I’m obsessed with the ideas of marketing and am always trying to find better ways to connect with my customers. One tool that I am using is called the Silver Circle. It’s called the Silver Circle, because well, I don’t have a good name for it and Simon Sinek already has dibs on the Golden Circle.
It is essentially a mind map of sorts that illuminates your customer while also providing ideas for business development/partnerships. I stumbled upon it by accident, and thought it would make a useful mental model. Here’s how it works:
Step 1. Identify Your Target Customer (WHO)
Who is your customer? Write this down in the middle of a piece of paper and circle it. For the sake of simplicity, I’m using a college student as the target customer.
Step 2. What Does Your Customer Do? (WHAT)
Think about all the things that your customer does on a daily basis. WHAT do they do for fun? What activities do they do on a daily basis? The more questions you ask, the better the results. Draw lines connecting the circle in the middle to the activities that you come up with.
Step 3. Where Do They Do These Things?(WHERE)
Now that you know what your customer does, think about WHERE these things take place. Draw lines connecting steps two and three. These will be places that you can reach out to for business development.
Step 4. Align Incentives (HOW)
The next step is to know who owns the places identified in step 3? HOW can you alleviate the business pain that these people have through the use of your product. Done right, you should be able to align the incentives for the target customer, the business owner, and yourself. For example, in the illustration below we come to an understanding that there is a possible alignment between marketing towards college students who attend bars, and the owners of the bars themselves. How does your product help bar owners while also helping college students (Win-Win)?
As a condensed way of thinking, we get the “Silver Circle” below.
I’ve used this model to clarify my thinking and find new business development opportunities. Try it out and let me know if it helps!