How To Create A Customer. A Quick Guide for Indie Consulting Firms.

Do you find, discover or create a customer?

If you think about creating a brand that lives long, you create it.

Here’s a quick framework based on the work of Marty Neumeier, with some spice by yours truly. :)

5 Steps To Create A Customer

1. See Greatness In People

Don’t position your products, position your customers for success in the world.

Help them achieve what they want (Help people you like get what they want). Where’s the focus of your brand? Messages, comms, media — is it focused on you or on them?

Look for the highest good. Think long term, take the higher ground. That’s YOUR responsibility (and choice).

2. Help Then Find Meaning In Their Lives

“The really great brands have something more than a stack of benefits. They create emotion. ‘There’s something about it that’s building my identity.‘”

It’s how the customer adopts the business and its products as part of their life. Simon Sinek’s “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

3. Design The Customers You Want

Design the space for them so they can see and inhabit that space. “That’s me in there!” They’ll tell others and that’s the beginning of a tribe.

To me, that’s the base to niching down. You can only find the right fit if you design them (not in the graphic design or artistic way, but in the one that is intentional). That way you’re able to Say No to the wrong ones. Seth Godin’s Minimum Viable Audience.

4. Support And Grow The Tribe

Help The Tribe Thrive™.

Show in ways of how you can serve them to thrive. Community building, building in public, approach with curiosity. [Resource: Fostering a Community of Clients w/Joel Pilger]

5. Create A Framework For Stories

“[…]Great narratives identify opportunities for the people outside the company to pursue on their own.”

The story is about your customers. Set the scene and let them play along.

John Hagel’s framework around narratives and stories makes this simpler. On the same side, there’s Guillaume Wiatr with Strategic Narrative.

Summing up, a consistent brand helps support a business and associate it with its intended meaning, making it thrive.

What the customer thinks he is buying, what he considers “value,” is decisive — it determines what a business is, what it produces and whether it will prosper. Peter Drucker

Are you designing your audience? How are you approaching this?

Lemme know. :)

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