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What is An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?
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“All too often, marketers and salespeople think: “A customer is a customer is a customer. Any sale is a good sale.”” At New Breed, we sometimes use the terms “ideal customer profile” and “buyer persona” interchangeably, because we use the core concepts of ideal customer profiles to build out our personas. More often than not, a buyer persona is just one piece of the puzzle, so you need to understand who all of those puzzle pieces are and how to reach them individually in order to sell to the company as a whole. Finally, a target market is also similar to an ideal customer profile, but a target market is more commonly used in a B2C consumer setting. Rather than describing a company, a target market defines a core group of consumers who would benefit from the product or service. Why Are Ideal Customer Profiles So Valuable? You may have the ability to sell to a wide range of companies and appeal to a wide range of personas within those companies, but you need to know where you win. If you sold to every single company that was interested in your product or service, you’d likely experience high rates of churned and unhappy customers — and unhappy employees, too. For example, when New Breed first defined our ideal customer profiles, we included one profile whom we called Startup Sam. This type of customer was (and is) highly interested in working with us, but their lack of budget made them difficult to sell to. With a high cost of acquisition, we hoped to recoup that by renewing with them over a long period of time, but the average deal was small, short, and provided little value to our company. Once we started noticing this pattern, we disincentivized our sales reps from working with Startup Sams and instead referred them to other resources that might help them solve their challenges until they reached our target profile. This helped us increase our win rates, average deal size, and lifetime customer value.
“As your business grows, you need to make sure that the deals you’re closing are worth the resources you’re expending in order to close and retain those deals.” At New Breed, we sometimes use the terms “ideal customer profile” and “buyer persona” interchangeably, because we use the core concepts of ideal customer profiles to build out our personas. More often than not, a buyer persona is just one piece of the puzzle, so you need to understand who all of those puzzle pieces are and how to reach them individually in order to sell to the company as a whole. Finally, a target market is also similar to an ideal customer profile, but a target market is more commonly used in a B2C consumer setting. Rather than describing a company, a target market defines a core group of consumers who would benefit from the product or service. Why Are Ideal Customer Profiles So Valuable? You may have the ability to sell to a wide range of companies and appeal to a wide range of personas within those companies, but you need to know where you win. If you sold to every single company that was interested in your product or service, you’d likely experience high rates of churned and unhappy customers — and unhappy employees, too. For example, when New Breed first defined our ideal customer profiles, we included one profile whom we called Startup Sam. This type of customer was (and is) highly interested in working with us, but their lack of budget made them difficult to sell to. With a high cost of acquisition, we hoped to recoup that by renewing with them over a long period of time, but the average deal was small, short, and provided little value to our company. Once we started noticing this pattern, we disincentivized our sales reps from working with Startup Sams and instead referred them to other resources that might help them solve their challenges until they reached our target profile. This helped us increase our win rates, average deal size, and lifetime customer value.
“All too often, marketers and salespeople think: “A customer is a customer is a customer. Any sale is a good sale.”” At New Breed, we sometimes use the terms “ideal customer profile” and “buyer persona” interchangeably, because we use the core concepts of ideal customer profiles to build out our personas. More often than not, a buyer persona is just one piece of the puzzle, so you need to understand who all of those puzzle pieces are and how to reach them individually in order to sell to the company as a whole. Finally, a target market is also similar to an ideal customer profile, but a target market is more commonly used in a B2C consumer setting. Rather than describing a company, a target market defines a core group of consumers who would benefit from the product or service. Why Are Ideal Customer Profiles So Valuable? You may have the ability to sell to a wide range of companies and appeal to a wide range of personas within those companies, but you need to know where you win. If you sold to every single company that was interested in your product or service, you’d likely experience high rates of churned and unhappy customers — and unhappy employees, too. For example, when New Breed first defined our ideal customer profiles, we included one profile whom we called Startup Sam. This type of customer was (and is) highly interested in working with us, but their lack of budget made them difficult to sell to. With a high cost of acquisition, we hoped to recoup that by renewing with them over a long period of time, but the average deal was small, short, and provided little value to our company. Once we started noticing this pattern, we disincentivized our sales reps from working with Startup Sams and instead referred them to other resources that might help them solve their challenges until they reached our target profile. This helped us increase our win rates, average deal size, and lifetime customer value.
“In reality, there is a stark difference between ideal customers and less-than-ideal customers.” At New Breed, we sometimes use the terms “ideal customer profile” and “buyer persona” interchangeably, because we use the core concepts of ideal customer profiles to build out our personas. More often than not, a buyer persona is just one piece of the puzzle, so you need to understand who all of those puzzle pieces are and how to reach them individually in order to sell to the company as a whole. Finally, a target market is also similar to an ideal customer profile, but a target market is more commonly used in a B2C consumer setting. Rather than describing a company, a target market defines a core group of consumers who would benefit from the product or service. Why Are Ideal Customer Profiles So Valuable? You may have the ability to sell to a wide range of companies and appeal to a wide range of personas within those companies, but you need to know where you win. If you sold to every single company that was interested in your product or service, you’d likely experience high rates of churned and unhappy customers — and unhappy employees, too. For example, when New Breed first defined our ideal customer profiles, we included one profile whom we called Startup Sam. This type of customer was (and is) highly interested in working with us, but their lack of budget made them difficult to sell to. With a high cost of acquisition, we hoped to recoup that by renewing with them over a long period of time, but the average deal was small, short, and provided little value to our company. Once we started noticing this pattern, we disincentivized our sales reps from working with Startup Sams and instead referred them to other resources that might help them solve their challenges until they reached our target profile. This helped us increase our win rates, average deal size, and lifetime customer value.