we define the prototype customer as well as we possibly can. Because now we’re going to extrapolate up.

You might think it’s a waste of time to prototype the ideal customer in the first place. STOP RIGHT THERE.

What gets lost by skipping that step is the information we acquire by deeply thinking about how one human in our customer group will respond. The loss is detail most folks won’t take time to think through in one step.

Yu can get details without the context of an individual human reference, but skip that step, you are stealing deep knowledge from yourself. If I tell you, if you read it, even when a real customer relates the buying experience, it is not the same as thinking through one customer’s identity yourself.

It’s you, you’re investing in.

It’s survival. If we don’t know our customers as well as ourselves, sooner or later, we will fail. I don’t need a coach to tell me how to do that. Neither do you.

How to Define Your Niche Market

Look at that ideal prototype customer. Find the group that he or she represents. Use the ideal customer to find that group’s needs, wants, and values. You know how to do that as sure as you know what things are everybody things and what things are your best friend’s idiosyncracies.

  • What is your ideal customer’s age group? Define an age range narrow enough to keep within a set of tastes and values. Spanning a 10-year age difference might work for undertakers, but probably will not for the needs of college students or new home buyers.
  • How is your ideal customer exactly like every member of the group? What needs does the group have in common? What do they all desire? How can you use your previous success — what you’ve already provided — to serve the larger group?
  • What is the group’s biggest worry? Is it the same as the ideal customer’s? What other issues does the group have?
  • What are the major ways that the group interacts? How do they communicate with each other? What secrets do they keep
  • What are the major ways that the group solves problems and finds answers?
  • How does this group define a good day? How do they define a bad one? What other groups do they get along with? What groups do they work with that they don’t understand?
  • What problem can you take off their desk? How can you save them time, money, or pain?

Picture the group in a meeting room. Have you accounted for everyone there? What part of the group will love your product or service as much as you do?

That’s your niche. That’s the customer you want to serve.

Next: The Four-Part Definition of a Business

–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.

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.

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.

If You Don't Know What You Love Doing . . .

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It’s Natural

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Here’s how it often works. He says. She says.

I say, “Sure you do. You’re just not seeing it.”

If you’re stuck finding out, sorting out, what you love doing, my experience is that what you love doing is so obvious that you can’t believe it is worth counting. Let me tell you about Martha.

Ah Martha, her desk was like it belonged in a magazine. If she wasn’t in her office, folks thought she was out for the day. Everything had its place, and you could bet it was there. Soft-spoken, gracious Martha had a smile that lit up the department of 32 people and thousands of pages she kept track of. Marha was a sea of calm in a world of publishing paper clutter.

For her performance review. I asked Martha to do a self-appraisal. Martha reached outside herself to find many things that she did well and wrote them up in excellent fashion. All of the qualities I described above were missing.

When I asked her about it, she said, “Oh, anyone can do those things.”

I replied, “No, Martha, folks aren’t nearly as organized as you are, nor are they as calm and gracious.” That turned on her room-lighting smile.

I said “You love organizing things and all of us, don’t you?” Her larger smile told the story.

Martha didn’t see what she loved or her most valuable qualities. She discounted them because they were was something that was a natural talent. We tend to discount what comes naturally to us as not as valuable because we didn’t “earn” it. Yet, Martha’s talents were what kept my department working smoothly and without friction. To this day, I miss her.

She didn’t see it because it was obvious and so natural to her.

Yet everyone else knew how valuable her talents were to them.

Look to Your Second Nature

If you don’t know what you love doing, ask those folks who rely on you. Look at what you do as second nature. Think of those defining qualities and the things that you always do and would be nervous or bummed if you could no longer do them. I can’t imagine Martha not being allowed to organize things.

What can you not imagine yourself not being able to do?

Not long ago when talking with the other founders of SOBCon, I said, “I have to be the keeper of the vision.” I explained it in this way, “it’s not ego. It’s not about control or the name of my blog. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. It’s in my DNA. I can’t NOT do it.”

What’s the thing you can’t NOT do? What’s imprinted on YOUR DNA?

C’mon and say it out loud.

–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.