Not Only Luck.
An essay by John Melonakos

The Word “Customer”

One easy way to tell an entrepreneurial newbie from a veteran is to watch how careful they are with the word, “customer.” Veterans are careful to reserve the word “customer” to refer to paying customers. Veterans use other words to describe everything else:

  • Prospective customers – blanket statement for anyone in your target market that has yet to take action with your startup
  • Leads – a prospective customer for whom you have some contact information and can load them into Salesforce.com or other CRM
    • Inbound leads – come voluntarily through whitepaper download, webinar registration, website login, tradeshow attendee, etc.
    • Outbound (or scraped) leads – come through your own outbound digging efforts (a controversial topic)
  • Users – freemium, trial, or other non-paying users of your company’s products. Users are leads.
  • Customers – someone who has paid money for your product or service

Last week, I read a horrible go-to-market plan from a new startup. It was bad for many reasons, but I cringed the way it threw around the term “customer” so loosely.

Yesterday, David Cummings posted about the critical importance of building a customer acquisition machine. Anyone who has spent the time, effort, and money to build a customer acquisition machine gains a deep respect for the word “customer.”

What are you thoughts on the word “customer”? Do you agree?

 

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From the conversation

Comments preserved from the original post.

Kyle Porter

It depends on where you are using it (external or internal). I like to use the word “client” or “customer” internally to describe anyone whom we are trying to help succeed. I’ll steal some lines from a great author, Mahan Khasla:

“The client can be either current or potential. The client can be internal or external to an organization. The client can be multiple people, and often is.”

You see, the tactics of how you use the term don’t matter, it’s the intent. If you’re using the term internally to help your “audience” use whatever you like. If you’re using it to try and improve your image externally (for new business, raising money or recruiting), you might want to be careful with what language you use.

melonakos

In reply to an earlier comment

Excellent point! Surely it is OK to use the term customers to broadly refer to that group if the intent is good. Intent is what matters, along with not getting sloppy in word choice.