This is a series about building and refining your messaging and positioning

#1 - Series Intro: (i) Messaging & Positioning Template & (ii) 5 Expert Tips
#2 - Messaging & Positioning Template: (i) Customer Unmet Needs & (ii) Persona Worksheet
#3 - Messaging & Positioning Template: (i) Ideal Client & (ii) Ideal Client Worksheet
#4 - Messaging & Positioning Template: (i) Differentiators & (ii) Value Proposition Worksheet
#5 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Market Category
#6 - Overcoming Objections to Positioning: (i) Proof; (ii) Workflow Redesign; (iii) Offers
#7 - Messaging & Positioning Process: Testing
#8 - Messaging & Positioning Process: Learning from Data

Ideal Client: A Systematic Approach

Many mission-driven founders fall into the "throwing spaghetti at the wall" trap by being too broad or addressing diverse segments with varying needs. This often results in generic descriptions of their target audience (e.g., “all donors”), leading to positioning statements fail to connect with their audiences. Consequently, innovators fail to engage decision-makers, experience stalled growth, and risk financial instability.

I share a few key steps below to help you break out of this trap.

👉 Tip: After skimming this article, download the companion worksheet to get more step-by-step guidance to identify your ideal client.

🪴 Discover how Joyful Ventures, an innovation agency, empowers you to drive community impact with bold vision, dynamic teams, and scalable processes

1) Brainstorm Segments to Find Ideal Clients

The key to this process is to find your current bright spots and what makes them different. I share three steps to get there.

A) Choose criteria defining what “ideal” means

There’s a challenge: how can you identify a bright spot?

To tackle this, define your "bright spot."

This task is more complex than it appears, as your definition will depend on whether you have market fit, which is marked by a repeatable and predictable stream of sales conversions, renewals, and referrals.

Scenario 1: If you lack market fit, consider the following criteria (hit toggle). These factors are leading indicators of future market fit.

(1) Accessibility: This refers to how easily you or your team can reach decision-makers within a specific segment or niche, often influenced by your prior professional experiences and networks. Greater access to these individuals typically leads to faster refinement of your approach and quicker sales. You might consider reviewing you or your team’s connections on social media (e.g., Linkedin) or contact books to find patterns of those you can most easily access.

(2) Perceived effectiveness: How much your prospects perceive your solution to address unmet needs. Consider data like average number of sales stages complete, or if you have sufficient wins, close rate or average time to close.

(3) Actual effectiveness: How well your solution would actually address their unmet need. Consider data such as how strongly your curiosity, expertise, and capabilities tie to the segment’s top need, and, if you have the data, customer satisfaction rates, renewal % or referral % rates.

(4) Cost and Complexity: the time and money needed to reach and satisfy a market, factoring in challenges related to selling, regulatory compliance, and successfully delivering value to address their unmet need.

Example: Selling to global Fortune 100 companies can generate significant revenue, but the sales process may take months or years due to complex procurement procedures, intense competition, and compliance requirements like SOC 2. Successful adoption and contract renewals are also challenging, as multiple user roles must be engaged. In large organizations, needs that a smaller organization might address with a single function are often managed by various specialized roles, leading to complex product journeys involving administrators, editors, managers, end users, and others. For success, many of these roles must adopt and find value in your solution, making the process more intricate than in organizations where only one user role is involved. For early innovations, this complexity can determine your chances of success and renewal.

If you want a sample scoring rubric for the above, reach out directly.

For deeper dives on these factors, check out the series below.

This is a series about Founder-Market Fit, a critical driver of market fit

#1: Founder Market Fit: The Overlooked Path to Your Ideal Client Profile
#2: Three Prompts to Founder-Market Fit and Your Ideal Client Profile
#3: Founder-Market Fit: Intellectual Curiosity and Unmet Customer Needs
#4: Founder-Market Fit: Essential CEO Skills

Scenario 2: If you have market fit and are aiming for more efficiency, growth, or financial sustainability, consider the following criteria (hit toggle).

(1) Efficiency: If you want more efficiency in sales or value delivery: Monthly Recurring Revenue predictability; Time or cost to close the sale; and/or Time or cost to onboard and get customer to value

(2) Growth: If you want more growth: Market growth rate and/or Total market size

(3) Profit: If you want more financial sustainability: Gross margin; net revenue retention; and/or customer lifetime value over customer acquisition costs

For deeper dives on the terms or metrics above, see the articles below

This is a series about building financially sustainable business models

#1 - Financial Sustainability Meets Social Innovation
#2 - Tech-Enabled Services Versus SaaS Business Model: A Framework

B) Ideal clients: What distinguishes them?

Now that you’ve defined what a bright spot means, let’s identify which of your leads and customers score well on that definition. This will illuminate your bright spots, from which you will generalize.

First, round up a full list of your leads and customers, including those you’ve lost. Make sure these individuals have an attached field that displays data on the criteria you’ve prioritized above. Sort by those who score the best on your criteria (”your bright spots”).

Second, brainstorm what differentiates the top from poor performers. This investigation will reveal what you think is driving those outcomes and where you can fine-tune your focus. Consult data that can give you this contextual information, including customer notes, your understanding of their priorities, direct feedback, and competitor information.

An example of how what this might look like. See worksheet in the next item in the series.

To assist you in that brainstorm, consider the following common observable attributes to generate your segment categories.

Affiliations. Does the organization align with a particular niche with clear needs/expertise? Examples can include being part of a development department, being a fundraiser, or part of the community health industry. Note participation in key events like conferences, fundraisers, partnership announcements, or professional associations.

Unmet Needs. What common patterns do you see around their top dream outcomes, use cases, and limitations of current solutions? To find these, scan their website, job posts, blogs, and other public information for language that lines up with what you're offering. Or better yet, chat with your buyers directly or review existing notes you have from your discussions with them.

Demographics. Analyze characteristics of the industries you’re targeting, such as those facing new regulations that increase the urgency for your offering. Consider factors like team size, geographic location, and technology adoption (e.g., data and AI). These elements can help you identify specific sub-segments most likely to value your proposition.

Third, use this analysis to brainstorm segment category names and add them to a list. Consider adding both market groups and workflows you improve (such as “personalizing email campaigns”). Add both because workflows can often be relevant to multiple market groups, not just one.

Workflows are essential in addressing customer unmet needs. They represent specific action sequences that groups follow to achieve a desired outcome. For example, personalizing email campaigns is a workflow aimed at improving donor retention or increasing contributions, a common desired outcome for fundraisers. The term “workflow” is often interchangeable with terms like use case, application, or process. We'll explore these concepts further when discussing how to identify customer unmet needs effectively.

An example list of segments look like. See worksheet in the next item in the series.

C) Optional - Brainstorm segments without win-loss data

If you're aiming to expand into new markets where you have little experience or you have few existing customers, you may need to brainstorm with limited data.

Consider the approaches below (hit the toggle)

(1) Unique differentiators. Clearly identify your unique differentiators and brainstorm potential segments or applications.

Segments. For instance, while you initially thought your precision cleaning technology was best suited for hospitals, limited traction in that market prompts you to explore other segments. You may find that your technology also meets the needs of veterinary or primary care offices, where you have better access.

Applications. Similarly, you might discover that the imaging components of your technology can be repurposed to develop 3D models, opening opportunities in segments like industrial design, where these models can facilitate rapid tool fabrication.

(2) Your Criteria: Even if you don’t have data, brainstorm ideas based on the criteria that define a bright spot. For instance, let’s say one of your top chosen criteria is market growth. You might brainstorm high growth markets by reviewing market research reports or even using AI Deep Research tools.

(3) Your Current Customers: Find “adjacent” segments based on your current set of bright spot customers and strategic partners. Think about how you might incrementally change some component of that segment to reveal new, high potential segments. For instance, if primary care physician offices are a bright spot, you may consider targeting related segments that they’re connected to, such as hospitals, larger doctor’s offices, specialists, or managed service organizations.

(4) Diversity. Often brainstorming with people from diverse backgrounds or perspectives can help bring in fresh ideas. Brainstorm with a existing customers, strategic partners, AI (I have a simple ChatGPT brainstorming prompt for this purpose), friends, and enthusiastic prospects to brainstorm promising segments or needs. To support this process, share insights on high-performing and low-performing segments, along with your thoughts on the factors driving these outcomes.

(5) Market Insights: Examine indirect or direct competitors for their customer list or social media activity, and see who they seem to be targeting. Evaluate growth trends in your industry, as these factors can reveal new segments or needs that align with your mission and capabilities. You might examine trends in funding sources, demographics, technology, laws, or other major shifts.

👉 If you want a deeper dive on any of these topics, reach out

2) Prioritize Segments to Find Ideal Clients

You should now have your top 2-3 criteria and a comprehensive list of segment category ideas. In this step, prioritize the segments to target first.

If you're starting out, focus on quick wins—areas that deliver high impact with minimal cost or complexity. You won't overlook higher-potential, higher-cost segments; it's about when you'll address them, not if. Use this prioritization as a dynamic tool for your "market roadmap," guiding you in building resources to tackle larger markets as you achieve initial successes

A common progression is to start with small businesses, then advance to medium-sized businesses, corporations, and finally Fortune 100 companies. The successes and infrastructure developed from earlier segments will enable you to effectively sell to and deliver value for those higher on the ladder.

A) Filter

For impact-driven organizations, common filtering mechanisms can help you ensure you’re only comparing the most relevant segments that have “must have” traits. This helps reduce the number segments you have to score and prioritize.

These filters can include:

segment’s alignment with your company's mission and values

baseline market growth. Filter out segments with negative or stagnant growth rates

segments and needs that clearly don’t fit your interest areas or expertise at all

B) Score

First, assign weights to each criterion, ranking them from high to low, with your most important criteria receiving the highest weight.

Second, create a table to score each segment on a scale of 1 to 5 for each of your top criteria, using the columns to represent the criteria.

Finally, calculate a “total score” for each segment by multiplying the individual scores by their respective weights and summing the results. This total score will help you identify which segments are most promising based on your prioritized criteria.

C) Evidence Quality

Optionally, I strongly recommend you consider the factor “evidence quality.” as you narrow down your top options for testing. See more about this critical concept here:

🪴

Strategic Decision Making Framework: Don’t Miss This Essential Tool.

3) Refine Your List to Find Ideal Clients

For the top market segments you've identified, take a moment to reflect on any aspects that seem off. Rescore the segments, add new ones, or adjust your criteria as necessary.

To enhance your thinking, sketch out the ideas below to see if this changes your scores.

If you're feeling uncertain about proceeding with the prioritized sub-segments for a positioning sprint, consider addressing any personal blockers you may have and/or create a new strategic criteria that would deprioritize that segment.

Define each segment. Crystallize these segment’s top observable traits that help you know if you’re looking at this segment.

Identify their top 1-2 unmet needs. Identify their main challenges or blockers, and the consequences of not solving that need.

We'll explore the second and third items further in the next section on customer unmet needs. After that, consider revisiting your market prioritization exercise to see if you would change any of your scores.

Remember:

This is a time-boxed experiment to test market fit and update your scores through customer discovery and sales processes with these segments.

It’s also iterative; starting at the base of the pyramid, discoveries at each step may require you to revisit your assumptions. These are hypotheses, and your confidence in their fit will grow as you actively test reception.

Finally, view this as a roadmap. You might feel stuck because there are markets you feel strongly about but recognize it would be challenging to tackle right now. It's a matter of when, not if.

Next: Ideal Client Worksheet

Now it’s your turn to apply the steps we identified to your own customer list. Access the worksheet to find your ideal client profile in record time.

👉 What’s your biggest challenge in this process? Share your feedback here or toggle by clicking.

See the next article in the series below

This is a series about building and refining your messaging and positioning

#1 - Series Intro: (i) Messaging & Positioning Template & (ii) 5 Expert Tips
#2 - Messaging & Positioning Template: (i) Customer Unmet Needs & (ii) Persona Worksheet
#3 - Messaging & Positioning Template: (i) Ideal Client & (ii) Ideal Client Worksheet
#4 - Messaging & Positioning Template: (i) Differentiators & (ii) Value Proposition Worksheet
#5 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Market Category
#6 - Overcoming Objections to Positioning: (i) Proof; (ii) Workflow Redesign; (iii) Offers
#7 - Messaging & Positioning Process: Testing
#8 - Messaging & Positioning Process: Learning from Data

Three Ways Joyful Ventures Can Help You

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Micro User Interview Questions for a 10 minute Innovation Process Strategic Decision Making Framework: Don’t Miss This Essential Tool

Dan Wu, JD/PhD

How to Find Your Ideal Client