The more I do this Tacklebox thing, the more I realize there are two giant archetypes of customers and everything else flows from that initial split. And, if you don’t know which your customer is (and act accordingly), you’re screwed.
The two are:
**Here’s an example.**There’s a founder in the program trying to help companies that invested in office space pre-2020 but have since turned partially remote (and don't need that much space).
There are a lot of different flavors of this customer, but the customer they’re choosing has a long-term lease they can’t break. Which means they have half-full office buildings and will for some time unless they do something.
Within that customer, there's a split. One type of company is trying to grow into their extra space and treating it like an opportunity, while the other is trying to minimize the damage and treating it like a drain.
We’ve found that the mindset doesn’t correlate to the company's revenue or growth prospects - it's just a matter of their “dna.” They either see themselves as growing or surviving.
For the "grow" companies, the solution needs to leverage the space for opportunities. A CIT ran by our member saw traction helping this customer run events in the space that would bring them exposure - potential new business and potential hires.
For "survive" companies, the solutions that got CIT traction were around saving money immediately. Things like help with subleasing or motion detectors that identified spaces of the office that weren’t used often so you could save on cleaning costs.
For growth companies, the outcome / JTBD, was grow the company so the space was filled. Make more next month.
For survival companies, the outcome / JTBD was stop the bleeding. Lose less next month.
There were bread crumbs that told you which company fell in which bucket everywhere. The type of other products they’d bought recently, the quarterly goals (cut losses vs. increase revenue), etc.
Neither customer is necessarily “better.” You just need to know which you’re dealing with.
So, is your customer trying to survive or looking to grow?