If you sell to everyone, you sell to no one. An ideal customer profile, or ICP, describes the type of company that gets the most value from what you offer. It doesn't start from who you'd like to have as a customer, but from who is already a customer and a good fit. With these steps you'll have it on paper in one afternoon.
Step 1: list all your customers
Take every customer from the last two or three years. For a young company that might be ten, for a larger one a hundred. A simple spreadsheet will do.
Step 2: score each customer on three points
- Value: how much revenue and margin does this customer bring in?
- Speed: how fast did this customer sign, and how smooth was the start?
- Relationship: do you enjoy working with this customer, and do they stay?
A score from 1 to 3 per point is enough. Add them up and sort the list.
Step 3: find what the top five have in common
Look at your five highest-scoring customers and compare:
- Industry and type of company
- Number of employees or revenue
- Who made the decision: the CEO, the IT manager, the operations manager
- What problem they had when they contacted you
- What happened at their end just before they bought, such as growth, a new manager or a bad year
That last point is often forgotten, but it's worth its weight in gold. It tells you when a company is ready to buy.
Step 4: write it down on one page
Example for an IT services company
Companies in logistics and manufacturing, with 30 to 150 employees. The operations manager or CFO decides, the IT manager advises. They work with outdated software and lose time on manual work. They usually contact us after a growth phase, an acquisition, or the departure of someone who kept everything in their head.
Step 5: test it on your last ten leads
Put your last ten leads next to the profile. How many fit? And which of them became customers? You'll usually see right away that leads within the profile sign far more often. That's also your argument for getting the team on board. How to turn that profile into more conversations is explained on our page about B2B lead generation.
Ideal customer profile or persona?
An ideal customer profile describes the company. A persona describes the person you talk to, with their role, concerns and goals. Always start with the company. A perfect persona at a company that doesn't fit won't bring you a customer.
What to do with it
Use the profile to decide who to approach, to write your message and to qualify leads. Want to know how to run those conversations? Read which questions to ask in the first call. And review the profile every six months, because your best customers change as your company does.
Where is your sales leaking?
Take the free sales scan. Ten questions, three minutes, and you'll see right away what will make the biggest difference.
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