Building CAUSL - Episode 3: Ideal Customer Profiles

Since launching CAUSL, I've had a number of people ask me "who is your ideal client/customer"? I usually reply, "anyone with money" and then I laugh.

All jokes aside, identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP) is no easy feat. On the surface, it seems like an easy task - surely it's the highest paid person in the function you'll be working closest to, no?

I'm not sure if that's true. It might be the case that those people aren't close enough to the problem to determine whether what you're selling is something they even need. They might not even be aware of the problem. Sure they may be the budget holders, but is it their job to go out and find solutions for their teams, or should the team leaders, propose the solution as part of the problem they themselves have identified? Who knows!

At this point, I'll interject. I don't know what the right answer to this question is. What follows is simply a collage of my thoughts. I've read a few posts, articles and sections in books telling me what they believe is the right answer, but it all feels theoretical. That being said, I'm starting to think the concept of identifying an "ideal customer" is a multifaceted construct that extends beyond my understanding so maybe I do need to approach this theoretically. But before answering "who is my ideal customer", I should start with, "why do I need an ICP"?

Why do I need to build an ICP?

Why does anyone need anyone need to build an ICP for that matter? Turns out the reason for doing so is time. I haven't come up with a single answer more important than time. On a long enough timeline with zero pressure to generate revenue, everyone would be fit the bill of an ICP rendering this exercise useless, but I simply don't have enough time to message everyone in the world so I need to focus on leads which I think are most likely to convert into clients. That is why I need an ICP. I can accept that.

Now I know the why, let us start building out the what, where, when and how to paint a picture of the who.

Where are my ideal customers?

Whilst I would love to have clients all over the world, the logistics to set that up are beyond the scope of my short term goals. So for now, let's assume my ideal customers are UK based and to some extent, Europe based. That keeps me in roughly the same time zone as people I want to work with.

What is their job title?

C-suite/VPs or. Leaders who influence? I'm torn on this one. Early data points would suggest it's the latter, but my sample size is just too low to draw any meaningful conclusions. One thing is for sure, the Total Addressable Market (TAM) size for both groups is large enough to keep things interesting. I'm going to try and run some experiments here and see what happens. For now I think it's about 40/60 so I'll keep a bit more focus on the latter group.

What influence do they have on budget?

An obvious one but the ideal customer needs to be in a situation where they own the budget or are in a position to influence how the budget is used. It doesn't make sense going after leads who don't influence how the budget is spent. This rules out titles such as senior and lead and gives me a lower bound of "Head of".

What field are they in?

This is a bit of a tricky one, because the services we offer tend to be aimed at product teams, but the roads leading into product varies. For example the point around "C-Suite/VPs vs. Leaders who influence" is a vertical approach, but what about a horizontal approach? VCs, Advisors, Vendors and other leaders in the organisation e.g. the CMO, CTO, etc... all carry enough weight and insight to provide the referrals we need. I need to do more outreach but I can't rule any of these people out.

What industry do they belong to?

I don't like this one. Every problem has a solution and we're problem solvers so unless we're talking about something like "space exploration", no industry is off limit. I myself have worked in luxury goods, travel, B2B, B2C, SAAS, insurance, gaming, publishing, and car rentals, so I'm not sure why I would close off entire verticals.

How many employees do they have?

Employee count is an interesting one and I imagine there is a strong relationship between employees and our likelihood to win the client. I should take into consideration whether they have a product analytics team, but I think at this stage most organisations don't so I'll keep it simple and stick to employee count. A startup/scaleup are most likely to need the support but might not have the budget. A more mature organisation will probably have the budget but might not need the support. This is a tough nut to crack. I think I'll just split employee count into three buckets and test:

1) 50 - 100 (startup)

2) 101 - 500 (scaleup)

3) 501+ (enterprise)

Concluding thoughts - Arriving at an ICP

At the risk of dragging on, I'll begin to wrap it up here. This following matrix is where I've arrived at for my definition of an ICP. I've colour coded each cell with my confidence level for that component of the ICP. The orange ones require further data and testing. The industry component could be stripped down but that's a future exercise. I still think this is a fruitless exercise, but seeing as everyone I've spoken to has asked about it, I figured there's probably something I'm missing. Don't get me started on buyer persona!