This is an important concept for all early stage companies to get clarity on. Lead Customers are very different from your top 5 prospects. Here’s how I define a true Lead Customer.
A Lead Customer is NOT:
- Your first major customer or deal opportunity – I often hear people say they’ve got a F100 company as a lead customer – and I say “yikes, let’s regroup”.
- A single person – it’s an organization. It takes a village to raise a child. Yes you need a champion, but avoid the chief developer who likes to play. You need your champion to see the business value and engage others in the company.
- Prospects who contact you first – these need to be qualified as lead customer types or not. They may be looking for a “whole” product (which you can’t deliver yet).
- An organization looking for an off-the-shelf solution. These are great prospects, but not right now.
A Lead Customer IS:
- Someone who has “real pain” that your product can address. Old contacts and colleagues are not always the best lead customers.
- An organization that is willing to work with you as you “work out the kinks” so to speak. This also means spending time talking with you about their needs.
- An organization that is representative of a potential market segment (see my post on fishbones). You should have several lead customers that are from different fins on fishbone. You should not be picking a segment focus until you’ve listen and learned from several lead customers.
- An organization you can engage across your company. Engineers to engineers, business to business, etc. If you’ve got only one point of contact, you have a problem.
- An organization that will be referenceable in future. This is key. Ask this up front.
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