How to Create Your Ideal Customer Profile in SaaS Sales

ICP (or Ideal Customer profile) is a detailed description of your IDEAL customer. Who are they? What makes them Ideal? Those are the customers who will never churn, those are the ones you want to have more with the shortest possible sales cycle. And, most important, these customers have a great product experience, which solves their pain points.

So, ICP is a description of the Ideal Customer which will serve as guidance for your Sales and Marketing teams. As a guide, there might be some cases when you will get a great customer outside your ICP space. That is an indication that ICP is a living project that is changing together with your product and organization over time.

So, what are the attributes of the ICP profile? Let's dive in.

1. Firmographics. Here we are talking about the company where your personas work. Here are the questions you have to answer:

• Industry/Vertical
• Size of organization and department your personas are working in
• Geography and location
• Any organizational or technology changes that can trigger buyers' decision toward your offering
• How do they buy (organizational setup for purchasing): B2C or B2B

2. Technographics. Customers' technology stack and IT infrastructure.

• Technology stack
• Particular technology environment where your product can fit in
• Are you replacing any existing technology with your product? If this is the case, why they should care?

3. Demographics. These are additional details about your ICP personas that help understand their purchase behavior.

• Job titles in your target departments
• Team size and composition
• Reporting lines and who are decision makers (or “economic buyers”)
• What motivates them personally and professionally
• Where do they look for new product and technology information?
• Your target persona's education level

4. Describe the problem you are solving for your ICP personas (in their own words):

• What are their day-to-day tasks
• How big (serious) is today's pain from process (or tolls) inefficiencies
• What can motivate them to look at your solution? What pain points you are addressing?
• Why they should care?
• What are the ideal use cases?
• What purchase decision process will look like?

5. Product Purchase Signals. Timing is critical when it comes to any organizational or technology changes. So you have to know all possible triggers in your ICP organizations that can accelerate purchase decisions. That might be a technology change (e.g. Hosting Cloud Platform choice), organizational changes (e.g. M&A), new government regulation requirements (e.g. new licensing or certification), or any career changes within your target prospect department. Also, it's critical to know all personas involved in your product decision-making process on the customer side. From your “technical champion” to “economic buyer” and “project sponsor”. All of them require a dedicated ICP page with clear motivation factors, purchase arguments, buying, and influence authority level.

6. Do your Target Market research. Usually, that's the task where your Product Management team (usually reports to Engineering) can help. That research includes competition research, including competitive technologies, product features, and any local markets specific.

The next step is to collect Feedback from your customer's personas. Build and refine your questions list after every interview. Learn as much as you can about their day-to-day challenges and which factors can make your product sticky.

Put together your ICP profiles (by personas). Make sure that all your Marketing and Sales efforts target them well. Test your campaigns on your existing trustful customers first to validate relevance.

And…. be ready to update your ICP materials regularly. Based on my experience, run updates every 6 months.

Hope it helps craft your SaaS Startup ICP well. Will address creating Unique Selling Proposition (USP) in my next blogs.

Happy selling and stay tuned for more SaaS Sales Insights!