Essay

Who to Satisfy? Differentiate Buyers, Users, and Customers for Effective Product Decisions

Johanna Rothman · jrothman.com Free Beginner

Rothman untangles three roles founders often blur together: buyer, user, and customer (the one who signs a contract but never touches the product). Her own war story, where she satisfied a program manager but never met the actual users, shows exactly how a founder can win a deal and still ship the wrong thing. A quick, plainly written primer worth ten minutes.

  • Buyer, user, and customer are three separate roles that can live in one person or in three different people
  • Satisfying only the person who signs the check can leave the actual users unhappy and unheard
  • Map all three roles explicitly for your specific deal before you decide what to build
Open on jrothman.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. Should my ideal customer be the person who pays or the person who uses the product?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The best book on positioning against competitors by understanding the alternatives customers actually consider. Directly turns... aprildunford.com Book · ~200 pages Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It April Dunford
  3. The definitive text on how strong product teams discover and deliver products customers love, from the most cited voice in... Silicon Valley Product Group Book · ~370 pages INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (2nd Ed.) Marty Cagan
  4. Moore's beachhead idea is the definitive case for winning one narrow segment before you touch the broader market, which is... Geoffrey A. Moore Book · ~240 pages Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers Geoffrey A. Moore
  5. This is the classic mental model for exactly your question: how customer count trades off against deal size. Janz maps five... The Angel VC Essay · ~12 min read Five ways to build a $100 million business Christoph Janz
  6. This is the cleanest breakdown we found of who is actually involved in a purchase: economic buyer, champion, end user,... Dock Article · About a 12 minute read The 6 Types of B2B Buyers (and how to sell to them) The Dock Team
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →