Can You Identify Your Ideal Customer?

Michael Girdley offers a guide to figuring out where to focus your marketing.

Good Morning!

Here are today’s highlights:            

• The owner of an electronic-components manufacturer asks whether he should stick with a 24-year-old promise to sell through distributors only.

• Despite the attacks on Yelp, the owner of a spice business says he’s not sorry he took a political stand.

• MacKenzie Scott is donating $10 million to an organization that serves small businesses (Anyone know how to reach Ms. Scott?).

• Banks expect to have to fill 27,000 teller positions every year for the next decade.

THE 21 HATS SOUNDING BOARD

We’ve got some interesting conversations brewing on our Slack channel, including one started by Jimmy Kalb of Triad Components, who is thinking through an ethical dilemma: “Our business is a manufacturer of electronics components (fuses, circuit breakers, switches) as a part of the global supply chain. Twenty-four years ago, when we were first building our business, I created a list of ‘brand promises’ that I proposed to potential distributors in order for them to take on our product line to sell their customer base.

• “One of the brand promises was that we would exclusively sell our products through the distribution channel and never to OEM customers directly (cutting out the distributor). We are the ONLY company (regardless of commodity) in the electronics components industry to make this promise. This promise built us a great amount of goodwill and trust—allowing the company to be a true partner with our now 500+ distributors and grow our business to $15M+

• “Most recently, due to several different factors, we've been asked to quote some incredibly large pieces of new business (one quote exceeds $30M per year, with two or three others in the $3-5M range). These new quotes came directly from our own marketing and sales efforts and are not currently being serviced by any of our distributors.

• “Question: Do we abandon our ‘no selling direct’ brand promise? Do we modify the brand promise to say ‘we don't sell customers under a specific dollar amount?’ Do we stay true to our word and ignore this possible new business? Any thoughts?”

• Paid subscribers can JOIN THE CONVERSATION HERE