How Startups Target High-Revenue Customers

To scale your business, you have to take better aim at your target market. Here’s how.

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A lot of business owners don’t realize that they have almost total control over who their customer is and how much money those customers are willing to spend.

Once you understand this — and when you start to lean into what you learn — you’ll sell more product for more money with less effort and lower costs.

Your first customer is ANY customer

It’s not hard to lose control of your customer base. When your company is at the startup stage, it’s only natural to scramble to get anyone to buy your product, discover that it’s awesome, and — if you’re lucky — tell someone else how awesome it is.

Sure, you target markets, you do surveys, you narrow your pitch down to certain demos — but at the end of the business day, the only demo that matters is: “Has cash and wants our stuff.”

That’s the traditional roadmap to early-stage survival.

But like I tell my kids, “The road to success starts with telling someone no.”

Your BEST customer probably isn’t even your customer yet

In the business world, what that translates to is this: Until we stop trying to serve everyone on the planet in the hopes that the percentages will someday work in our favor, we continue to cripple our business with hit-or-miss strategies, unrealistic expectations, and painfully slow growth.

The solution can be found in your customer base. And the strength of your customer base is a reflection of how well your business performs for that base.

You are in control.

Now, there’s no million-dollar top-secret twelve-step plan to figuring out how to wield this control, but it boils down to targeting “better” customers instead of “more” customers.

Don’t strafe your target customer, take dead aim

It seems counterintuitive, but the first thing to do is narrow your product’s messaging, positioning, and definition.