Ask most owners to describe their ideal customer and the answer is a demographic. Homeowners, 35 to 55, household income above a certain line. Small businesses in a certain industry.
None of that is wrong. It just doesn't explain why anyone buys, which makes it a weak guide to who you should be talking to and what you should say.
Why demographics don't explain buying
Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor behind the jobs-to-be-done idea, made the point plainly in a 2011 interview with Harvard Business School Working Knowledge: "The fact that you're 18 to 35 years old with a college degree does not cause you to buy a product. It may be correlated with the decision, but it doesn't cause it."
What causes the decision is a circumstance. Something happens, and now there's a job that needs doing.
His best-known example involved a fast-food chain trying to sell more milkshakes. Product changes based on demographic research didn't help. Watching who actually bought them did. Around 40% were sold first thing in the morning, to commuters facing a long, boring drive who wanted something to hold and something to keep them full until lunch.
The buyers didn't share an age. They shared a morning.
Bob Moesta, who worked with Christensen on that project, says it even more directly in his book Demand-Side Sales 101: "Demand is only generated by a customer's struggling moment."
What a customer situation looks like
Take an air conditioning company. It has at least two very different customers:
- A homeowner whose unit died during a heat wave, who will call whoever answers first.
- A homeowner whose unit is fifteen years old, collecting quotes for a replacement before summer.
Same age, same income, same street. Completely different urgency, different questions, and different ideas of a good experience. The first needs speed. The second needs patience, options, and a clear written quote.
The pattern repeats everywhere:
- A dental office has the family that just moved to town and needs a new dentist for everyone, and the patient whose previous office closed.
- A gym has the person training for a first race and the person whose doctor told them to start moving.
- A repair shop has the driver with a warning light on the night before a road trip.
Each situation tells you where that person is looking, what they're worried about, and what would make them choose you. The demographic tells you very little of that.
Why the situation matters more than the label
Moesta describes four forces that decide whether someone switches to something new:
- The push of their current situation.
- The pull of the new option.
- Anxiety about making the change.
- The comfort of what they already do.
Someone buys when push and pull outweigh anxiety and habit. All four forces live inside the situation. None of them show up in an age range or an industry code.
That's also why your best customers are a better guide than your average one. April Dunford, known for her work on product positioning, recommends studying the customers who got unusually strong value rather than averaging everyone together. Those customers tend to buy faster and push less on price. The situation they were in when they found you is the situation to look for next.
How to find your best-fit situation
- Pick five to ten favorite customers. Not the biggest. The ones who were easiest to help and got the most out of the work.
- Ask what was happening right before they reached out. A move, a breakdown, a deadline, a frustration that finally boiled over.
- Ask what they'd already tried, or what they had been putting up with.
- Ask what made it the moment, instead of six months earlier.
- Write the pattern down in one or two sentences a customer would recognize. That's your best-fit situation.
If you can, ask a few of those customers directly. People are usually happy to tell the story of what was going on, and their exact words make better marketing copy than anything written in a meeting.
What to do with it
Once the situation is written down, it changes several decisions at once:
- Where to show up. The heat-wave homeowner is searching on a phone right now. The replacement shopper is reading reviews and comparing quotes over weeks.
- What to say. Speak to what just happened, not to who the person is.
- How to respond. Urgent situations reward the fastest reply. Considered ones reward clear information and no pressure.
- Who isn't a fit. Knowing the situation you serve best makes it easier to recognize the ones you don't.
Our own best-fit situation
The same exercise applies to us, so here is our answer.
We work best with an established local service business that already has inquiries coming in, has room on the schedule, and has gaps in follow-up or coordination between the people and tools involved. The owner wants one connected process instead of several separate vendors, will share booking numbers so we can measure what changes, and works with the team.
If a business has no inquiries yet, a schedule that's already full, or no interest in a shared process, we're probably not the right fit. Those conditions matter more to whether the work succeeds than which industry the business is in.
Common questions
Is a buyer persona the same thing as a best-fit situation?
Not quite. A persona usually describes who someone is: age, job, income, interests. A best-fit situation describes what is happening to them when they need you. A persona can include the situation, but many don't, and those are the ones that tend to sit unused in a folder.
Should I stop using demographics completely?
No. Demographics are still useful for things like ad targeting and choosing where to advertise. They just work better as a filter on top of the situation, not as a replacement for it.
What if my best customers are in several different situations?
That's common. Write down each one separately, then rank them by how well you serve them and how often they come up. Most businesses find two or three situations account for most of their best work.
How do I find out what situation a customer was in?
Ask. A short conversation with a recent customer, built around what was going on before they reached out, what they had tried, and why they acted when they did, usually reveals more than any survey.
Fit makes the work useful
Age and income describe who someone is. The situation explains why they buy, where they look, and what they need to hear. Find it, write it down, and let it decide who you talk to next.
H Marketing Agency is a growth partner for owner-run local service businesses in Orange County and Southern California. If your business has inquiries coming in and follow-up that slips somewhere along the way, book a strategy session or call (949) 877-7987.