What to Say When You Serve More Than One Kind of Customer

The averaging problem

This is the question I get asked most often in StoryBrand breakout rooms, and what sits underneath it is usually a doubt about the framework itself. Maybe this doesn’t work for a business like mine — mine is too complicated.

The answer is no. The framework is not built for simple businesses; it is what makes a complicated one make sense. Complexity is the condition it exists to solve. You just have to go through the process rather than around it.

Almost every business serves more than one type of customer. A roofer has homeowners and property managers. A law firm has individuals and companies. A software company has the person who buys it and the person who has to use it every day.

So the owner does the sensible-looking thing and writes one message that covers all of them. And because it has to be true of everyone, every specific detail gets sanded off until what is left is something like we provide quality solutions for a wide range of clients.

The alternative most people reach for next is to pick one customer and write only to them. That works, and it costs you the other two. There is a better option.

Stack them, don’t merge them

Write a complete message for each customer type separately. One per customer, done properly, in their own words — the same eight decisions you would make for a single-customer business. Here is what goes into each one.

Then put them side by side in a grid. Customers across the top, the parts of the message down the side.

And here is the part that makes it work: read across the rows. All three versions of the problem, together. All three versions of what success looks like, together. Not down the column, which is what you did while writing them — across.

What happens next is fairly reliable. Common language surfaces almost immediately, because these customers are different but related. They came to you for connected reasons, and when you see their problems written next to each other, the shared thread is usually obvious within a minute.

That shared thread is your homepage. Not a compromise between three messages — the part that was genuinely true of all three, in the words all three used.

The grid, as a document you can use

This is the template I use with clients. Characters across the top with the shared column pinned first, and the parts of the message down the side — the character, all three problems, empathy, authority, the three plan steps, both calls to action, failure, success, and the from-and-to transformation.

Three instructions at the head of it: fill in each character column, highlight the language that repeats, then distil it into the shared column. That shared copy is your homepage.

Free, and no form. Clicking opens your own copy in your own Google Drive, so you can type straight into it.

Open your copy of the template

What changes and what doesn’t

Here is the thing nobody tells you, and it is the reason this is less work than it sounds.

Some parts of your message genuinely change for every customer. Some are identical for all of them.

I built one of these years ago for Lead City, a software platform for real estate brokerages, which had two very different buyers — the broker who runs the firm, and the team leader working inside it. Their situations were not the same. The broker worried about money going out faster than it came in, and about losing agents to better-equipped competitors. The team leader was frustrated that their broker would not give them the tools to do the job. Different problems, different feelings, different pictures of success.

But when I look back at that document now, two rows are word-for-word identical across every column.

Authority doesn’t change. The founder’s story — how he started as an agent, became a broker, built the thing because he needed it himself — is exactly as persuasive to both audiences. Credibility is credibility. You write it once.

The plan barely changes. Start a free trial, use it for fourteen days, build the business you want. Same three steps for everyone, with one framing sentence adjusted. If your process is genuinely the same for every customer, say it the same way every time.

What does change: who they are, what is wrong, how it feels, the empathy sentence, what it costs them to do nothing, and what success looks like.

How many is too many

Most businesses land on two or three. I am working with a commercial lender right now who has nine, because they offer nine types of loan and each one attracts a different borrower with a different worry.

Nine is fine. It is not nine businesses. Everyone in that list needs financing, so the top of the message holds — and only the specific problem changes underneath.

The practical problem with a number like that is not the writing, it is the grid. Sixteen columns will not fit on a page, and comparing column two against column fourteen is beyond anybody. So I work in batches of five, and two columns stay pinned on every screen: the shared column, and the first character I built. Every other character gets compared against that same reference. It keeps the comparison honest, because you are always measuring against the same thing rather than against whichever column happens to be next to it.

The test is not the number. It is whether the shared row exists at all.

Write out the problem for each customer type and look at them together. If you can find language that is honestly true of all of them, you have one business with several customers, and this method works no matter how many there are.

If you cannot — if the only thing your customers have in common is that they pay you — that is worth knowing. It usually means you have two businesses sharing a logo, and the answer is two websites or two clearly separate sections, not one homepage trying to hold both.

What this looks like on a website

The structure follows the grid exactly.

At the top, speak to everyone. Your homepage headline, your opening statement and your main problem paragraph come from the shared column. Anyone who arrives should recognise themselves in it, whichever type they are.

Then let them choose. Somewhere in the upper half of the homepage, show the paths — plainly labelled, in the customer’s own words. For a real estate agent that is “I’m buying” and “I’m selling,” not “Residential Services” and “Listing Services.” The visitor identifies themselves in a second, which is a second of effort they are willing to spend.

Underneath, get specific. The page they land on uses their column and nothing else. Their problem, their words, their version of success. By this point you know exactly who is reading, so there is no reason to hedge.

Broad at the top, specific as they go deeper. That is the whole architecture, and it is why a business with nine customer types does not need nine homepages.

Two I have built

A real estate agent has buyers and sellers, and they are not the same person. One is worried about overpaying and losing out on a house. The other is worried about leaving money on the table and having the place sit unsold. Different fears entirely.

But both are standing in front of a complicated process with a lot of money at stake, and that is the sentence that goes at the top. On Ted Weaver’s site, which I built, the headline is buying or selling your home doesn’t need to be overwhelming — true for both, and specific enough to mean something. The problem section underneath opens with “what you don’t know can cost you,” which is also true for both.

Then the page says select how I can help you, and the visitor picks. From that point on they only see their own version: their plan, their proof, their download. There is a testimonial from a first-time buyer and a testimonial from a seller, and each one sits with its own audience.

Look closely at the two plans and you can see the converging and diverging rule at work inside a single element. Step one is schedule a consultation for both of them. Step three is contract to closing for both of them. Only the middle step changes — find the right home, or prepare and list your home. Two thirds of that plan was written once.

A recruiting and temp staffing company had two audiences pointing in opposite directions: people looking for work, and businesses with roles to fill. About as different as two customers get, and the kind of business where an owner will tell you the method cannot possibly apply.

The headline was we place the right person into the right job. Read it once as an employer and once as a job seeker. The employer hears “the right person.” The job seeker hears “the right job.” One sentence, two entirely different readings, both accurate — which is what a shared line is supposed to do.

Directly beneath it, a single line asked the question: looking to hire, or looking for a job? Both halves were links. And the same two options sat in the main navigation on every page, so a visitor who scrolled past the hero could still pick a side from anywhere on the site.

Notice what those paths were not. Sitting right there on the same screen were the three services — temp, temp to hire, direct hire. Any of them would have made a plausible button. None of them was used as a path, because the services describe what the company sells and the paths describe who is reading. Split by the reader.

The photograph did some of the work too. Rather than a handshake or a stack of resumes, the hero showed three people the agency actually places — two in hard hats on a plant floor, one in a shirt and tie. An employer could picture the staff they need. A job seeker could see themselves standing there.

What to say out loud

A website can offer people a choice. A conversation cannot. When somebody at an event asks what you do, you get one answer.

Use the shared column. Say the thing that is true of all your customers, in the plainest version you have, and stop.

What happens next is the useful part: they will narrow it themselves. They will say “oh, so do you work with people like…” and name a category. Now you are in a conversation about one specific customer, and you can use that column.

The mistake is trying to fit all nine into the first answer. You end up listing, the other person’s attention drops, and by the time you finish they remember none of it. One sentence, then let them ask. More on writing that sentence.

Three ways this goes wrong

Writing the shared version first. It is tempting, and it produces the vague thing you were trying to avoid. The shared column is something you find by comparing the specific ones, not something you write from scratch. Do them in order.

Splitting by service instead of by customer. Your service list is how you see the business. Two of your services may be bought by the same person with the same worry — that is one customer, not two. Split by who is buying and what is worrying them.

Hiding the choice. If the paths are buried in a dropdown menu, nobody chooses. The whole structure depends on the visitor self-identifying early, so the choice needs to be visible without scrolling far and written in language they would use about themselves.

Common questions