The four criteria
When you have more than one plausible customer, four criteria help choose between them. Use all four together - any one of them on its own can mislead.
Reachability. Can you actually get in front of this customer with the budget and channels you have? Landlords are reachable through Google Business Profile and letting agents. Working professionals are reachable through search. Interior designers are reachable through trade shows and word of mouth. Each is reachable, but not every channel works for every customer.
Decision speed. How long does it take this customer to say yes? A homeowner choosing a kitchen renovation can take six months. A landlord choosing a maintenance contract can take a week. The shorter the decision, the more revenue the same effort produces in the quarter.
Lifetime value. What's this customer worth across multiple sales? A workplace-stress patient who books six sessions and returns annually is worth far more than a one-off enquirer. A landlord with a renewing maintenance contract is worth far more than a one-off call-out.
Fit with what you actually like doing. The least quoted criterion and the most important. If you don't enjoy serving this customer, the offer will quietly degrade over time and the marketing will read flat. Pick a customer you can serve well for years.
The three-segment trap
The most common GTM planning mistake is to write the plan around three segments, with a paragraph for each. The plan looks balanced and feels strategic. In practice it produces a website that speaks to none of them, a channel set that fits one of them, a conversion path that converts none of them well and milestones that can't be measured because the segments behave differently. Pick one segment per quarter. The other two can wait.
The one-sentence customer test
- Can a stranger picture a real person from your sentence?
- Could you name three actual customers who fit it?
- Does the sentence rule someone out clearly?
- Could you tune your channels and conversion path for that one person?
- Would your offer page change if you swapped this customer for another?
If all five answers are yes, the customer is real and the rest of the plan can be built on top. If any are no, the sentence isn't sharp enough yet. Companion eBook Finding Your Best Customer goes much deeper - this chapter is the GTM-planning version of the same thinking.
Worked example: a freelance copywriter with three plausible customers
A copywriter could serve software companies needing landing pages, professional services firms needing proposals or e-commerce shops needing product copy. All three are real. All three pay. The plan that tries to win all three writes a website headline that says "copywriting for businesses that need to sound clearer" - true, but invisible. The plan that picks software landing pages writes "landing page copy for B2B software companies whose homepage isn't converting" and earns three calls in the first month from exactly the right kind of business. The other two segments don't disappear. They wait.
What to do this week
Write the one-sentence customer for this quarter on the GTM plan page. Pass it through the five-question test. If it fails, sharpen it. The other rows of the plan will be much easier to fill once this row is sharp.
The recurring principle this chapter sits on is start with the customer. Channels, conversion and milestones all flow downstream of the customer choice. The next chapter, Choosing the Right Channels, takes the customer you've named and shows how the channel choice falls out of it.
