As you’ve noticed the past week, I’ve written several times about the process of creating “the perfect segmentation cocktail.”

Today I want to zoom into a critical ingredient: the DNA of your ideal customers.

What do I mean by that? 
Well, just because you focus on Engineering Consultants in the UK with 500-1000 FTE that drive +£75M revenue doesn’t mean they’ll all magically buy your SaaS product.

Why not? Because they’re all wired differently – either because of their management style, ownership structure (Private, public, etc.), or the economic, political and competitive conditions of their market, you name it.

Let me give an example from my time at Unit4 – an ERP vendor. Technically we could sell to everyone in the mid-market. But often, we knew right from the start when we’d lose against SAP, Oracle, or Microsoft – or when we’d win hands down. And so did our competitors.

What made the difference?
It was not because we had more features or a better UI. No way – every vendor consistently scored +98% on functionality. No, our solution fitted the dynamics of our customers better than anyone else.

Customers that became our biggest fans were in constant flux – and the ERP we provided them turned this into an advantage for them.
In other words, our platform’s DNA uniquely matched our customers’ DNA.

It allowed them to acquire and merge faster than others. Deal with regulations more quickly than anyone in their market. Restructure the business on the fly. Expand into new territories as soon as the opportunity emerged. And so on. They were ‘businesses living in change.’

This helped us to start winning 8 out of 10 deals.

So how do you go about it? Two tips:

1️⃣ – Zoom out – and look at your ideal customers with a different pair of eyes. Describe their DNA. What dynamics are normal to them and not to those customers that are better off with your competitors?
2️⃣ – Zoom in – Create a list of problems that keep your ideal customers up at night. How is this list different from customers not ideal for you? What does this tell you?

My question to reflect upon today:

If you had to describe the DNA of your ideal customer, what words would you use?

 

Be Remarkable

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