DISCIPLINED

ENTREPRENUERSHIP
Who Is Your Customer ?

STEP 1
Market Segmentation

Business

Necessary and
sufficient
condition

Paying
Customer

How to get
that?

New Market

Brainstorm
1. Is the target customer well-funded?
2. Is the target customer readily accessible to your
sales force?
3. Does the target customer have a compelling
reason to buy?
4. Can you today, with the help of partners, deliver
a whole product?
5. Is there entrenched competition that could block
you?
6. If you win this segment, can you leverage it to
enter additional segments?
7. Is the market consistent with the values,
passions, and goals of the founding team?

Focus on a
target
customer

Narrow
Market Segmentation

Primary Market
Research

STEP 2
Select a Beachhead Market

How ?

Same step with narrowing the

market in step 1

The customers within the market all

buy similar products.

Three Conditions
That Define a
Market

The customers within the market

have a similar sales cycle and
expect products to provide value in
similar ways
There is word of mouth between
customers in the market, meaning
they can serve as compelling and
high-value references for each
other in making purchases.

STEP 3
Build an End User Profile

End User

: The individual (a real person!) who will

use your product.

Decision-Making Unit : The individual(s) who decide whether

the customer will buy your product

Champion

Primary
Economic
Buyer

Influencers,
Veto Power,
Purchasing
Department

THIS STEP IS CRITICAL PART OF THE PROCESS AND FOR THE CUSTOMER!!

STEP 4
Calculate the Total Addressable
Market (TAM) Size for the
Beachhead Market

Make a first-pass
calculation of the
TAM

Bottom-up analysis, to
calculate the number of end
users that fit your End User
Profile
Top-down analysis, to
determine how many end
users meet different
characteristics

Defining your
beachhead
market

Defining End
User Profile

TA
M

STEP 5
Profile the Persona for the
Beachhead Market

PERSONA
IMPORTANT

Purchasing Criteria in
Prioritized Order

Provides specific
details about the
primary customer

The more succesful

product to serve
them

Feedback for product

STEP 9
Identify Your Next 10 Customers

HOW TO COMPLETE THIS

STEP :
1

List more than 10 potential customers (aside from your Persona), and include any pertinent
information you have about them from your existing research.

2
4

Contact each of the potential customers on your list and present your Full Life Cycle Use
Case, High-Level Product Specification, and Quantified Value Proposition.
If a customer validates your hypotheses from the previous steps, now is a good time to ask
the customer if they would consider providing a letter of intent to buy your solution, once it
is available.
If a customers feedback is not aligned exactly with your assumptions, take good notes and
think how this affects your analysis.

Now that you have contacted each customer, you may have new data.

If you find that you cannot create a list of 10 customers who are excited about your HighLevel Product Specification, then you may need to reconsider your beachhead market.

While this step is conceptually simple, contacting customers and getting information from
them will require a good amount of work, but will be invaluable as you move forward.

ensi :
plined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup

THANK YOU