Sep 24, 2018 Written by David Barlev

Increase Your Success Potential With The Right Customer Fit

woman on phone showcasing right customer fit

Understanding what your customer wants from you is the name of the game if you want your app or ecommerce website to be successful. But, finding out what they want and how to give it to them is just the start of this process.

Just because someone fits into the mould of your buyer persona or customer avatar, does not, unfortunately, mean that you can be sure they’re a perfect fit for your solution.

woman on phone showcasing right customer fit

For example, let’s say you’re selling an analytical dashboard for small marketing agencies who are planning to grow. You have two business owners who match your Buyer Persona beautifully – their names are John and Dave. Although they are running very different agencies, they’re both thirty-something unmarried males who devote their lives to their startups. They eat at the same restaurants, work in the same city, and are kept up at night by the anxiety they feel from the thought of failure.

But, there is something here that is not included in these customer profiles. John absolutely hates e-learning. He just can’t sit down in front of a computer and learn on his own. He requires an in-person experience in order to absorb anything. Dave, conversely, prefers to do all his own personal development via online courses on his own time.

As a business, part of your solution requires that customers work through your e-learning modules. They don’t have to, but if they don’t, they won’t be able to use your dashboard to its full potential. In this scenario, it’s clear that purchasing from you would be an ideal solution for Dave, but a complete nightmare for John. Dave would have a great user experience, and John would have a terrible one simply because he is not equipped to be successful in your environment.

If you truly want to achieve long-term growth and success for your products and services, you want to do everything you can to provide your customers with the best possible experience. And that sometimes means turning away customers who aren’t going to be successful. Bad experiences spread like wildfire, and you want to avoid selling to people who aren’t the right fit whenever possible.

Learning to qualify people based on their customer fit will help you to avoid selling to people who will be unable to achieve success with your product or service.

Customer Success Consultant Lincoln Murphy suggests that we break this area into at least 6 potential fits:

  • Technical Fit: does the customer have the tech to be able to use your product?
  • Functional Fit: does your product have the features or functions this customer needs?
  • Resource Fit: does your customer have the time and money to be successful with your product?
  • Competence Fit: can the customer learn what they need in order to be successful?
  • Cultural Fit: does the customer share your business’s core values and beliefs?
  • Experience Fit: does your product or service give the experience this client needs?

I’ll stop there, but you can see how this list can easily grow and it suddenly becomes clear why people like Dave and John may seem like great candidates, until we take it a step further.

Customer success is a major component of providing a great customer experience, and it’s something you should always consider when strategizing and planning.