For marketers and business owners with an innate sense of their target market and audience, pinpointing their ideal customer isn’t always straightforward. To simplify the process, they should examine their existing customer base and answer the basic questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Any customer-facing role is at risk of landing a toxic client. Business leaders and marketers must evaluate prospective customers as they would prospective employees during the hiring process. They should assess the individual for cultural fit and identify undesirable personality traits and mannerisms contradicting their organization’s values and growth objectives.

Direct competition is no longer the main factor a business should consider critical to remaining relevant. A brand’s business strategy must continuously evolve to compete across industries on the basis of customer experience.

Since the onset of the pandemic, we’ve experienced significant disruptions in the global supply chain. No business, whether product or service-oriented, has escaped the impact of limited products or component availability and long lead times. Now is the time, more than ever, to re-think sourcing, stocking, and sales strategies.