Customer Profiles

Sesion 1
F2F
 Learning Objectives

Propose the business plan and evaluate the business model

 Contents

 Choosing the Beachhead Market - 7 Criteria of Beachhead

Market of the Business’ Market
 Build the End Profile
 Questions of Potential Characteristics of the End User Profile
Defining the Beachhead Market –
7 Criteria of Beachhead Market
of the Business Market
 What is Beachhead Market?
This is a terminology that was being used in Military
operations.

“When an army troop wants to invade enemy territory with

water access, the troop may employ a beachhead strategy,
where the army lands a force on a beach in enemy
territory, controlling that area as their base to land more
troops and supplies, and to attack other enemy areas.”

Same logic should be applied to your business,

“your beachhead market is where,
once you gain a dominant market share, you will have the strength
to attack adjacent markets with different offerings,
building a larger company with each new following.”
 7 Criteria of
the Business Field

1. Is the target customer well-funded?

If the customer does not have money, the market is not attractive because it will not be
sustainable and provide positive cash flow for the new venture to grow. In interior
design field, do you have any ideas, where could you find such customer type?

2. Is the target customer readily accessible to your sales force?

You want to deal directly with customers when starting out, rather than rely on third
parties to market and sell your product, because your product will go through iterations
of improvement very rapidly, and direct customer feedback is an essential part of that
process. Also, since your product is substantially new and never seen before (and
potentially disruptive), third parties may not know how to be effective at
creating demand for your product.

3. Does the target customer have a compelling reason to buy?

Would the customer buy your product instead of another similar solution? Or, is the
customer content with whatever solution is already being used? Remember that on
many occasions, your primary competition will be the customer doing nothing.
 7 Criteria of
the Business Field (Cont’d)

4. Can you today, with the help of partners, deliver a whole product?
Let say, suddenly, a potential client challenged you to prepare a sample, a kind of unique furniture, that
if the prototype was approved, they would order more in a bigger scale. Could you provide it – for
instance, today? It means, You will likely need to work with other vendors to deliver a solution that
incorporates your product, which means that you will need to convince other manufacturers and
distributors that your product is worth integrating into their workflows.

5 . Is there entrenched competition that could block you?

How strong are the competitors, from the customer’s viewpoint (not your viewpoint or from a technical
standpoint)? Can the competition block you from starting a business relationship with a customer? And
how do you stand out from what your customer perceives as alternatives?

6. If you win this segment, can you leverage it to enter additional segments?
If you dominate this market opportunity, are there adjacent opportunities where you can sell your
product with only slight modifications to your product or your sales strategy? Or will you have to
radically revise your product or sales strategy in order to take advantage of additional market
opportunities? While you want to stay focused on your beachhead market, you do not want to choose a
starting market from which you will have a hard time scaling your business.

7. Is the market consistent with the values, passions, and goals of the founding team?
You want to make sure that the founders’ personal goals do not take a back seat to the other criteria
presented here.
Switching the Paradigm
 Switching the Paradigm
YOU
Organization-centric
Business model design
What kind of interior furniture
that we can we sell customers?
How can we reach customers
most efficiently?
What relationship do we need to
establish with customers?
How can we make money from
our customers?
THEM!
Customer-centric
Business model design
What job(s) do(es) our customer eed to
get done and how we can help?
What are our customer’s aspirations and
how can we help him/her live up to them?
How do our customers prefer to be
addressed?
What relationship do our customers
expect us to establish with them?
For what value(s) are customers truly
willing to pay?
 Market Segmentation
Step 1: Brainstorming
Brainstorming wide array of
market opportunities. No matter
how crazy the idea might be.
This would prevent you of
thinking that you have already
had a specific market and
specific application in mind.
Put those ideas in order, find
some similarities between those
ideas, and put the similar ideas
in group.
(Step by step)
Step 2: Narrow Things Down
Take the 6-12 top ideas that consist of potential end users and application of
your idea. To narrow things down, you should be able to answer these
questions:
- Is the target customer well-funded?
- Is the target customer readily accessible to your task force.
- Do the have reason to buy?
- Can you deliver a complete product today?
- Is there any strong competitors blocking the way?
- If you could win this segment, could you use it for your benefit to enter
additional segment?
- Is the market consisten with values, passions and goals (of the founders)?

Step 3: Do Primary Market Research

Go talk to your customers. The direct talk will help you to get the better
sense of which market opportunity is best.

Warning:
If you could find some or even only one market research report on the
market with all information that you need, you might be too late.
Build the End User Profile
 Knowing the Types of Customers

End User:
The individual (a real person) who will use your product. The End user is
usually a member of the household or organization that purchases your
product.

Decision-Making Unit:
The Individual(s) who decides whether the customer will buy your product,
which consists of:
- Champion: The person who wants the customers to purchase the product;
often the end-user.
- Primary Economic Buyer: the person with the authority to spend money to
purchase the product. Sometimes, this is also the end-user.
- Influencers, Veto Power, Purchasing Department, and so on: People who
have direct control over the decisions f the Primary Economic Buyer.
 Crucial Thing!

You would have to build

a profile of the end user that should be specific enough
to calculate the possible annual revenue
(Total Addressable Market) size of your market.
 Crucial Thing!

You would have to build

a profile of the end user that should be specific enough
to calculate the possible annual revenue
(Total Addressable Market) size of your market.

THE GOAL IS:

To create a description of a defined end-user whith similar
characteristics and similar needs.
 Questions ofThe Potential
Characteristics of the End-User Profile
 Questions to be Asked
(and to be Answered)!
These questions below would be closely related to the end-user profile of
your field, the the Business.
Each question would lead you to your the Business end-user profile.
So, soon after you questioned yourself with these questions,
you would have to answer it as well.

However, you might not yet be able to answer some of these questions; or,
you might find that it might seem not so relevant to your product/service – at
this moment.

Yet, in the future, you would meet these questions again to build the more
specific character which would lead you to your “Persona”. Persona is one of
the end user from your potential customers who best exemplifies your
End user profile.
 The Questions
for Your Potential End-User
What is the gender?
What is their age range?
What is their income range?
What is their geographic location?
What motivates them?
What do they fear most?
Who is their hero?
Where do they go for vacation?
How they had dinner?
What did they do before work?
What newspaper do they read? Websites?
What kind of TV show they watch?
What is the general reason they buy this product? Savings? Image?
What makes them special and identifiable?
What is their story?
 Note:

You may not yet be able

to answer many of the above questions;
they also may not be relevant to your situation—
or so you might think at this point.

The answers of the questions above,

would be the descriptions of the market.
Would it be quite OK for the Business?
If it wouldn’t, what would you do then?
 References

Aulet, Bill (2013). Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to A

Successful Startup. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New Jersey. ISBN: 978-1-
118-69228-8