A framework for identifying and communicating your ideal customer profile

And why it’s important

Who are your customers? I mean beyond the logos, who ARE your customers — especially your most successful ones? What characteristics do they share? Is it their geography? Their market/industry? Their needs/pains? Their beliefs? These and other characteristics combine to form a profile of your ideal customer — your Ideal Customer Profile or ICP

Whereas personas typically refer to an individual buyer or user of your product, your ICP refers to the companies who are most likely to benefit from and buy your product, solution, or services. And like your personas, your ICP should be a living, breathing “definition” that you’ll come back to — and modify — often.

The ICP is a critical, strategic document that guides key downstream efforts. It informs everything from the features and functionality you build in your products to the very words you use in your messaging to how you position your product in the market. It will also allow you to focus your resources on the prospects who are most likely to become successful customers in the future. Your ICP will increase the likelihood you will end up with satisfied customers who will remain with you over time and through multiple contracts.

The goal of the ICP is to identify the accounts most likely to become high-value customers. The speed with which your team clearly understands who is a good fit and who is not a good for your offerings has a major impact on productivity and ultimately success.

The further your team gets from the ICP, the more likely your metrics will suffer:

OK, I get it, I need an ICP to focus my sales resources, positioning, messaging, and content to attract (and keep) my best customers. But how do I create one? The process can actually be as simple as three steps:

“Best” can mean a lot of different things depending on your business, your products, and other factors. How many you choose before establishing a pattern will also vary. Are you a high-volume sales organization, or does each individual account have a high average value? Consider some of the following:

What do your best customers have in common? This can include both qualitative (interview them) and quantitative (mine your systems, use surveys) data.

Creating an ICP is not an academic exercise. It is a practical plan for action. Once completed, it must be shared across the entire organization. A Pond Map is a framework and an artifact to both identify and communicate your Ideal Customer Profile. It provides a single picture of who is a potential fit (in the pond where you should go fishing for customers), and who is not a fit for your products (where you should not be casting your line).

The general Pond Map structure includes five categories — Account Profile, Needs, Urgency Drivers, Beliefs, and Tipping Point. More on each of these below.

Negative factors — those that would lead us to determine a prospect is “out of the pond” or a poor fit with our products and services— go above the line. Positives factors — those indicating a good fit or a prospect that would be considered “in the pond” — go below the line. The negatives go on top because we really want to make sure we understand and highlight factors and characteristics that would make for a poor fit. Let’s not waste resources chasing prospects that are not likely to be successful.

To further reinforce this idea, negative factors are categorized in two ways:

Fill out each section of the Pond Map with the following information (negatives listed first followed by positives):

When you put it all together, this is what it looks like.

Here is an example of a (partially fictitious) Pond Map.

Some deals are easier to identify and faster to close. Some customers are likely to be more successful than others. Some customers will expand their use and renew their contract year after year. And some customers will shout their love for you from the mountaintop. And none of this is by accident. These are your ideal customers — the ones you should be seeking, nurturing, and winning over and over again.

Pond Maps are just one process and tool for identifying your ICP. Just as there are numerous sales and marketing methodologies — Pragmatic Marketing, SiriusDecisions, Miller Heiman and others — there are plenty of ways to map and communicate your ICP. Find what works for your organization and use it!

Related posts:

All modern web browsers allow users to save passwords and emails used to log into various sites. These credentials are stored by the browser and are used to automatically complete the respective…

Shanghai was once known as ‘The Pearl of the Orient’, yet stepping off the plane I walked into a mash of Blade Runner, Gotham City and The Jetsons, with a touch of The Fifth Element thrown in for…

There was once a kid Whose heart was made of snow And as he learned to walk Signs of dirt on it would show ‘Just secure what’s right The attacks will surely perish Trust me little one The snow can…