Effective segmentation can drive up company value at time of sale
When the day comes that you want to attract and excite a third party to acquirer your business, it will be critical that you show them that your team deeply understands the various customer segments in your market place that you serve today, even those that you may not yet serve but may provide a future expansion opportunity. You serve a clustomer when you group all your customers into a single cluster and treat them as if they all have common buying needs. Over time, this is a dangerous and growth limiting assumption to make. You serve customers when you segment them according to how their needs may differ from each other. Segmenting your customers by their unique needs is the optimal path to exciting a future acquirer. Your business is ideal for conducting customer segmentation if any or all of these apply:
- We have customers that use our product/service differently than others do
- We have customers that purchase our product/service differently than how some others do
- where they buy from, such as direct versus thru middleman
- have a different purchasing process, such as the timing of their purchasing need or their process for how they find/select/buy our product/service
- We have customers that vary by geography or even culture (i.e.: domestic versus international)
- We have customers of different sizes (i.e.: small mom & pop versus larger corporations, public companies versus private)
- We have customers with varying needs in terms of the support they need from us (i.e.: sales support, technical support, customer service, etc)
These are just a few of the ways that companies will segment their customers. Help strengthen your business today and prepare to impress your future company acquirer by talking with your team about the effectiveness of your customer segmentation planning and build the future value of your enterprise.
