A segmentation that makes people laugh is a segmentation they will actually use.
Last week I argued that knowing how big a customer is tells you very little about how to speak to them. So what does the second layer look like? Here is the answer you probably do not expect: it does not have to be sophisticated. It has to be used. And for that purpose, almost anything goes.
When we worked with a top pharmaceutical company, we split their doctors into โAngelsโ and โDevilsโ.
The โAngelsโ were in it to heal. Money barely registered with them; what moved them was patient outcome and clinical evidence. The โDevilsโ were, to put it plainly, motivated by earnings. Most doctors sat somewhere on the spectrum between the two, and that was part of the design. A sales representative had a mandate to place a customer on that line after a single conversation, without a workshop, a licence, or a scoring tool.
We chose those labels partly to be funny, and we were not being frivolous. A sales team can quietly bury a segmentation that arrives as a forty-page methodology. They will happily use one they can repeat to a colleague over lunch. Behind the joke sat the actual commercial reality of that audience, which the official segmentation, built on practice size and region, never touched at all.
What changed was the conversation. With an Angel you lead on patient outcomes, evidence, and time freed up for care. With a Devil you lead on margin, throughput, and reimbursement. Same product, same facts, different entry point. Neither version is dishonest. Both are true. You are simply choosing which truth to open with, instead of reciting the same pitch to everyone and hoping it lands.
That is the whole trick of a second-layer segmentation. It does not describe the company. It describes the person who has to say yes.
๐๐ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐ก๐๐ง๐๐๐ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐ฌ๐๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ญ๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ญ๐จ ๐ ๐ง๐๐ฐ ๐ฌ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌ ๐ก๐ข๐ซ๐, ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ฒ ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ ๐ข๐ญ ๐ข๐ง ๐ ๐๐จ๐ง๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ฌ๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ญ๐จ๐ฆ๐จ๐ซ๐ซ๐จ๐ฐ? ๐๐ซ ๐ฐ๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ฒ ๐ง๐๐๐ ๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ฎ๐๐ฅ ๐๐ข๐ซ๐ฌ๐ญ?
