While your company may cater to many different people, it’s crucial to sharpen focus. Sales intelligence methodology focuses on a phenomenon called the ‘ideal customer profile’ or ICP - someone you will likely pitch to. But how easy is it to build your own unique ICP?
What is the ‘Ideal Customer’?
Ultimately, the name gives away much of the description. The ideal customer, or ICP, is one who will likely get the most out of your product, brand, or services. These are clients with whom you can expect to grow your business on a mutual basis.
Companies build ICPs based on a variety of data. This may include sales figures, market research, and direct outreach. Ultimately, building an ICP is all about using intelligence to create a clear correlation or an average ‘perfect’ buyer. This is someone you can rely on for sales and for brand loyalty for years to come, too.
ICPs are helpful in that they can both provide brand/sales stability and growth. It is not always simple to create an ICP early in a business’ lifetime. However, it is worth consideration.
How Sales Intelligence Can Help You Get to Know Your Customers
Advanced sales intelligence techniques can help you shape and hone your ideal ICP. You may build an ICP based on customers’ locations, salaries, and sales habits. Using intelligence software and data precedents, you can map out median behaviors. While you may not account for unique needs, this will indicate who to pitch to.
Intelligence is beneficial when data is frequently collated - from older and current sales figures. Businesses can effectively filter out leads that provide zero conversion by using intelligence techniques and tools. The most advanced tools and methods will dig deep into publicly available data.
This means that you can effectively ‘enrich’ any data you may already collate behind the scenes. It is no longer considered ‘enough’ to collate basic sales data and demographic information. Leads that regularly convert in the modern age require deeper insight. What do your customers value - and why might they choose other brands over your own?
It’s also possible to use intelligence to personalize your ICP to an extent. There is a danger of over-analyzing and potentially alienating your audience. There’s a fine line between seizing upon data to build ICPs and making harmful assumptions.
It is all the more reason to use intelligence techniques and software to manage the way you profile carefully. The most effective intelligence-centric ICP building is born from millions of data sources. There are no shortcuts - but thankfully, it has never been easier for businesses to work intelligence to their advantage.
Turning the Ideal Customer into Leads
When it comes to building an ICP, you need data relevant to your business and industry. Simply scoring names, dates of birth, addresses and salaries may not be enough. You may need to know about their social activity, political views, or even their tastes. This is information that may be made available to you through market research.
Using intelligence to build ICPs benefits everyone. Customers benefit from a pitch that directly speaks to them and is relevant to their daily routines. Businesses, of course, seize upon leads that convert time and again, and for longer periods.
Building an ICP takes more than one person and one piece of software alone. It’s likely to take a team of experts in your company to craft a profile carefully. It may even take weeks to build the ideal avatar. However, intelligence tools (such as those we’ll recommend below) are at least helping to make this easier.
However, once your ICP template is live, you can start lead scoring. This is where you can effectively measure each prospect that emerges against your ‘checklist’. For example, you may score a lead based on their likelihood to buy from you regularly. You may also score them in terms of suitability to recommend your services and upgrade / upscale with you.
Intelligence, ICP templates, and lead scoring give way to direct outreach. This is where marketers will effectively put their research into practice. Marketers will contact prospects directly via phone or email, for example, to start mutually beneficial conversations. This is made easier thanks to ICP templates effectively placing leads on the ‘same page’.
Essentially, ICP building through intelligence and lead scoring will ensure more precise, more efficient outreach. That, crucially, could sustain your business for years - providing you refresh your intelligence’s data regularly.
Tools to Help Formulate Your ICP
It is more than reasonable to use simple tools such as Microsoft Excel or database software for ICP building. That said, these tools will only get you part of the way. Therefore, it stands to reason that you may wish to use a specialized program to help deliver results.
One such tool, for example, is Rollworks. This program offers smoother data management and collation and helps you build efficient funnels. You can effectively create ICPs based on broad data categories and manage potential lead data through an intuitive dashboard.
The DiscoverOrg AccountView ICP tool, too, is a portfolio-based program to help you create and manage ICP templates. The software allows users to filter accounts based on names, industries, and growth data. Beyond this, the dashboard built into the suite organizes data so that outreach is smoother from the get-go.
Conclusion
The concept of an ICP, or customer avatar, is neither new nor novel. Businesses and marketers all over the globe have used data aggregation and average profiling for decades. That, ultimately, is because ICP building is highly effective for helping us understand our leads.
Data is the power source that keeps sales intelligence moving. Real-time data on competing brands and emerging companies, too, is highly useful. Fundz can help - with rolling funding information available as you require it.
SOURCES
https://www.cognism.com/what-is-sales-intelligence
https://gzconsulting.org/2017/02/21/discoverorg-accountview-icp-tool/
https://www.rollworks.com/icp-insights/
Topic: Sales Intelligence
