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In week 2 of Market Discovery and Intelligence Class, we learned how to determine market size. On first glance most products seem to appeal to everyone. But, upon closer inspection it becomes obvious that this is simply not the case.

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As a lawyer, I know that the law touches almost everything. Name a subject, and there probably is a law to regulate it. Yet, not every problem requires sophisticated legal advice. Therefore, every lawyer must define their ideal customer. It is impossible to appeal to every customer out there or to be able to work on every legal problem.

The ideal customer has an urgent problem that he is looking to solve. Whether the customer chooses your product or not is a result of multiple factors. One of them being, what other people say. In class, we categorized influencers:

  1. influencers: external facing, like bloggers
  2. recommenders: endorsements from people closer to you (like parents, friends, and significant others)
  3. buyers: e.g. budget approvers
  4. ultimate decision maker: in my case this would be the client
  5. saboteurs.

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Saboteurs are everywhere! Their veto can slow down the decision process or completely prevent the sale. I am sure we can all recall a time when we were the saboteur.

 

This is a sponsored post on behalf of University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Certificate in Entrepreneurship program; however, the opinions provided are my own.