How to Ascertain Your Key Customers in Three Steps

When starting a new business, one of the first things you should do is inventory your business stakeholders and determine which customer is the most important. You have probably heard people tell you to do this before, but what difference does it make? Too often, businesses want to be all things to everyone. When you do this, you lose focus on what you do for your most important customers.

Determining your key customer does not mean that your products and services do not support other customers. It simply allows you to focus your mission, purpose, vision, products, services and marketing on those that will be the most influential to the overall success of your business.

A key customer is simply one of many stakeholders in your business. A stakeholder is a person, group or company that has an interest or concern regarding your business. They can affect or be affected by your company’s actions, objectives and policies. Business stakeholders can include investors, creditors, owners, employees, government entities, suppliers, competitors and even the community itself.

Your most important business stakeholder, however, is your customer. A customer is someone who buys products or services from your company. They drive everything that you do.

Your products and services will serve a plethora of different people. So, your company will have many customers — you might even think they are all key. A key customer keeps you in business, increases your profitability and stands by your company through thick and thin. Key customers have a vested interest in the overall success of your company. They are your most important customer.

1. Take Inventory

The first step to understanding your key customer requires you to take a full inventory of all your customers. Using good old-fashioned brainstorming, create a list of all your customer groups — this is typically called market segmentation.

2. Segment Customers

Once you have your list of customer groups built, break them into one of five criteria. The criteria are as follows:

Key Customers: These are the people and groups that you see align perfectly (or almost perfectly) with your work. These customers always return to you. They at least try all your services and products. When the company needs help from its customers, these are the ones that step up. These are the customers that will always leave you a good review on social media, even when their experience was less than perfect.

Important Customers: These are the people and groups that you see have a good degree of alignment with your work. These are good customers and loyal to the company and the brand. They purchase a good amount and support the business. They typically will not go out of their way and can be pulled away by really good offers —but they tend to come back.

Customers: These are the people and groups that you see partially align to your work. This is what I refer to as the movable middle and is where most of your customers will land. They shop for your products and services because the price is reasonable for the quality. They will leave a negative review if they receive really bad service, but most give your company the benefit of the doubt.

Difficult Customers: These are the people and groups that you see somewhat aligned with your work. These customers are looking for a commodity — they may always haggle on the price. They cost you a lot of your time and effort in dealing with problems and complaints, but they may barely buy anything from you. Often, these customers feel they are more important than they really are. Many times they will dangle the prospect of future business if you focus on them and treat them well, but seldom do they deliver.

Not Customers: These are the people and groups that you see barely aligned with your work. These are the kinds of customers that just happen to purchase something once in a while. They have no interest in your company or loyalty to your products and services.

Now, your final list of key customers should be relatively short. Further, segment this list by identifying which of these key customers has the potential to help you generate your highest profits and has the most impact on your growth. If you end up with more than one customer that meets this requirement, combine the customers into one group.

3. Create A Customer Avatar

The last step in your key customer determination effort is to create a customer avatar or customer persona. Avatars and personas define your key customer's demographic information, challenges and pain points, goals and values, and objections and opinions. Your customer avatar or persona should represent a single person in that key customer group, complete with name and picture.

Once you understand your key customer and exactly what they look like, you can build your mission, purpose, vision, and primary product and service offerings to meet that customer’s specific needs.