Choose a first buyer you can actually reach.
Give your AI your offer, what you know about buyers and who you can reach. Leave with one customer group and a small test.
Use this promptHow can AI help you choose your first customers?
“Small businesses” can sound like a customer group until you try to find someone to talk to. Which business? Who decides? What would make them pay attention today?
This prompt helps you narrow the choice using what you have seen and the people you can reach. You can use it before you build or when your offer is live but your first buyers are still unclear.
You are choosing where to learn first. You can change the choice when a real response gives you a reason to.
Before you paste it
Give your AI this context:
- What you could offer now, or the small version you could deliver.
- The customer groups you are considering. “I don’t know yet” is a useful answer.
- What people have actually said, done or paid for. Separate that from your guesses.
- People you can contact, or a specific place you can meet them, within your time and budget. Use anonymous summaries for private customer notes.
PASTE INTO YOUR AI
Help me choose my first customer group
Help me choose one customer group to approach first. My offer or idea: [what I could help someone do] What I can deliver now: [include any important limit] Groups I’m considering: [list them, or say I’m unsure] What I know from real people: [what they said, did or paid for; “nothing yet” is fine] Who I can reach and how: [existing contacts or a specific route; label untested access] Time and budget for a first test: [my limits] Use this context. If something missing could change the choice, ask me one question at a time. Use the answer to decide what you still need; don’t give me a questionnaire or repeat what I’ve already told you. Compare the groups using the evidence we have: a specific problem, what people do about it now, who uses the offer versus who can agree to buy, whether I can deliver a useful result, and how I can reach them. Keep unknowns visible. Don’t invent market sizes, customer quotes, willingness to pay or lists of prospects. Recommend one group to approach first and explain the tradeoff. Define it clearly enough that I can recognize someone who fits. If access is the biggest gap, make verifying a route the next step. If nobody’s need is established yet, treat this as a choice of who to learn from, not proven demand. Give me a short working note: - The group, the likely buyer and the problem we think matters. - What supports the choice and the important assumption still untested. - One realistic way to reach them and the smallest conversation or offer test to run. - What to ask or offer, and what I will record afterward. - A response that would make us reconsider the group or offer. Respect my constraints. Help me prepare the test; leave contacting people, spending and publishing with me.
What you should leave with
A short working note: one recognizable customer group, the person who could buy, why you chose them, a way to reach them and a small test. You should be able to name the next person or route to check. A polished customer profile without a way to reach anyone leaves the main question unresolved.
Illustrative example · not a customer result
You bring: You want to offer help keeping small-business websites up to date. You are considering cafés, tradespeople and independent gyms. You know four gym owners through a local club; one recently told you their class timetable was wrong online. You have no evidence about the other groups yet.
A useful result: Start by talking to independent gym owners you can reach. Find out how often their timetable changes, how they update it now and who decides whether to pay for help. You have a contact route and one reported problem, which makes this a sensible place to investigate. It does not establish that the other owners have the problem or that anyone will buy.
Then do this
Use the route you chose. Have the conversation or make the small offer, then record what happened in the person’s own words. Give that evidence back to your AI before expanding the plan. If nobody replies, check the route and your ask before treating silence as proof there is no need.
Reachability helps you test a choice. It does not prove the problem matters enough for someone to pay.