Step-by-Step Instructions

Click to print worksheet

Let’s start brainstorming, and solidifying your customer segments.

Problems it Solves

1. Unsure who your first customers will be? Not for long.
2. How narrowly should you define your “customer segments?” How narrow is too narrow? How broad is too broad?
3. How do you segment B2B customers versus B2C customers?

Building a Huge List of Customers

Break out the “Customer Storming & Role-izing” worksheet.

Step 1

Write in your Victory Declaration.  This victory declaration is important because, again, it makes all of our decisions easier.  Never forget your true aim!

Step 2

Write in the problem you hypothesized your first customer group has from the “Idea Generation” exercise:

Step 3

Give yourself three minutes to write down as many different groups of people you can that might have the problem from Step 2.

In other words, write down all the potential segments you could serve with a product that solves the hypothesized problem.

Get at least 10 before continuing.

In my example, I am focusing on the problem "How do I do Lean Startup?”

Who might have this problem?

Note: there are no bad ideas for this exercise. The more the merrier. Don’t worry if they don’t make a ton of sense, or even if they fulfill the criteria – you'll worry about that later.

In brainstorming, quantity > quality.

Step 4

Now let’s start cleaning these segments up.

The easiest way to figure out if you have a good customer segment is to identify the person’s role, or what title they would use to describe themselves.

A great segment is one its members would describe themselves as.

“Females, 18 – 25” is an awful segment. Why? We can’t ask people about being “18 – 25” because no one sees themselves that way. Instead, people see themselves as:

• High school seniors
• Sorority members
• Computer Engineering students
• Recent college grads

If instead you ask customers about any of the roles they personally identify with…

…they’ll give you a treasure trove of problems you can solve for them.

In my example, I don’t think people would self-describe themselves as “startup curious corporates.” I need to figure out what words they’d use to describe their relationship with entrepreneurship.

In a similar vein, Accelerators don’t make the cut.  No one is an Accelerator, they have a role within an Accelerator.

This is key when you’re creating B2B segments:

Businesses don’t have problems. People within businesses have problems.

For other possible segments you listed, you may have to get more specific.  For example, I listed “professors” as a segment. There are many types of professors out there, but few of them would use the term “professor” to describe themselves.

Instead, they’d refer to themselves as their specific role in their university: marketing professor, Dean of the Business school, entrepreneurship professor, etc.

Now that you know what makes for a bad segment, cross out any group you listed in Step 3 where the members would not describe themselves with the word you did.

If you’re unsure whether you should refine a segment, here’s the litmus test.

Would someone use that term to describe themselves in any of these places:

• Twitter profile
• LinkedIn profile
• A conversation with their best friend

If so, awesome, leave that segment. If not…cross it out.

Step 5

Replace the crossed out segments with a more specific role someone would use to self-identify.

With this simple shift, you have already started to get more specificity, which will help you drive better conversations with customers and elicit better problems.

Step 6

Now select 3-5 segments which you'll use in the next exercise of this workbook; the ones your gut says are most likely help you achieve your victory.

Don’t worry about whether your gut is right – you'll compensate for that later.

In my case, my victory is to get $1 million in the bank  so I am going to target large segments I'm passionate about, but also have money to spend. My choices are:

• Startup founders
• Entrepreneurship professors
• Innovation consultants
• Directors of corporate incubators

What’s Next?

In this exercise you created a broad list of possible customers – all your possible Early Adopters. Then you trimmed that to a very specific list of “roles” (a.k.a. segments) to hone in on.

Next you’ll take that list of segments and dive even deeper into them, sussing out which customers are the most eager for your product!