How do you build customer criteria to land more good fit clients?

Understanding Customer Criteria: Full Breakdown

When building customer criteria, the goal is to help you quickly and effectively identify whether a customer is a good potential fit — or not right for you. This is especially useful when thinking about outbound sales efforts, whether that’s a trade show, a lunch meeting with a prospect, or any other context where you’re connecting with potential clients.

A Real-World Example: HR Technology

Let’s say you have an HR technology platform focused on helping companies find great candidates. It’s a busy space with a lot of competing solutions, which makes having clear criteria even more critical for qualifying or disqualifying prospects quickly.

Hiring Volume

One key criteria is hiring volume. Does the prospect hit a certain number of hires per year? Below a certain threshold, it may not make sense from a pricing or business case perspective for the client.

Privacy and Regulatory Compliance

With constantly changing privacy rules and regulations, an HR platform handling sensitive data needs to evaluate geographic readiness carefully. There may be regions you simply can’t service today — but could in Q2 or Q3. Knowing this in advance saves everyone time.

Current Technology and Competitors

Are they using a competitor today? If they’re on an old, painful legacy system, you may have a high success rate converting them. If they’re using a strong competitor and are happy, that’s a signal to move on quickly.

Geopolitical Stability

In today’s environment, geopolitical factors can significantly impact operations and assumptions. Consider doing a premortem — if the environment changes drastically, would you change your strategy for that client?

Your Yes List and No List

The most important exercise is defining your absolute yes criteria and your absolute no criteria. The more specific you can make these lists, the better. When you’re mid-conversation and unsure whether someone is a good fit, these two lists bring immediate clarity.

Even if you have customer criteria today, it’s worth revisiting periodically. The more precise your criteria, the more you’ll focus on the right customers — and the more successful you’ll be in landing them.