There are few aspects to business that are more important than sales, but not many. Without this integral part of the puzzle in place, a business will never succeed.
Sales alone cannot guarantee success. Product quality, customer support, and even internal operations, all play a huge part in making sure a company grows.
One of the best ways to ensure that your company is getting the right sales is to target the ideal customer profiles to find business or clients that need your product.
This powerhouse guide is created to help precisely target irresistible attracting your dream clients. From decoding customer profiles to crafting personalized marketing strategies, discover the game-changing tactics that will elevate your sales game to unprecedented heights.
Why Use ICP?
It's not just about selling; it's about forging lasting connection by gaining exclusive insights that propel your sales strategy into a league of its own. That's where ICP comes in.
Think about this:
If you don’t know who needs your product to eliminate their biggest pains and achieve their biggest goals. If you don’t know how to sell to them, you aren’t going to be able to keep the lights on for long.
If you have an amazing product or service, but you don’t have a clue who you should sell to, we have the ultimate solution for you: Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Let's cover what an ideal customer profile is, how to build one for your organization, and how to target everyone that needs your solution lightning fast.
What Is an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?
So what exactly is an ideal customer profile (ICP)?
An ICP is a profile of the key characteristics, goals, and needs that all your top customers have in common, from industry to company size.
An ideal customer profile is invaluable to any organization because instead of trying to sell to the world (imagine trying to cut through all that noise), once you figure out the demographics of the customers who value your solution the most, you can develop powerful campaigns that convert faster.
When you have a solid ideal customer profile, you can disqualify those who don’t fit the profile, flood your pipeline with a steady stream of ready to buy prospects, and dramatically increase sales.
Related: Ultimate Guide to Maximize Inbound Sales
Steps to Build an Ideal Customer Profile
Find the Patterns
First, you want to identify all the characteristics that your best customers have in common.
Define the common location. Are they located across the U.S.? In a particular region? Or are they located internationally?
Define the common industry. There are over 142 industries. Are most of your best clients in the SaaS industry? Healthcare? What patterns do you notice with industry?
What’s the headcount of your top clients? Do they tend to be self-employed? Is their headcount 51 to 200? 501 to 1,000? Over 10,000?
How much revenue do your most valuable clients tend to generate? $0 - $100,000? $100,001 - $1,000,000?
Are they private or publicly traded?
What are the common reasons your top clients purchased your solution? What pain points does your solution solve for them? What goals were your clients able to achieve because of your solution?
Get as accurate as possible here because a self-employed company that’s trying to go from $0 to $100K is going to have completely different pains and goals compared to a Fortune 500 company.
As a disclaimer, you don’t have to leverage all these demographics to build your ICP, but typically the more specific you can get, the more efficient your targeting efforts will be.
Build the Lists
Once you identify the shared characteristics of your top customers, build your contact lists of all the titles, roles, and positions you can prospect. As a word of warning, target one department at a time because every department has different responsibilities, goals, and pain points.
Related: How to Buy Contact Email Lists
Ideally the department you pick and the titles you go after should benefit the most from your product or service out of any other group.
If you need help brainstorming all the different titles, roles, and positions in a department, try Seamless.AI because Seamless will find look-alike contact titles, roles, and positions that match your search based on relevancy.
Leverage Your ICP Guidelines and Optimize
Once you’ve done your research, found the patterns, and built the lists, create your ideal customer profile guidelines.
Your sales and marketing teams can now use these guidelines to qualify future clients and streamline their messaging.
Don’t forget to occasionally revise your ICP as your organization changes and grows.
Recap
- Look for patterns and characteristics that your current top clients all share
- Build a contact list of all the titles, roles, and positions you can target at a single department
- Optimize your ICP guidelines over time
Take these steps to create your ideal customer profile and start spreading the word about your solution!
Related: Ultimate Guide to Sales Segmenting
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