Step 4: Define the profit potential of proto-customers.

Step 4a: Open and fill out a form

Open our Customer definition form. There are a couple of questions that will help you articulate who your customer(s) is (are) in terms of what their problem(s) is (are), how they buy, what questions they ask, and so on. You have the option of saving it, printing it, ignoring it, or submitting the completed form to the Socratic Duck for review. If you save and or print it, it's yours for the effort to use however you wish. If you ignore it, well, we guess that's your business. But if you decide you want to submit it to the Duck for our review and recommendations, you get an objective, third party's opinion on what you're attempting to accomplish. (But don't think our benevolence is entirely altruistic. Our nefarious scheme hopes some folks will avail themselves of advertisers who appear on this site, who will in turn think their ad dollars weren't wasted here and want to spend more. Rest assured if you reveal yourself to us, any and all information you give us, particularly personally identifying information, is kept strictly confidential. We will not reveal, sell, or otherwise make you known to any other party, without your express written consent. Privacy matters. However, if we're intrigued by your company, we may approach you directly about developing a stronger business relationship. So think twice before submitting anything. Nonetheless, anything we allow you to download from this site is yours to use as you see fit. Your only obligation is that as you get huge, and if you attribute that growth to something you found here, when somebody asks, you cite the source.)

Filling out the Customer Profile Form is easy. Answer the open ended questions with as much detail as you can. You're attempting to create proto-customers (archetypal customers, which you can go so far as to name; "Dave is a...who..."). Think about how your customers approach the purchase of your product or service category. There are probably several that fall along a spectrum, which you define. One example: "Completely unaware that they have the problem" might be one end of the spectrum; "They could pass for the inventor of it" might be the other. Another example: "They have a vague understanding of what they want" to "They know all the lingo, up to an including the model numbers." Ideally, you want to identify, two, three, perhaps as many at five archetypes.

Ask yourself these kinds of questions: "How would Dave [archetype 1] approach the purchase of my product? What questions would he ask? What information might he hide from you and why? How much knowledge does he come to the transaction with; in other words, how well can he define the problem, and how well can he articulate the required solution? Do I need to help him with my industry's lingo (translate it in both directions)?

You can open as many of the questionnaires as you wish, since we recommend one per archetype. Once you have them, you have a couple of options. Store them on your machine locally (renaming and saving each one as an *.html file, i.e., dave.html). You can then look at them, study them and figure out with to do with the information on your own (at no more cost to you than the time and effort). Or, submit them to the Duck for review and some recommendations about what to do with the information. Our aim is to give you an in-depth analysis and actionable recommendations for making your company that much better. From our outside perspective, which lets us look at your company in a way closer to the way your customer does than you can, we're going to ask you questions beyond those found on the Customer Profile form in order to get deeper into your specific company. And since we presume it's your company, beyond simply a Theory of Small Business you're interested in, that just makes sense, doesn't it?

Step 4b: Do the math

Download Your Business IS the Marketing from this site. This is a Microsoft Excel worksheet. We recommend saving the file to your computer, rather than opening it directly, since you should only save changes on your machine (if you save it on line, you may be telling the whole world about your business -- the stuff you don't necessarily want to share). Having said that, if you want to peruse it, open it directly, then save it to your machine. Remember where you kept it, since you'll need it shortly.

Being in business is, ultimately, a financial activity. You'll want to know what your various customers are worth, so that you can figure out how much you want to invest in getting them, keeping them and growing them. You also want to know which kind of customer is not worth fighting for (because they actually cost you money). With that thought in mind, download our handy-dandy spreadsheet which will show you what each archetype is worth. As with the Customer Profile, you can save the spreadsheet locally, or submit it back to the Duck for review in conjunction with the profile. In fact, submitting the profile and financial information together makes our recommendations that much better.