
Truly understanding your customers is the only way to effectively market to them, sell to them, and delight them. That may bring to mind buyer personas, those fictionalized individuals who represent your customers. While well-articulated personas are absolutely necessary to creating valuable, relevant, compelling content, these are NOT the same as an ideal customer profile.
An ideal customer profile (ICP) is not a person, it is a business. A type of company that will get the most benefits from your products and services while giving you high value in return.
This tool helps you identify the strength of a prospect, so you feel confident investing effort into selling to that business. You can then train your sales team on connecting with these prospects and equipping them to handle issues they may encounter.
The foundation of a good ICP is data; factual demographics including…
… and it goes far deeper.
An ICP should also include behavioral (recent activity) and psychographic information (what people in that company may be thinking/feeling). If available, information about actual individuals — specific buyers, users, and influencers — within a business can be very useful.
Another necessary element of an ICP is strategic intent. For instance, instead of targeting a prospect with a primary strategy of reducing costs, you look to attract prospects focused on reshoring as a supply chain strategy. Different, aren’t they?
The right strategic intent can result in working with a business with a quicker and more successful sales cycle, a high customer retention rate, and is likely to be a powerful ambassador for your brand.
Plus, your marketing team can more effectively share post-purchase communications to drive customer delight and build customer lifetime loyalty.
Trajectory is another element to consider. What does long-term success look like, and how realistically attainable is that? Is the business in a dynamic industry? Is leadership positioning the company properly, and is that business equipped to grow? What challenges and opportunities lie ahead?
A solid ICP begins with understanding which customers will get the most value from your business while, at the same time, giving you profitable returns. But, don’t forget about the intangibles, such as how the relationship can provide marketing fuel for you and/or how your people feel about working with that customer. The intangibles matter!
Start the ICP creation process by looking at your own top-end customers. The best business relationships are symbiotic; they last long and stay strong because everyone benefits! As you think about customers in that context, rank them from top to bottom, and then take the top quarter and consider the factors that make them your most preferred customers.
You most likely won't have any customers that score strong on everything that matters. Yet, we’re going for the ideal here! So, identify all the things you want in a customer, starting with the things that make you valuable to them — because customers who love what you mean to them are most likely going to be valuable to you!
Now, turn your focus on how they’re valuable to you …
Now, let’s examine your top customers’ characteristics, which can predict new ideal customers…
When thinking about all the different ways to describe the best customers, it’s easy to continue going deeper and deeper into all the ways to describe the ideal.
When you think about constructing a truly thoughtful ICP, the first and most obvious application is in evaluating leads and opportunities. It’s wisest to focus energies on converting and closing leads that come closest to the ideal.
RELATED: Why and How to Identify Your Best Sales Prospects
Additional, more far-reaching, benefits of understanding your ideal are creating content, planning social media activity, and articulating your brand promise to that ideal.
Just like any human relationship, the more you understand about what makes your ideal customer tick, the better equipped you are to connect with them with relevance, meaning, and credibility.
In addition to creating an ICP, another key to business growth is aligning your marketing and sales teams to ensure they’re on the same page about what makes a good lead and what your prospects and customers care about. Our eBook is a comprehensive guide to preparing, building, and implementing a sales and marketing service level agreement (SLA). Get yours by clicking the link below!
Topics: Inbound Marketing, Inbound Sales, Marketing & Sales Alignment