How Well Do You Know Your Customer?
Ever Wondered How To Create An Ideal Client Profile For Your Startup?
As you may already have experienced, our vision of our perfect customer often is skewed from reality.
What if we gain a customer for our business, but that customer is extremely hard to deal with?
Or what if we are able to attract tons of customers, but our churn rate is shockingly high?
1. Interview Customers In Your Market
It’s easy to think that we know exactly what our future customers care about and why they would invest in our services, but in order to truly understand your ICP, it’s best to interview them.
If are just starting out and don’t have existing customers, try reaching out to customers of similar offerings to yours and understand what led them to make their purchasing decision.
You can try this on social media by messaging prospects who comment on your competition’s posts and ask them what they like about their current vendor.
When you finally are able to interview someone who matches your customer persona, here are a few questions that will help give you a deeper understanding of your market.
Questions to ask:
- What is your role in your company?
- What are your responsibilities for work?
- How do you spend your time at work and at home?
- What do you care about professionally and personally?
- How do you work with your team?
- How do you make decisions?
- Why do you work in the position the work in?
- Who else do they involve in their decisions?
2. Identify Similarities Within Your Customers
After you have identified the key characteristics of one client, it’s time to create your client profile.
Does everyone share a similar story to that one client you interviewed in step 1?
Are there only a few people who can relate to that story?
At this stage, it’s important to understand the overall feel of the market so you craft a story relevant to numerous people instead of one individual.
Now, everyone doesn’t have to share the exact same story, but it is important to notice if the clients you do speak to share the same values, goals, and responsibilities amongst their common positions.
3. Understand The Deep Pains Of The Market
Just like in step 2, it’s critical to understand the common issues that the group of people you are after face.
And when I say understand, I mean REALLY understand their challenges.
On the surface, there are typically four types of common pain points amongst buyers.
These are:
- Financial Pain Points
- Process Pain Points
- Productivity Pain Points
- Support Pain Points
Once you have identified which surface-level pain is common amongst your target market, it’s time to assess why your ideal client would want to purchase a service like yours to alleviate this pain.
To start, ask yourself these questions:
- How does this problem affect my customer personally?
- How does this problem prevent my customer from reaching his or her goals?
- Does this issue affect just my customer or does it affect the entire company that they work for?
- What will happen if they don’t find a solution to this challenge?
- How do others perceive my customer if they don’t get this challenge addressed?
- How does this scenario make my customer feel towards themselves?
4. Understand Your Customers’ Goals
What will happen if your prospect doesn’t invest in your solution or solution similar to yours?
Do you understand the company’s mission, vision, or revenue goals for the year?
Do you understand how your offering will help customers reach their goals in their personal lives?
If they continue to operate the way they are currently, will that hold them back from reaching their desired outcome?
Since most companies value giving their customers the best experience in the marketplace, how will your product or service create a more enjoyable experience for your customers’ customer?
Conclusion
These are just a few tips to help craft your ideal buyer persona.
As mentioned earlier, its imperative that you think diligently about this topic as it will help you prioritize the people you want to work with.
By having detailed conversations and thorough analysis, you can reduce the time spent with crappy customers and have a deeper understanding of what to look for when trying to find new ones.
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