Hey ,

In this newsletter, I’m going to show you a proven framework to create an Ideal Customer Profile (or ICP) for a B2B company.

This is the exact process Andrei and Vlad used to:

• Improve a client’s positioning so they were perceived as niche industry experts;

• Create a hyper-targeted list of B2B prospects that are likely to buy their product;

• Generate $300k in sales opportunities with a pilot ABM campaign

But before we get down to brass tacks, let me quickly announce our next live summit of this year.

Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Summit ‘23 

This year's lineup is incredible. 18 actionable keynotes. 3 tracks. Free to attend. 5 gifts👇

Now, let’s get to the meat of the matter.

Why do you need an ideal customer profile?

, a customer profile is necessary for four main reasons.

1. Focus

Instead of adopting a throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks sort of approach, an ICP will help you focus your marketing and sales team on the type of companies they should be targeting.

As a result, your company will generate better sales opportunities with higher ACV and hit revenue targets.

2. Personalization

To make the most of your campaigns, you should address your customers in a way they’d feel that your product was created just for them.

But the truth is, doing that requires understanding your customers’ needs, their challenges, their OKRs, and their goals. And that’s exactly where your ICP comes into play.

3. Channels

Your ICP will help you identify the exact channels your target buyers are using for research, education, and communication.

Just because someone tells you that TikTok or Snapchat is trending right now doesn't mean your buyers are spending time there and that you should also hang out there.

I love pink glasses, . Trust me, I really do. But you shouldn’t wear pink glasses hoping that senior execs with 10+ years of experience are hanging out all day long on all social media channels and that you just need to be everywhere to capture their attention.

4. Account qualification and disqualification for list building

By analyzing your best customers you can define the similarities between them. This includes their:

• revenue,

• team size,

• stack,

• needs,

• etc.

These criteria must be practical and tangible so that all members of the marketing and sales teams can apply them and qualify or disqualify companies.

Now that the goals of the ICP are clear, let's move on to the step-by-step process of creating one.

A step-by-step guide to creating an Ideal Customer Profile

1. Select a specific market segment.

Your ICP is in fact the impersonation of your key customers from a specific market segment.

Lots of B2B companies miss this step and sadly have to face the music. They export all the data from their CRM and create a universal customer avatar. Thereafter, they take a "one size fits all" approach and spread their efforts thin instead of focusing on specific segments.

For what it's worth, you even need to create a standalone ICP for each market segment.

Start with exporting your historical data and analyzing revenue by verticals and markets. In the same vein, you need to define a few industries that generate the most revenue, do custom scoring, and select a segment you’ll focus on.

Read more about marketing segmentation in the GTM strategy guide or watch a market segmentation workshop during which we covered the process in detail.

2. Segment revenue in a selected segment by client

Dear , all clients aren’t created equal.

When you select a target segment, you should also sort the revenue by clients. Matter of fact, you need to apply the Pareto Principle and identify 20% of companies that generate 70-80% of the segment revenue.

That is the basic principle of account segmentation.

But how on earth should you segment accounts? Glad you asked 😊

1. Analyze revenue from a specific segment and define 10% of companies that generate the most revenue – Tier 1.

2. The next 10% is added to Tier 2, and the remaining 80% to Tier 3.

3. Define common firmographic patterns between these companies.

Quick example 

Tier 1: revenue size – $20mln – $50mln, team size: 500-900.

3. Select the 10 best customers and fill in the ideal client profile template

The next step is filling out the ICP template.

As a rule of thumb, I suggest adding only Tier 1 and some Tier 2 companies, but no more than 10.

Then you’ll need to analyze their firmographics, buying committee structure, and run in-depth customer interviews.

You can easily find this data from your CRM or LinkedIn.

4. Define and enrich the buying committee.

The next step is to define the buying committee. There are several ways you can do it.

The first step is to analyze your CRM and talk to sales.

In the CRM, check who was in the email thread. Look for replies and CC. The sales team might provide you with more insights.

Here are 2 quick questions you can ask them:

• Did the Champions or decision-makers mention anybody from their team whom they want to talk to?

• Did anybody else from the client’s team join the calls/meetings?

Once you figure out these people, open LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and find them. If you don’t see them on LinkedIn, look them up on Facebook and Twitter.

If you still can’t find the buying committee members, here is a step-by-step process you can follow.

• Upload your clients' emails to LinkedIn as a CSV file (a plain text file containing data);

• Go to My Network –> More Options –> Upload file and upload the file containing your customers’ contacts. Then LinkedIn will show you their profiles.

Once you’ve finally found the buying committee members, copy into the ideal customer template their job roles, age, and social media activity (Do they post anything? How often?).

I also recommend checking who they follow and engage with.

That is the easiest way to identify influencers and media for co-marketing and content that resonates with your target audience.

Now that you’ve collected public information, it’s about time you analyzed the buyer’s journey.

5. Analyze the buying process

Here are three steps to analyze the buying process.

1. Interview your sales team

During the interview, you can ask your sales team the following questions:

• What were the goals of each of the buying committee members?

• What concerns or objections did you face during the sales process?

• At what stage did the objections appear, and why?

• How did you handle the concerns?

• What factors influenced the purchasing decision of every buying committee member?

2. Analyze emails and sales calls

Besides interviewing a sales team, I recommend running a manual analysis of all sales calls and emails.

If you aren’t interviewing your sales teams about fresh deals, chances are they’ll forget some details and only share what they remember.

But if you do additional research and analyze sales calls and emails, you’ll be able to figure out way more objections, concerns, and doubts.

This information will help you improve your marketing message and prepare a buyer enablement program.

3. Run in-depth customer interviews

The last step is vital but most B2B companies never do it – in-depth customer interviews. Your ICP and GTM strategy should be based on customer insights, not assumptions.

Here are 6 groups of questions you need to ask.

1. Buying triggers: What prompted them to start looking for products like yours?

2. Research process: Where and how do they search? What information are they looking for?

3. Decision-making process: What influences their decision? Who is involved in the product approval process?

4. The value they got from the product.

5. Their goals, needs, and challenges.

6. Channel presence: Where do they get industry information from? Whom do they follow?

The insights you’ll gain will not only help you develop a better ICP but amplify your value proposition and positioning, differentiate your brand, and align your marketing and sales with the buyer’s journey.

Would you like to learn more about customer interviews? Check this out 👇

6. Combine the data and fill in all 5 pillars of your ICP.

The last step is the easiest one.

Combine the data and fill in the ICP template. Next, present the ICP to senior leadership and sales, and then get them aligned on it.

Our upcoming community events

Building a demand gen program from scratch: from planning, budgeting & execs buy-in

Event Information

​Join Andrei and Sam Kuehnle, Vice President of Marketing at Loxo, sharing how to build a B2B demand generation function from scratch.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• ​The step-by-step process for developing a B2B demand generation function;

• How to plan resources and campaigns;

• ​How to budget demand generation;

• ​How to present demand gen motion to key stakeholders and get their buy-in.

Best shares from Trenches Community

• How to plan complex B2B marketing campaigns (especially, if you are going upmarket or selling to an enterprise)

• Top 5 reasons you will likely miss your sales target in 2023?

• How to build a demand generation function at a B2B company in 10 steps

Questions from fellow Trenchers

Dear , your help is needed. If you can answer any of the questions below, please click on the link and share your ideas.

• Do you guys know B2B SaaS brands (especially HR Tech) doing a great job with their FB Ads? Looking for inspiration as I’m onboarding such a client for their demand gen.

• Hello, everyone! Do you have any playbook about bottom-of-funnel events? Like, what is the best way to capture demand and measure ROI for an event that we know our ICP will attend?

• Hi, any B2B brands here that use YouTube extensively? If yes, I am keen to find out what your goals with YouTube are - lead to website, share content? And also, what are your challenges wrt the platform?

NOTE: If you found this content interesting and insightful, chances are you have 1 or 2 colleagues (well, maybe 03) who'd enjoy it as much as you do. Help them by sharing this and earn some exclusive perks.

See you in Trenches 😉

Adechina ODJO