Instead of asking “How can we find more new customers today?” consider the following question:

“How can we make the customer experience better for our individual customers, and make it more likely that they’ll want to keep doing business with us?”

This contrasts sharply with the “pick a market and attack it” mentality that is often erroneously held by organizations large and small, and brings with it some surprising insights (and explains many common blunders).

For example, “the average customer” never buys anything, because there is no such thing as “the average customer.” Instead, there are dozens or thousands or millions of individuals.

The first step in making a business more retention friendly, and more Evergreen, is to stop thinking in terms of averages, and start thinking about how individuals will react to your experience, your marketing, and your products & services.

Start with a better question.