Entrepreneurship: Build An End User Profile
Entrepreneurship: Build An End User Profile
Build an End User Profile
(Disciplined Entrepreneurship: STEP 03)
Recap (Step 02)
• Beachhead Market
• Well Defined Market
– Similar product, Similar sales process, Word of mouth
• Refine Market Segmentation
– Tool: Market Segmentation Certification Worksheet
• Select a Beachhead Market
– Tool: Beachhead Market Selection Worksheet
Six Themes of the 24 Steps
• Who is your customer?
• What can you do for your customer?
• How does your customer acquire your product?
• How do you make money off your product?
• How do you design and build your product?
• How do you scale your business?
Who is your customer?
1. Market Segmentation
2. Select a Beachhead Market
3. Build an End User Profile
4. Calculate the Total Addressable Market (TAM) Size for the Beachhead
Market
5. Profile the Persona for the Beachhead Market
9. Identify Your Next 10 Customers
Who is your customer?
STEP 3: BUILD AN END USER PROFILE
FOR THE BEACHHEAD MARKET
Build an End User Profile
Build an End User Profile
Why Build an End User Profile?
There are three reasons you do this step:
1. To keep the focus on the customer
2. To validate your selection of Beachhead Market by deepening your
understanding of the end user
3. To provide the necessary information to estimate the Total Addressable
Market (TAM) in the next step
Build an End User Profile
• The fundamental concept of the End User Profile is that it must be a
person and not an organization or department.
– In the end, it is a human being, or set of human beings, who will use your product or
oversee the use of your product, so you need to deeply understand this person.
• If your product has one‐sided markets, where only one kind of end user is
required for the product to work, you can easily focus on building an End
User Profile for your markets. For multisided markets, such as
marketplace platforms like eBay that attract both buyers and sellers, you
will need to develop an End User Profile for each side of the market.
End User –vs– Decision‐Making Unit
Each customer actually consists of an end user and a decision‐making unit.
The end user very likely is an integral part of the decision‐making unit but
may or may not be the most important person within it. More specifically:
• End User: The individual (a real person!) who will use your product. The
end user is usually a member of the household or organization that
purchases your product.
• Decision‐Making Unit: The individual(s) who decide whether the
customer will buy your product, consisting of:
– Champion: The person who wants the customer to purchase the product; often
the end user.
– Primary Economic Buyer: The person with the authority to spend money to
purchase the product. Sometimes this is the end user.
– Influencers, Veto Power, Purchasing Department, and so on: People who have
sway or direct control over the decisions of the Primary Economic Buyer.
End User Profile
There are six items that are the most common when building a
useful End User Profile. You may want to expand or contract this
list depending on the complexity and economics of your
situation:
1. Demographics: Demographics are quantifiable data that can be used to
identify your target end user and also filter out those who are not your
end user. These are things like gender, age, income, geographic location,
level of education, school attended, and other relatively easily
measurable factors.
End User Profile
2. Psychographics: Merriam‐Webster Dictionary defines psychographics as
“market research or statistics classifying population groups according to
psychological variables (as attitudes, values, or fears).” Understand how
they behave based on what they believe, rather than the general
identifiable characteristics that demographics give you.
– What motivates them?
– What do they fear most?
– Who is their hero?
3. Proxy Product: What products do these end users also buy today? This
information is valuable because it shows how the end users already
behave, instead of how they might theoretically behave if your product
were to exist. Sometimes, proxy products are complementary products.
End User Profile
4. Watering Holes: Watering holes are the places where your end users
congregate and exchange information. They are reliable places for
information about your product to be spread by “word of mouth,” which
is far more effective than advertising. The forms that watering holes take
can be very diverse in nature as they can be industry conferences,
Saturday morning soccer fields, restaurants , online platforms, and many
others.
5. Day in the Life: Literally tell the story of what it is like to walk in your end
user’s shoes for a typical day. Make it a composite of multiple end users
whom you have actually spent a day observing and talking with. The
resulting story sets aside abstract studies and statistics and brings it all
home to your team by helping them understand what happens in real
life. It also reinforces and helps you refine the rest of your End User
Profile.
End User Profile
6. Biggest Fears and Motivators: What keeps your end users awake at night
more than anything else? What are your customers’ top priorities—their
fears and motivators? As part of the End User Profile, you’ll want a
weighted list of your end user’s top five or so priorities. Confirm this list
with the end users you talk to as much as possible. This list will be
extremely useful going forward.
End User Profile
• Your primary market research from previous steps may be useful here, but
you will likely need to do additional primary market research to
complete your End User Profile.
• Don’t guess or make stereotypical judgments about what your End User
Profile “should” look like in an attempt to save time. In the end, you want
information about real people, because it’s real people who will use your
product, not fictional characters in a marketing document.
Summary (Step 03)
• Why Build an End User Profile?
• End User –vs– Decision‐Making Unit
• End User Profile
– Tool: End User Profile for Beachhead Market
Who is your customer?
1. Market Segmentation
2. Select a Beachhead Market
3. Build an End User Profile
4. Calculate the Total Addressable Market (TAM) Size for the Beachhead
Market
5. Profile the Persona for the Beachhead Market
9. Identify Your Next 10 Customers