How to Choose the Right Target Customer

There’s typically a give-and-take relationship between the product you’re trying to build and the customer you’re trying to serve.

They both feed each other. Your target customer affects what you need to build, and what you choose to build affects who’s willing and able to buy it.

As you go, it’s pretty common to discover that what you’ve built for one type of customer could also be valuable to another type of customer — maybe lots of others.

That feels like a victory!

The problem is you can’t serve everyone equally. Trying to will split your resources and almost guarantee that your marketing and messaging fails (what resonates with one with conflict with another).

You need traction ASAP, and choosing the right customer is paramount to getting it.

So how do you do it?

There are lots of ways to discover who your initial target customer should be. My favorite involves asking just three questions and making a simple list.

If you’re coming into this with uncertainty, you’ll walk away with clarity after working through this.

Chances are, someone springs to mind when you think about a customer who’s easy to serve. (If not, no sweat, we’ll work on it.)

There’s really two elements that go into “easy.”

A.) Perfect Fit: The skills you have, or the feature set your product has, is a perfect match for what this type of customer needs and is willing to pay for.

B.) Joy: This is the type of customer that’s most enjoyable to serve.

B usually flows from A in the form of fewer complaints and faster time-to-value, but I find that joy is a powerful thing to consider when you’re going to bet the next 5-10 years of your life on this startup and serving this type of person.

So, create a column for “easiest to serve” and write down whoever comes to mind.

Note: Writing down who you definitely don’t want to serve is also helpful.

This may be tough to answer without going through the sales process with different types of customers, but you can always interview different types of customers who you think you might serve (e.g. small business owners, enterprise managers, consumers, agency owners, etc.), and start mapping out their buying processes and timelines.

Then use your expertise, intuition, and what you’ve learned from customer conversations to make a bet on which customer type will be able to make the fastest decisions with the fewest hurdles.

There are bound to be differences in how different types of customers make buying decisions. What you’re really looking for here is the differences between people who say “Yes, I want this now, take my money” and those who say “We need to review this and get back to you.”

You want people who feel a pain deeply that you can solve, who will act quickly. So, create another column for “fastest decisions” and write down whoever comes to mind.

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“Happy to pay you” doesn’t necessarily mean they have the deepest pockets. It means they value what you do so much that they are willing and able to pay what you ask without fighting you on the exact dollar amount.

One caveat here is that your pricing should be in the realm of what that type of customer is used to paying for similar products/services. And what they’re willing to pay often depends on your product’s specific offerings.

For instance, a small business owner may be willing to pay, let’s say, $100/mo for a single feature that save them a couple hours a week. Meanwhile, an enterprise manager may be willing to pay $50,000/yr for something that solves their problem, but need a much more robust platform before they can consider using it.

There’s no real right or wrong answer — it’s more about what’s a good fit for your skillset, your market, your product as it is today, and who you want to serve.

So, create a third column for “pays the most” and jot down the people who come to mind that are willing to pay the most for your current product.

Note: This does not mean you shouldn’t negotiate pricing. It means the value you bring to this type of person in particular is higher than the value you bring to other types, and they can afford it.

I hope specific people came to mind while you were reading through those three questions, because this exercise works best with specific humans rather than made up personas or guesses at employee titles.

Now you need to create a list — a spreadsheet works great, or simply snag some paper and a pen.

1. Take your list and make a column for each of those three questions: Who’s the easiest to serve, who makes the fastest buying decisions, and who’s happy paying you the most.

2. Under each column, list specific people you have worked with, and rank them. Who’s been the best in this category? Who’s been the worst?

You’ll need a minimum of 10 people for this to be helpful, and 100 is too many. The exact number is not important, but 25-to-40 people is a sweet spot. Take your time with this, and go through your CRM, email logs, other connections, or discuss with your partners to get this right.

3. After you’ve ranked everyone across all three columns, total up the sum of their ranked positions. E.g. if Dave ranks 3rd for easiest to serve, 19th for speed, and 7th for payment, his score is 29.

Whoever has the lowest score is probably your ideal customer.

Congrats! You found them.

Take that person at the top of your list, and start fleshing out their persona. What are their:

The more thorough you are here, typically the easier it becomes to acquire new customers. Repeat this as needed with others at the top of your list, and identify consistencies.

That’s your target customer — the type of people who will be easy to serve, quick to buy, and pay the most. That’s who you should focus your sales and marketing on. I’ll have another post on that specifically coming soon.

Hi, I’m Kenneth Burke. 👋 As a Marketing VP, I led our bootstrapped startup from $0 to $20M and an acquisition. Now I help startup founders achieve product-market fit, so you can remove the guesswork from growth.

I post stories, advice, and frameworks weekly here on #BurkeBits, and share content more often across LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. If that sounds interesting, subscribe, email me at [email protected] with your current challenge, and share this with another builder.