Choosing your ideal customer: Is buying optional?

Hey, Rob, back in action. How are you doing, man?

Good. How are you doing?

I'm great. I've, for folks that might be watching on Apple or YouTube or something like that, a change of scenery. I have moved in with my girlfriend's family. We just bought an apartment and learned literally when I vacated my last one that it's going to be delivered in 6 months. And so we are living with what we would call here in Mexico, the suegros, like basically my in-laws. And they are saints for receiving a grown man, you know, a 37-year-old who's just like invading their apartment. But yeah, it's been a big week.

I will just as a PSA be accepting applications for co-host, as I assume this one will not survive the next week or two. So please email me. Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. Well, But yeah, they were kind enough to vacate the premises so that we could do these shenanigans. But anyways, Rob, today we are talking about ICPs, which it's hard to imagine a more important first decision that a founder is going to make versus who am I going to serve? It's like, you know, you talked a little bit about this. Basically, frequently founders will start with like, what's the supply?

Yeah.

Which is that I feel like we've probably beat that horse, that dead horse, that horse, dead horse is beaten or something like that.

Yeah.

But the choice really, if you're starting from which you often frequently recommend, which is who are you serving, has massive implications for what you build, for what your target market is, for just basically how you go to market, like everything beyond that. But Rob, well, you know, this, this week's post is called From Idea to Pull Is Buying Optional. Can you give us some of the context? Like, why is this one on your mind?

Yeah. So I just keep struggling to— this is just like another version of me kind of saying a similar thing that I've said before, but it's still not landing with people. Like I keep finding it not landing. So I was like doing a session with a startup. that I've done a session with, a couple sessions with before. And they, they actually did this thing where, where they were, they had focused on the, their customers who were the happiest. And they're like, okay, how do we find clones of our happiest customers? And that sounds like a totally reasonable thing to do for finding your ICP.

Yeah.

But it turns out that their happiest customers Buying was optional. They were fine not buying. It was. And so, so even though they were delivering a ton of value to those customers, selling to other people who looked just like them was a slog. It was pushing because buying was optional in the first place. And so it just keeps coming back to that. Or whenever someone gives me an idea, oh, in the, or whenever I'm trying to figure out what the heck AI Rob is. We're like, we're over 150 people on it, like 150 startups on it. And I'm still trying to figure it out. It's really hard for me to get from like the kind of supply side, the product side to, okay, cool. Who's the target market? What is this thing? How do I figure that out so that I grow as fast as possible? And so the idea recently, I actually don't remember. I think it came up in that conversation with the startup where they were focusing on their best customers. We were going through an example of a company that they were trying to sell to, and we're like, okay, I know that in their case, growth is existential for this company. The, the, they are, you know, so why aren't they buying our product? And it turned out that like they had other ways of growth that could work. So if they had other ways of growth that could work other than what the startup was doing, Oh, they'd probably just like, they buying is optional in that case, even though growth is existential, they have multiple options of ways to grow, which meant buying was optional, which meant they didn't buy. And when we looked at like, oh, okay. So the question is, who, who is buying mandatory for? Who is buying not optional for? That is where we were able to like, that's where you kind of make it I think that's the question you ask that helps you fill out the pull framework in a non, kind of like nonsensical way.

Yeah. I also like the sharpness of when is buying mandatory. I admit you are going to be bringing me along for this journey because it's a topic that I haven't been able to fully wrap my brain around. But, you know, what you just raised makes me think, okay, this conversation is for the kind of like pre-product or like launching a startup. It's also for the, you know, trying to grow. Where do I look? What are the types of case studies or the anecdotes that I'm trying to replicate? Which, yeah, you list. Let's jump into this actually. Yeah, you write most conceptions of a target market are who I want to sell to, who would get the most value out of this, who has the biggest pain point or problem. And then the last one, which is who are my happiest existing customers? The first 3 there, I feel like one, anybody who's a founder has probably thought about all of these. Like, who do I want to sell to is where we start until we realize that nobody cares that we want to sell to them. Getting the most value out of this is the, like, it sounds right if your ROI is through 20x and then nobody responds to your messages. Biggest pain points and problems. Again, the bitch and 8 switch from Bob Moesta.

Yeah.

Happiest existing customers, which you, you just talked about. Honestly, that would have been my instinct before reading this, which is, you know, go through, like, look at my existing customers, figure out who was most satisfied with this. I didn't even realize that I was doing this jump, which is happiness. Seeing an equivalent happy customer will drive a new customer to purchase. Tear that apart. Like, why, you know, help.

Yeah.

Like cement that in my brain. Why is that the wrong approach and how should I be thinking about this instead?

Yeah. So in this case, I'll just give you the actual example. This was a startup selling, well, we'll get to this example a little bit later, but they were selling AI search visibility, ranking improvement. And their happiest customers were manufacturers. Um, and those manufacturers bought and they've, they've gotten so many inbound leads from AI search, like AI search, if you're a manufacturer, will bring you a ton of new business because you're like searching, especially like if you're, uh, I don't know, like a textile manufacturer, eco-friendly textiles for blank, like you're searching a very specific thing. So AI search works super well for you. And so when they got these customers, those customers were just like, Oh my gosh! This is like a money printing machine. This is amazing. This is this is really working. But and and so like you you look at that and you're like, okay cool. How do we get more manufacturers? But if you that like that's not the rel that's not relevant because it matters when they bought was buying optional for them or was it mandatory? And for those manufacturers. They already had a bunch of existing customers that they were getting repeat orders from. They already went to trade shows and exhibitions where they got a bunch of other customers. They, they, and they didn't have any sort of big imperative to grow. So they bought, but they would've been fine not buying.

Yeah.

And so buying was totally optional. They could have spent that money on other things so that the people who bought, they just kind of bought and like, okay, cool. Like, Let's see, this sounds interesting. Maybe I'll give it a try. Right. But, and so because of that, buying is optional. That means for everybody who's just like them, buying is going to be optional as well.

Hmm.

They can just not buy. And so it doesn't matter how much value you drive for them. If buying is optional, they will probably not buy. And it's not weird if they don't, they just like, they can delay it. They can. And so this startup was finding that when they were trying to sell to people who looked like their best customers, they wouldn't buy, or they'd take multiple sales conversations over months and they'd be trying to push in this, like, I know people just like you are super happy with this. What is going on here? And then they had another kind of customer who bought in like one day. And it's just like, I don't understand this at all. Well, okay. If you take the frame of at the point of purchase, is buying optional? You realize that for some people buying is mandatory at that point. And that is not necessarily related to what happens after they buy. You obviously want to find the person for whom buying is mandatory and they don't churn.

Yeah.

But if you simply just like assume that contingent upon purchase, are they happy? You're missing the important thing for fast growth.

Interesting. It's like separating— tell me if I'm wrong about this— separating almost retention. It's like suspending the retention problem or suspending the, am I going to be an NPS 10 solution for this, from the, does my product have the potential in like with this IP Excuse me, ICP to hit hypergrowth or something like that. Is that, is like, is it that we're pulling forward this retention question with the expectation that that is going to drive like growth or?

Yeah, no. So, so I'd think of them as 2 separate things that both must be true, but, but they are not necessarily directly related. So you, if you want to grow fast, buying must be mandatory. Also, if you want to grow fast, churn must be rare.

Yeah. Okay. Let's dig into the buying must be mandatory. To me, I hear that and it sounds like a combination of urgency and like looking for options, but they're like, we're kind of like focused on the ULL sort of like, and confirming that those are are insufficient. What does it look like when buying is mandatory? And like, there's a couple things I want to dig into there to understand, because it's like, it's not that competition doesn't exist, or maybe it's that competition doesn't exist. Like, what do you mean explicitly when you say you're looking for somebody for whom, like, it is not an option to not purchase, whether it is mandatory?

Yeah. I mean, so, so there's like a slide that I put in here, which is like, these are, this is ULL. This is basically pull, right? This is just another way to frame it, which I think is just like a, a kind of more zoomed out lens. It's, it's a more zoomed out question to ask yourself, which is, can this person not buy? And so if they, is it, is it an option?

Yeah.

Is buying optional here? If buying is not optional, I just like imagine them in like a, almost like in a cage, like a tiger in a cage or something like that where, or kind of like, there's all these different ways in my mind to visualize it, but none of them are actually good enough.

And so I don't— I love tiger in a cage. I'm just gonna just kind of carry that one forward.

Yeah. Yeah. But so like there's no way out.

Right?

You're stuck in a situation where you can't do nothing. You can't delay this, you can't ignore it, but you can't use— you can't do the same thing you've been doing. It's like not okay to keep doing the same thing you've been doing. And it's— and you can't use the available options to you. And so you're just like, you're stuck. It's like you're a coiled spring, right, in this situation. And then, right, like, Okay, cool. Tiger in cage, door opens, right? Like that, that's how it, how it feels. And so I can go through basically like all the examples of startups that I've seen take off and they all find people in, in this situation. And usually it's like a bunch of trial and error. Like you try to sell to a bunch of people and they'll say, yeah, I actually don't need what you're selling. I need this other thing. And you just find them. In a situation, in this situation, they tell you what that situation is. Or you kind of like sell to 50 people and it turns out, oh wait, I didn't realize it, but like 10 of these people have real pull. They are buying as if this is mandatory to buy while everyone else we are pushing. And so, right, like that, you kind of reverse engineer that way. But this is just a way to say like, this person is stuck. So Let me give you like an example that I'm planning on writing about in the future, which is, um, uh, the way people have trouble understanding this is like for things that don't exist yet.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so like, how could I be, how could buying be mandatory for a thing I don't know exists or a thing, a new category of product? And it's like, okay, well, take teleportation as an example. The moment teleportation is available, buying is mandatory. For me, because, right, like, what do I want to do? I want to have dinner with my parents in Ohio. Then I want to go take a walk in Assisi, and then I want to go home for, like, then I want to go to bed in my own home in New Hampshire.

Right.

And so, like, those are all things where, where, like, the fact that I'm not doing them right now, I'm, I'm still, I'm a coiled spring. I'm a caged tiger wanting, but with no way to do those things. That doesn't mean I'm not kind of like, I don't have that in me, that potential energy in me to do that, such that, okay, this new technology comes out or whatever it is that enables me to the project on my to-do list, go travel instantly to wherever I want to go. Right. I will release that energy to buy.

Yeah. And I just want to note that you are a caged tiger, Rob. There's 2 things that feel like they're jumping out to me. One is like the fact that something has to be purchased or some action needs to be taken. And then the other one is, does this have to exist in a vacuum? So let's say that, and the answer to both of those might be yes. It's like, we're, you know, I, with my business, Kumbray, like I needed to change my insurance recently and So it became mandatory to find the insurance policy that met that requirement. But I don't know that there were like, there's so many options in the insurance industry. I guess like maybe it was do it as fast as possible. I don't know that there was something that was mandatory, but it wasn't in a vacuum. And so maybe as you're thinking, like, maybe I'm just not the ICP. In that instance. But it's like, help me understand, like, are they 2 separate things? Are they a thing together? Is one sufficient? Like, if you find people that have to take action, is that good enough to go out? Do you need to find people that have to take action, but they've got a few other options and you're the best option out of them? Or, you know, like, what do I do with that?

Yeah. So here's where, like, actually understanding the project, like, matters a lot. And so in your case for insurance, your project was not get me new insurance. Like that's, that's a piece of it, but it's like, get me new insurance with the least amount of time, hassle, and thinking.

Yeah.

And so like anything other than the top result on Google has L's on it, has a second L, which is I have to think more about it. I have to scroll down. I have to do XYZ, right? Like, and so, and so you're looking for the easiest, most hassle-free way to get your insurance there.

Yeah.

Okay, cool. And so that's like one way to think about those is like the nuance of the project will, of a specific person's project will often indicate what the, why other options on the market are not good enough and what you should do then, right? Like, so if I'm an insurance company and I believe that, okay, people who are who are buying cyber insurance or general liability insurance or whatever it is, business owners who are doing that, what they specifically want is the lowest hassle first, like lowest amount of thinking possible thing. You're going to design the entire experience. You're going to invest all your money into be ranked number 1 on Google, number 1 AI search, number 1 on whatever.

Yeah.

Right. And like anything other than doing that is like a waste of your time and that the The fact of doing that makes all the other options L's.

Yeah. Fascinating. Are there other examples, maybe in case this hasn't clicked, where you've seen something where buying was mandatory? And we talk a lot about Jump here. I don't know if you want to go into that one. If there's anything else that comes to mind that you're like, oh, they found— this is what it felt like and looked like when they went from Buying is optional to buying is mandatory.

Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking of a kind of— there's a startup that sells into GovTech, into governments, and they were trying to sell an applicant tracking system into governments and they were just like, okay, that sounds interesting. We will talk about RFPs. We'll talk about, we'll explore this when our existing contract is up. And so, so it just didn't seem like there was actually pull there. And then one person was like, yeah, cool, exciting about ATSs. I don't really care. What I really need help with is this other thing, right? And they were, they just, and so, and that's what happened to me too, when I was like demoing a product that, that like people didn't need, they would just be like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And then they wouldn't buy. And then someone called me and said, hey, I need help with this other thing. I need help with recruiting right now. And so the, it just, it feels like pull the way that we've been describing it the whole time. It just, it feels like you go from you pushing to them pulling when buying is mandatory.

Yeah. It feels like a better question for, am I focused on the right thing? It negates the instinct to be optimistic about about when people could purchase from you or like, you know, the scenario where your product takes off. But it's like, how do we tamp that down and say like, could, you know, is there a world in which they do not purchase from you? And if the answer to that is yes, then you should think really hard about making a big investment or like really committing to that line.

Or figuring out, yeah. So if you found the kind of person where buying is mandatory, Like, that's your secret. That is the secret. You tell me, we chat about it. I keep it a secret with you and we both congratulate each other. And then you go and attack that as fast as possible. Like, that's what these startups find when they're going from $0 to $10 million ARR in like 10 weeks, right?

Yeah.

And yes, they work hard, but also it's, they've found that secret. They've figured out their There's a certain kind of person for whom buying is mandatory. We just need to get in front of them. And like, it's absolutely worth doing because there are windows in time. Like you mentioned, other people will eventually figure this out. They'll see what you're doing and like just copy you. And so you're there for a moment of time when you can just like absolutely crush that.

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Let's see, you know, maybe Like, let's hit these real quick. They're just criteria or criteria that you're looking for. There's one question I had about them. You said, you're right, buying is not optional when they must do something right now, where something is a project on their to-do list and they can't do nothing or delay doing it or do something else. They can't keep doing what they've been doing. Or they can't do it with their available options. I think we've kind of hit this, but I think what you're saying is that all of those criteria have to be hit simultaneously. It's not, you're not looking for one of those.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like this is, this is basically the inverse of pull or like the Waluigi of pull, right? So there's, there's like the version of pull that is, they have a project on their to-do list that's unavoidable. The list of options have limitations, right? This is just like that kind of flipped in a way that's like, okay, cool. They must do this project right now. They can't do anything else. They can't use anything else. They can't use what they've been using, right?

Yeah.

And those are the kind of properties that put them in a cage, and they must all simultaneously be there because if not, if you have everything except for the U, for example, right? You have P, Guess what? They don't buy because they don't have to.

Yeah. Hopefully, you mentioned kind of this fable that hard work or hustle or something like that in a startup is what causes it to take off, which is kind of like you just kind of assume that has to happen. And I feel like this framing is like, ask this question so that your success is not dependent on— I mean, it never was, It never was dependent on the number of hours that you work or something like that, but it's, it's like relentlessly look for the person who can't not buy your product and ignore kind of like other things.

Yeah. Well, it actually, actually what this is doing is it is making, so, so like right now there's a, you work a certain amount of hours and then there is like a probability distribution of, or like you talk to a certain number of customers and there's a probability distribution of things happen as a result of that, right? Like good things or bad things, right? Like you can work for a lot of hours and nothing can happen as a result of that. Like you can get nowhere talking to a bunch of customers. When you found the people for whom buying is mandatory, it actually makes your time and the output extremely linked.

Yeah.

Which feels good. It doesn't, like, it doesn't feel good to feel, to like feel like you're not quite sure if what you're doing is leading to anything. It feels really good to be like, okay, I am putting in effort and I'm getting out output and like, oh, I can see how this machine works.

Yeah. Well, let's make this super practical, Rob. It feels like an exercise I was running through is thinking through my customers and like what would've happened or was buying optional. Unfortunately, a lot of them is yes, Like buying was optional.

And, and what you could find too is that like, okay, buying was mandatory for them, but for reasons that don't really replicate, right? And that is another version of sucking. And, but like, it's good to know. And then you're, then you're like, okay, cool. No wonder it's been a slog to try to sell this. No wonder it's been a slog to try to scale this. Now I know what I'm looking for. And like, cool. And hopefully I now know how to look for it.

Yeah. Yeah. So there's kind of like a think about your customers and like one by one or like in groups or whatever it is, ask yourself, was buying mandatory independent of were they really happy with it, independent of did it deliver a lot of value? It's like, could they have not bought at the time of purchase? It feels like Another thing that's jumping out of this conversation is the indicator of they bought weirdly fast. They didn't need convincing. Might it, maybe not always, but might be a pretty good indicator that there was actually a mandatory thing that they were trying to execute.

Yeah, it's a good indicator, but you want to like go back and see, did they buy fast because they're like, oh wow, this is super interesting and I'm always into new things and da da, right? Like that might indicate that they are not, buying was not actually mandatory. them, or it was mandatory for some like unhealthy psychological reason for them that doesn't replicate.

Yeah. Yeah. Any, um, any other tips that you would say like founder can put into practice, uh, you know, today, uh, using the buying platform? Yeah.

So, so I linked in this post a, um, so it's very hard to go from like, here's my idea, like here's AI Rob, let's go from that to, um, to like, okay, cool. Who is weird not to buy it? Who, for whom is buying mandatory? And so I created a Claude scale. It's like very mediocre, or, well, no, I've done a lot on it. It's actually a very hard thing to get from idea to weird not to buy. And so what it just does is it gives you the kind of shape of the properties you're looking for, which I found is just really, really, really hard. And so it's just, it's just basically applying this to your idea. And if you change some of the words in your idea or change some of the kind of like Ways you describe your idea, you can see how the things change. I was like, treat this as a weekend activity, not as like a thing that's really important to do during the week, but it's an interesting thought exercise at least.

And maybe to clarify the skill, and you linked to this in the post, we'll also link to it in the show notes. This particular skill, which works with Claude, it works with ChatGPT as well.

It's a plugin for any of these.

Basically what you do is you describe your product, really. It's like you actually start from supply and then what it will generate is, okay, here are a handful of categories of potential ICPs that— is the right way to think about this? They might have a mandatory reason to buy.

Yeah. So what it does is you can give it your product idea, you can give it You can give it anything. You can give it sales calls, you can give it kind of whatever you want, and it will take that and then give you first, like, okay, here are the properties of the person who'd be weird not to buy. So they can't delay this, they can't do something else, they can't do it. And it gets kind of specific with that so that you can then say, ah, okay, that's the kind of thing that I'm— it's not quite right, but like, now I kind of have a feel for what I'm— looking for here? And then it just YOLOs a couple of different ideas of who that might be. I'd say don't trust that very much. I just felt like it might be interesting to throw it. What really matters is the properties. I might even include, I was playing around with it, like a graph of like, how many people do we think, which is pure slop. And it's like, it's just like, this is just like not a good thing for the world for me to put that out there. But it's cool. It's really cool. Yeah.

If there's a way that we can work in the tiger trying to escape the cage analogy into it, I think that would be fantastic. Awesome. Rob, other things that are on your mind that actually— one more thing that's just jumping out is the— it feels like the question of, is there, you know, what would you pay, like the Hail Mary, like what would you pay me to build for you? Or you should listen really closely when somebody asks you to build something or do something. that they can't already do. At that point, it's almost like if they're volunteering it to you, it is mandatory for them. And the question is like, does it replicate beyond that?

Yeah, it might be, it might not be. Like, it sounds like if you say, hey, what would you pay someone to solve right now? It depends how you ask that question or how they even process the words that you say, because you may ask the perfect question there, which is like, Is there anything that you've been trying to do that you can't do, that you've been trying to find somebody to build for you or to have built or whatever, where you're just like, if somebody showed up with that right now, you'd rip it out of their hands? Like, that's the perfect question to kind of like ask a Hail Mary, or that's a good enough question to ask the Hail Mary. But they may also say something like total nonsense, and they may say, oh, this is my job to be Steve Jobs. Let me envision that. And so You still want to test it. And that's why that's like mandatory versus optional is like mandatory is fill out the pull framework and we've tested the pull framework and the pull framework repeats, right? Optional is kind of everything else. And so you just have to kind of be disciplined about saying, okay, cool. I don't know if this is mandatory or optional. Filling out the pull framework is a way We do it in discovery. We do it like, we do it like even interviewing customers after they've bought to like figure out, okay, why did you actually buy? We do that as a way to determine was buying mandatory or not.

Yeah. And, um, you know, thinking about the, you know, using inverse, like, why can't you do this? Like the way that you kind of push, push away the customer and see if they like keep coming at you basically, um, is like a pretty good indication. It actually makes it less scary to do that. If your, if your goal is not sell to this person, Particularly early, it's like you're not trying to hit a sales target, you're trying to find product market fit. And so like pushing the customer away and seeing if they like keep like trying to get you to reengage, get your product or whatever it is, is a pretty good indication if they're fighting you that it's something mandatory that you're like, you're onto. You may not fully articulate it or understand it, but there's something there behind it that you should continue looking for. that might be a mandatory project that's, uh, you know, that they don't have options for. Um, Rob, we've run this a little bit long. Honestly, I hope this wasn't as painful for everybody as, as I suspect it was. I just, uh, like, I'm, I think it's an interesting idea and I'm struggling to wrap my brain around it and like know how to apply it. But, um, you know, folks, leave a, leave a comment, drop us a note if you've got thoughts on this or examples of, um, you know, maybe you've got a couple of different customers or a couple of different anecdotes that you're thinking about and one of them you feel like is a really strong signal of mandatory? Like, what does that look like for you? Rob, anything else we want to hit before we drop for today?

No.

Nope. Okay. Well, best of luck, everybody. I hope you all find the mandatory projects that cause your products to take off. We'll see y'all soon.