How to Build a Target Customer Profile for Your AppExchange App
Everything Salesforce does starts with the customer in mind. When creating your AppExchange app’s go-to-market strategy, you should follow suit by creating a target customer profile. Clearly defining who your target customer is will help you craft tailored messaging for your pilot customers and focus your conversations with the Salesforce ISV & direct sales teams.
An ideal target customer profile for a Salesforce AppExchange app consists of the common facts, pain points, and benefits your customers share.
If you are just starting out and feel like you do not have enough data points to build a target customer profile, do not worry about it. The important thing is to form a hypothesis, document it, and start testing it. Over time you will come back to your target customer profile and update it as your knowledge about the marketplace evolves.
Let’s take a closer look at the attributes that make up a target customer profile and build one for an actual AppExchange app called Drive Connect.
What facts do your customers have in common?
Use the following list of items to document the traits your AppExchange buyer’s share:
Target Market: What is the most precise way to describe the market your customers operate in?
For example, Drive Connect’s customers are:
- Small and medium-sized businesses using Salesforce & Google Workspace
Target Buyer: What is the role of the person actively engaging with you to purchase your app?
For example, Drive Connect’s buyers tend to be:
- Founders
- Sales, Service & Operations Leaders
Target End User: What roles do your end-users have at the companies they work at?
For example, Drive Connect’s buyers tend to be:
- Account Executives
- Service Agents
- Consultants
Location: Where are the buyers of your AppExchange app located?
The more specific you can get the better. For example, Drive Connect’s customers are located in:
- North America
- Northern Europe
- Australia
Employee Count: What is the average employee count of the companies you sell to?
For example, Drive Connect’s customers work at companies with:
- 1–50 employees
Departments: What specific departments tend to purchase your app?
For example, Drive Connect users work in the following departments:
- Sales
- Service
Industries: What industries do your customers tend to operate in?
For example, Drive Connect customers are in the following industries:
- Consulting Services
- High Tech
- Financial Services
- Healthcare
- Non-Profit
Salesforce Products: What Salesforce products do your customers tend to use in conjunction with your app?
For example, Drive Connect customers use these Salesforce products:
- Sales Cloud
- Service Cloud
- Health Cloud
- Nonprofit Cloud
- Experience Cloud
Third-Party Products: What third-party products do your customers use with your app?
For example, Drive Connect customers always use:
- Google Workspace
- Google Drive
- Google Docs
What pain points do your customers have in common?
Next, document the shared problems your customers face. This will help you and Salesforce identify what organizations are a good fit for your application.
For example, Drive Connect customers pain points are:
- Sales and service teams have low productivity because the data and files they need to do their work are siloed across Salesforce and Google Drive
- Sales teams struggle to create timely and accurate quotes, orders, and agreements because customer data has to be copied and pasted from Salesforce to Google Docs
What are the common benefits of your customers’ experience?
Finally, capture the benefits your customers receive when implementing and deploying your app. This will help you and Salesforce identify what organizations are a good fit for your application. Think in terms of how your product creates value for your customers. What do your customers experience after they have implemented your solution? How have you solved their pain points?
For example, Drive Connect customers achieve these benefits:
- Increased productivity because sales and support teams have a 360 view of a customer in Salesforce that includes Google Drive folders and files
- Increased sales because teams spend less time preparing quotes and agreements and more time selling
- Lower error rates on quotes because the process is now automated
Here is what a completed Target Customer Profile looks like for Drive Connect:
Here is a simple template that can help you get started documenting your own:
Next steps
Now that you know how to create a target customer profile it is time to put one together. It will become one of the foundational pieces of your go-to-market strategy. Once you have a clear picture of who your customer is you will be able to create a targeted value proposition for them and then eventually put together a Salesforce Partnership Battle Card (Salesforce Partner Community access is required) to share with key referral sources at Salesforce such as AEs, RVPs, SEs, and Success Managers.
Many of the concepts discussed here come from the Selling with Salesforce Playbook (Salesforce Partner Community access is required). If you have not reviewed it, it is a must-read for anyone bringing an app to market on the AppExchange.
