Creating your ideal customer profile, or ICP, should be one of the first sales management steps in determining your company’s strategy. Without an ICP, how will you know which customers or companies to target? Your ICP should help your team focus on identifying companies that are most likely to buy your product or service or are the best fit, depending on certain characteristics. The information you collect can be used to develop specific marketing techniques and sales methods targeted at your most likely customers. Having a clear-cut ICP will ultimately save you time, because you won’t be wasting your resources or effort on companies that do not need or want you. These 6 steps will help you make the most out of your ICP.
1. Know which industries would be most interested in you. You should have a short list of industries that your product is ideal for. It is important to understand the differences between each particular industry, as different market sectors will need to be approached in different ways.
2. Decide which sized companies will benefit most from your help. Look at both your ideal company’s annual revenue and the number of employees. Your product may be more useful to small, medium, or large companies. Different sized companies have different needs, so you should focus in on one size bracket or segment, rather than going after any company in that industry.
3. If relevant, find the geographic area that you can serve most easily. Sometimes it makes more sense to focus on local areas. You can save money on shipping, travel, and other unforeseen costs. Certain geographic locations are more likely to feature companies that fit your ICP than others. Determine which areas make the most sense for you to target.
4. Discover which internal factors impact a company’s ability to adjust to your product or service. A potential customer may look great on paper, but there are other important hidden factors that may get in the way of you helping them. Major sales management issues like poor organization or a rigid culture could impact a company’s ability to adjust to the new ideas and solutions you are proposing.
5. Consider their potential as a company. You want to be associated with winning customers. By pulling the recent sales data for all of the clients you are considering, you can see which are healthy businesses, and which ones are struggling. Your best bet is to work with a company that is on the rise or headed that way. Still, don’t rule out all companies that are not right at the top of their particular field. You may be able to do more for a company that is struggling than for one that already has everything figured out.
6. Continue to follow companies that interest you. Just because a company isn’t interested when you first approach them, doesn’t mean that they never will be. Changes that your potential clients undergo, like new leadership or a strategic shift, could cause them to change their minds. You need to be ready to jump in if this happens.
