“You know, I’m on the fence for how much you’d benefit from this” – This was the response to an inquiry I sent yesterday to a woman selling a business development course. See, compared to her target audience, I’m a little ahead of the game when it comes to things like identifying my ideal customer, defining my value proposition and honing my messaging to attract and convert. Okay, okay, I could be teaching the business course – but this woman had a different approach and her marketing had been impressively spot-on. I thought I could learn something from her. And her honest response impressed me even more.
Even if I don’t need the course – I will be recommending it to my friends who are at different stages of building their businesses.
Because that is the power of establishing fit – even when you have to tell someone they’re not a good fit.
That business coach was more interested in ensuring that her clients would succeed than in selling another seat in her class. Which makes sense, because her marketing heavily relies on social proof (testimonials from past successful students) and she wouldn’t have those testimonials if she didn’t carefully select students with…
Success potential.
Is she losing money by telling me I’m not a good fit? No. She’s laying the foundation to make even more money, with less effort, by only working with clients who need exactly what she offers.
Now, multiply this story about a million times when it comes to SaaS, because that is where finding customers who are the right fit for what you provide can make or break your company – fast.
If the shoe doesn’t fit… ‘break it in’ and get blisters? (Uh…no)
When we talk about fit, it’s often in the context of company culture – a term co-opted by HR to find employees most likely to do well. You might say, HR uses cultural fit as a tool to predict the success potential of job applicants.
If we start to use fit as a predictor of success potential in general, however, new avenues open up, especially when it comes to identifying the right customers for your product – the ones who’ll use it, love it, and advocate for it. Yes, we are talking about product-market fit, but not in the way you’ve read about it before. We are going to break it down into all the ways a customer must fit to get the best results, and yield the highest lifetime value.
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