Who It's Actually For: The Customer Segmentation Sheet

You have favourite clients, and clients who drain you. Your own invoices already know which is which. This finds them, without buying any data.

A four-page fillable PDF that segments your customers out of your own invoices. No external data required.

Bought segmentation describes your customers the way a government would, by age band and income and occupation, and you cannot act on an age. Your own transaction records show what people are doing, which of them are quietly leaving, and which of them are worth ten of the others.

This is the instrument that gets it out. Four behavioural dimensions you already have, plus the one that pays.

WHAT'S INSIDE

The six steps — export what you have, sort by value and look, segment on behaviour, add direction of travel, name them in your words, test one and hold one back. Each one with the trap underneath it.

Direction of travel — growing, flat, declining, gone. No bought segmentation includes this, and it is the reason an account that is quietly halving sits in the same bucket as one that is doubling and gets the same email.

The six tests — own data, behaviour, direction, recognisable, holdout, and the unwelcome line.

A worked example — five segments from 1,840 accounts, including the finding nobody wanted.

Instrument No. 07 of The Assignment, published Monday 9 November 2026. A new task every Monday.

Who made this

I started Sweet Peanut, a Vancouver baby-clothes company, in 2006, grew it into more than 1,500 stores, including Harrods and Nordstrom, across four continents, and sold it. Before that I spent ten years in advertising at BBDO, Cossette and McCann, finishing as VP and General Manager of McCann Vancouver. Since then I've run my own consultancy, taught business school for sixteen years, and written marketing textbooks for Pearson.

Education, not legal, tax or financial advice. For your own business; please don't share or resell. If you coach or teach and want a licence, email me.