Why does understanding your ideal customer profile (ICP) matter? After all, you can still close deals without it. But when you aren’t focusing on the right customers, your sales team becomes inefficient…and inefficiency is a killer. In fact, companies lose billions chasing the wrong deals.
“Pursuing a poor ICP fit deal costs companies $200b annually.” - Josh Ellars
Closing deals outside of our ICP take a lot more time and work to get there. When you have a small sales team–and an unpredictable economy–that time should be spent on customers that will close faster, renew predictably, and serve as future references for your product.
There are many firmographic, demographic, and behavioral attributes to consider when finding your ICP. To get started, Josh Ellars, CEO and Founder at Patri.io, says that CEOs need to narrow down their ICP by answering a series of questions:
The way to improve your company’s efficiency is to pursue the right deals that will result in high lifetime customer value. High frequency equals high value. These customers are the people who use your product the most, so identify them by diving into and analyzing your product usage.
Most people follow the traditional process for finding their company’s ICP. They gather CRM data about existing customers, survey key stakeholders about key characteristics for potential customers, interview the most successful accounts, train their GTM teams on the ICP, and then repeat again in 6 to 12 months.
At Patri.io, they use machine learning and a tool called RevFit AI to help you understand your ICP and apply it directly to your existing sales pipeline. RevFit AI helps you prioritize deals by quantifying how closely each opportunity fits with your ICP and identifying if there’s low hanging fruit or risky deals.
“A lot of companies spend all of their time identifying, finding, and gathering viable account and contact info to operationalize GTM efforts. They stop here. But you need to take it into pipeline management and revenue generation and even into customer success and revenue retention.” - Josh Ellars
Once you’ve identified your ICP and applied your learnings to your sales pipeline, what’s next? Josh and Lane recommend injecting your ICP into the rest of your GTM organization for even better results:
“It’s not about shooting your shot every single time. It’s about putting yourself in front of a good shot, finding more of those, and being able to take all of them.” - Lane Hartman
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