Who Needs What You Do?

A next-generation leader recently noticed that his friends wouldn’t shop at his family’s specialty food stores.

Their parents had been loyal customers for decades, but his generation saw the brand as belonging to their parents’ world, not theirs.

“The kids aren’t coming.”

He wasn’t panicked about it. He was curious. He saw it as an opportunity for increased impact and growth. It’s a community he can serve, and he understands what they need because he’s one of them. He just didn’t have a framework yet for what to do with that instinct.

Recently, I wrote about the real problem facing generational brands, one that feels like a demographic issue, but is really one of dependency. The short version: your concern about your aging customer base reveals an important vulnerability. A hyperfocus on longtime customers creates tunnel vision that misses opportunities for growth and expansion.

This week, I want to offer a tool for seeing it differently.

The non-customer

Management scholar Clayton Christensen observed that companies often learn the most about their future growth by studying their “non-customers.” These are people who have the same need a business solves, but who aren’t buying from them yet.

The insight is about understanding the job your product is being hired to do. Christensen’s research showed that customers hire brands to accomplish something in their lives. When you understand the job, you can ask a more precise question: who else has this need, but hasn’t hired us to do it?

His McDonald’s research shows what this looks like in practice. McDonald’s core milkshake customers were families with young kids who wanted an inexpensive sweet treat. But commuters were quietly hiring milkshakes for a different job. They needed something to make a long, boring drive more bearable. The milkshake was competing with bananas, bagels, and the radio.

Once McDonald’s understood that, they added chunks of fruit to make the shakes a better commute companion, and made them thicker to last longer. That let them serve commuters without abandoning the families who already loved them.

Who already has the job?

Consider a diaspora specialty food retailer with multiple locations and an online store. Their core customers have been shopping with them for decades, buying the ingredients that let them cook the food that connects them to home, family, and identity. It’s a powerful and specific job, and this business does it exceptionally well.

But the next generation grew up between cultures. Many drifted away from those foods in their teens and twenties, but are increasingly feeling the pull back toward food as identity. They’re starting families and want to cook the food their kids will remember from their own childhoods.

They have exactly the job this business was built to solve. They just haven’t walked through the door yet.

And here’s what makes this interesting: the business already has everything it needs to reach them. The infrastructure that serves the first generation can reach the second, if it is pointed in the right direction. Most businesses assume that finding new customers requires building new capabilities. This one doesn’t.

Start with who you already know

Looking for non-customers is an especially powerful tactic for family businesses with deep loyalty to longtime customers. It creates a path to growth that doesn’t require abandoning the people who built the business. You’re expanding who you serve, not changing what you do.

The next-gen leader I mentioned at the top is sitting on something valuable that he can feel, even if he hasn’t quite named it yet. His friends are non-customers who already have the job his family business was built to do. He understands their context because he shares it. Corporate strategists would invest millions for that kind of customer insight. He already has it, ready to be put to work.