Your company has grown but conversion rates are now slowing across the funnel. Things that used to work are not as successful. Your sales and marketing teams can describe who they want to target but you now realize their descriptions differ.
As you come across the term ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) once again you may wonder if upgrading can help? Maybe after a quick Google search you will find 247,000 results for Ideal Customer Profile. Where to begin?
Having helped 75 companies create, implement and leverage over 150 ideal customer profiles across their businesses, sales channels and geographies, this article is for you if you are responsible for generating revenue.
60% of our clients have an initial ideal profile either written down in slides, training materials or other PowerPoints. 10% have a simple tiering while the remainder can only verbally describe who they target.
The most common gaps to a world class ICP that can drive growth are;
1. Poor data hygiene means your customer and prospect accounts are not robustly aligned by industries, parent/ child relationships etc. Your team lacks a holistic view of accounts
2. 5% or more of potential selling time is spent on identifying & researching prospects
3. There is a lack of knowledge of the ideal size of your customers, industries and sub industries, their revenue, the technologies they use, # of locations etc.
4. The existing ICP is not differentiated by your sales channels, geographies, industries and/ or how customers prefer to buy
5. A consistent tiering method is not in place that can align your sales, marketing, product and operation teams
6. The ideal profile is a few bullets that exist in decks, training, descriptions etc. but is not baked into sales processes, campaign strategy or new product launch strategy
7. The ICP is not used for resource allocation, especially when it comes to Territory Design for the sales team
8. It is not used to help understand which segments have a higher willingness to pay for your product and/ or services
9. Your customer service team does not differentiate the level of service by those most strategic to you, or those who can spend more
10. You have a sense of total market size or TAM (Total Addressable Market) but cannot break the TAM down 2 or 3 levels to know who to target in this year or in the next
11. Your ICP is not leveraged to create a data driven Annual Revenue plan. Lasts years actual plus a wishful growth percentage puts you behind the competition
12. The profile is not routinely discussed and leveraged in pipeline and forecast calls, prospecting and KPI or OKR tracking. If ICP tiers are not measured across funnel conversion, deal size, win rate, sales cycle time etc. you cannot learn from it, adjust the ICP and have a radar into changing market conditions
If 6 or more of the above apply to you, your ICP is not good enough in today’s ever more difficult revenue generating market.
Please reach out if you would like to discuss how your particular ICP can be improved and how that can lead to growth in 2023.