Let's Go, Customers, Let's Go! - The Twenty Percent

Hello everyone!

Today I have for you an interesting assignment which involves something called the Pareto Principle, the idea that "20 percent of your customers will generate 80 percent of your sales."

So, how do you find your 20%?

I asked Rabbi Berl Goldman of Chabad Lubavitch Jewish Center at the University of Florida, an entrepreneur I interviewed very early on in my blog, a few questions to see how he finds his main "customer" base.

Here's a transcript of the interview:

Me: Who are your target customers? Demographics?
Rabbi: The larger Jewish population at UF. This includes around 4,000 undergraduate students and 2,000 graduate students.
Me: Where do you find these customers?
Rabbi: We mainly find these students through tabling, events with free food, programs, Facebook, and fraternities. We also find students when they come on college tours through UF, or on Preview [note for non-UF students: UF's orientation for Freshmen is called Preview]
Me: What are your customer's problems?
Rabbi: Often, life issues. Anything from psychological to emotional issues. We deal with anything from extremes, like suicide prevention, to more lighter issues, such as parent-child relationships.
Me: Wow okay, so that must mean that these problems are pretty important in your customer's lives. If you had to rate how big these issues were to your customers, what would your answer be?
Rabbi: I would rate them very high. Of course, it also depends on the moment. An issue might be a big or little deal to them, depending on when it happens.

So, now that I did the interview with the entrepreneur, the next step is--you guessed it!-- to ask the customers themselves these same (or at least, very similar) questions.

1) Who do you think is the target demographic of this Chabad? Do you fit that demographic?
2) Where did you find Chabad? Or, did they meet you?
3) Do you have any problems that you come to Chabad to solve?
4) How big, on a scale of 1-10, are these problems in your life now?

Here are the interviews. I found that people are a lot more willing to be recorded if it's just voice, so I decided to give it a try for this assignment by doing all three customer interviews through SoundCloud.


(I don't know why it didn't pick up my voice in the last interview, but you can see my questions above).

So, all in all-- do the responses between the Entrepreneur and the customers match up?
I would say that they do! I definitely think that for the most part, people understand what they can go to Chabad for. Everyone agreed that it was for college-aged students, which is pretty cool, too. I think the clarity of Chabad's goals makes it easy for people to want to come and be a part of the events they host.

Alright, see you around, everyone!