One of the most critical, and often overlooked, drivers of sustainable business growth in mid-market companies is having a deep, structured understanding of your core customer.
Many leaders believe they’ve nailed this down, but their insight rarely goes far enough.
They will often define their core customer as a company, sector, or industry. But that’s only part of the picture.
Your true core customer is the individual, or individuals, within those organisations who make the buying decisions. In B2B environments, these decision-makers frequently span functions, each with their own needs, expectations, and priorities.
To drive real growth, it’s essential to understand who these people are, what drives their decisions, and how your business can create distinctive value for them. I explore this topic in more detail in Understanding your core customer to drive sales growth.
Superficial insight isn’t enough
Mid-market businesses often operate with only a superficial understanding of their customers. They may have access to demographic data or anecdotal insights from their sales teams, but these fragments rarely reveal what truly matters to your core customers.
For example, your sales team might identify “on-time, in-full delivery” as a key customer need. While important, this is a baseline expectation, not a source of differentiation.
Genuine competitive advantage comes from understanding the deeper drivers of value: the top three needs your core customer has – often unspoken but critical to their decision-making.
This is where many mid-market businesses stumble. They lack a structured, disciplined approach to uncovering these essential customer needs.
Getting to the heart of customer value
A well-executed core customer review informs far more than just marketing. It shapes:
- Sales effectiveness: Your team can engage in more relevant, high-impact conversations with decision-makers, reducing sales cycles and increasing conversions.
- Customer loyalty: When customers feel genuinely understood and served, retention and referrals rise.
- Investment focus: You can deploy time, talent, and capital where they deliver the most value, avoiding the trap of trying to serve everyone.
- Operational simplicity: With clarity on who you serve best, you can reduce internal complexity and improve delivery consistency across the business.
Common mistakes to avoid
Defining your core customer is one of the most strategic exercises a mid-market business can undertake. Yet, it’s also one of the most mishandled. Here are some of the key mistakes to avoid:
- Treating it as just a marketing task
This is a strategic exercise. While marketing plays an important role, the process requires cross-functional leadership, bringing together insights from sales, operations, and strategy.
- Using the wrong lens
Sales teams often have close relationships with customers but may avoid digging too deeply into sensitive areas. This work requires an analytical, curious mindset, often best led by those with a strategy, marketing, or operational lens.
- Confusing demands with needs
Core customer needs go beyond demands like price or speed. The real differentiators are found in deeper priorities. Those that drive trust, loyalty, and long-term value.
- Trying to serve everyone
Spreading your effort across core and non-core customers leads to bloated operations, diluted focus, and reduced scalability. Focus creates power. Define who you serve best and build around that clarity.
- Letting the work go stale
Defining your core customer isn’t a once-and-done exercise. It’s a strategic discipline. Revisit it regularly, especially after market changes, to ensure you remain aligned to what matters most.
Get in touch
At SSBG, we help ambitious, disciplined mid-market leaders clarify their focus, build internal capability, and execute for sustainable growth. Defining your core customer is foundational to that work. When done right, it sharpens strategy, simplifies operations, and strengthens your competitive edge in a crowded market.
If you’re ready to take a more disciplined, structured approach to understanding your core customer, let’s talk.
