# Who's your customer?
- URL: https://www.petrikajander.com/purpose-n-clarity/who-s-your-customer/
- Author: Petri Kajander
- Date: 2023-01-30
- Language: en
- Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/7330d180/podcast/play/63662372/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2Fexports%2F7330d180%2F63662372%2Fccb397761564bb5487661f34c1752879.m4a
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUxb9yovY9k

Is it the one paying for your product, the one using it or somebody else?

## Transcript (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUxb9yovY9k, YouTube's automatic captions)

[0:03] Welcome to business purpose and Clarity with patreon your host we talk about startup live insights practical tips mistakes failures and everything between hey you startup who is your customer yeah who is your customer uh what does a customer mean you may ask and that's a really good question is it the one who is paying for the product or is the one who is using the product sometimes they're not the same entity same person and then it's getting complicated that's the case I'm talking today who is your customer whom you're targeting the thing let's take some concrete examples so these are obviously fictional cases I'm just pulling out of my head but it should keep some ideas what I'm talking about imagine you targeting for educational Market let's say schools and in schools it's the students who are using your product.

[1:08] But the students are not paying for the product the the deed so it's not usually even paying for the product it's the school admin the school administration or it could even be uh depending on the structure whether it's a private school or it's a public school it could be some government CDO municipality or whatever big entity who is logging the purchases as a polling thing and they they are making the decisions so there's a lot of different layers in the in the process how do you do your sales stuff how do you Target and market and do all these things because it's now a bit more complex obviously for the students they have different needs they love the product properly for different reasons then what actually is the aspect and the perspective of the who may influenced decision making as well because well it's the students they want.

[2:12] To teach in certain ways they want to do stuff their way they love something they can recommend something they may not have actually the final saying they may not have to budget themselves so but they are still in some cases influence or in some other cases not so much influential like the students um in the final decision making what is the product because um let's look look from the administration perspective let's say for example let's be looking now from the ID the school is like using a Microsoft assay overall it provider so they're not using Google products they're using Microsoft so it's office stuff and whatever the Microsoft provides for schools if your product is the one who is compatible with the Microsoft obviously that's a big advantage and it's easy to do the integration and it's way more easier for them to accept Microsoft products and.

[3:15] Even if you somehow preferred partner of Microsoft and maybe the sales processes even super easy those are really good points for the ID and maybe for the CFO whoever is making the final synthesis if the license is really cheap you know pupil or whatever because of the of the Microsoft stuff they're buying and you you have that type of product thinking from that perspective the arguments for the product have very little if anything to do with the actual use case of the product the students the teacher are not really that relevant for the purchase decision and the aspects of the software maybe there's some backups or maybe there's some other admin tools easy integration to the student database and uh what not are important things for for some of these.

[4:18] Stakeholders what is it what do you do what is it what do you focus on who's your customer another question might become a bit more blurred as you see the example like this cave is is obviously something from the real life in a sense that yeah they are educational products assault to the schools and students and teachers but there's also the other way to look at this thing what if you just directly talking to students maybe the parents are the customers and there's no school admin there's no teacher there's none of those things it's just like the student who loves the product and then the the parent who sees the benefit of using the product and then you directly targeting with a credit card or whatever the payment method from the parents budget educational budget if you will that makes the business case different in some way it's easier you can imagine.

[5:22] The student and make a really good product for the for the use of the end user to the student to the people to the to the one who is actually using it to to learn or whatever the way you wanna bring the benefits and then you just have to make sure that the spawn so if you will the parent will approve the the and you can forget all the complexity of bureaucrats and the bureaucracy and the different sales processes involved with that type of approach you may be in a different field so that it's not that complex but still it could be that the one who is buying in a in a B2B environment it could be HR it could be ID Department it could be whatever different department and they actually use is some employee in some Department who is using the from the previous example that the pupil and maybe they have a line manager or some operational manager who is then the student or whatever you will in this.

[6:27] Case uh think about us as the influencer for the gays so there are some similarities but not too much but this is the same K same thing if you really start to think about what art important things from these different stakeholder perspectives and what are the aspects you have to take into in order to be successful in your business in order to take market share in order to have a product which actually sells and becomes like market leader so this should reveal that it's not just the use case it's not just that the user's benefits which are important it's a little bit more complex than that so who is your customer who should you target at what are the product features what surprising model what's the marketing what's the sales what's the business case where's your business Edge.

[7:31] That all boils down to the question who's your customer pick one.