Effortless

And with each incremental step on that road, Amazon’s offer became a little bit more obvious. In the same way, investing your resources in creating a more obvious offer will make it easier for you to sell and grow, and harder for your competitors to keep up.

How much of that would you have felt comfortable asking of a taxi company before Uber? So yes, by all means, start by asking your prospects what they want, and your customers what made them want to buy—that will help you populate the explicit list of things that they’re looking for.

answer to the question of what you want in your new sedan will be very different if it is being asked by a genie as opposed to a car dealer!

obvious, resonant, and intuitive are like beauty in that they exist only in the eye of the beholder.

So for a customer avatar to be useful, we have to keep it firmly in the realm of caricature, where the mental picture of your ideal customer is simple enough to give you a clear gut sense about what they will like and how they will behave.

They contain just the key details that allow you to call a clear stereotype of your customer to mind, and nothing more.

if your friend told you Tina’s entire life story, you still wouldn’t really know Tina. But you might have the illusion of knowing Tina, and that would all but guarantee that the date won’t go well!

It’s best to start with a single ideal customer, as having more than one will double or triple the amount of work to do as you build your business, and create a lot of potential complications.

Female Mid-fifties Married with kids Living in a big city Upper-middle-class professional Well-educated, probably holding an advanced degree Politically liberal-leaning Spiritually inclined, regardless of religious affiliation