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    Is Your Sales Dashboard Showing you the Right Metrics?

    Is Your Sales Dashboard Showing you the Right Metrics?

    Why do I need a Compensation Plan Designer?

    Why do I need a Compensation Plan Designer?

    Variable Compensation and the Gig Economy

    Variable Compensation and the Gig Economy

    7 Step Guide to Building a Profitable Sales Territory Plan (with Examples)

    7 Step Guide to Building a Profitable Sales Territory Plan (with Examples)

    “Look At Our Dashboards”

    “Look At Our Dashboards”

    Introduction to Sales Operations

    US Tech Market Forecast Shows a Best-Case 5% Drop in 2020

    Forecasting in a Time of Uncertainty: Tech Markets

    It’s Time to Re-prioritize Accounts and Re-balance Routes to Market

    It’s Time to Re-prioritize Accounts and Re-balance Routes to Market

    Deal Optimization – Key to Survival

    Deal Optimization – Key to Survival

  • Sales Compensation
    • All
    • ICM Tools
    • Incentive Travel
    • Plan Design

    Sales VP Compensation – Sales Plan or Executive Plan?

    Does the size of our company determine which SPM platforms we should evaluate?

    Does the size of our company determine which SPM platforms we should evaluate?

    What is the Difference Between a Commission and a Bonus?

    What is the Difference Between a Commission and a Bonus?

    How much of our sales team should we include in our President’s Club?

    How much of our sales team should we include in our President’s Club?

    Sales Compensation Plan Templates

    Sales Compensation Plan Templates

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    The 21 Buying Methodologies

    The 21 Buying Methodologies

    New Sales Leader? Avoid these 3 Common Mistakes

    New Sales Leader? Avoid these 3 Common Mistakes

    What’s Your Ideal Customer Profile

    What’s Your Ideal Customer Profile

    A Guide to OKRs for the Sales Ops Leader

    A Guide to OKRs for the Sales Ops Leader

    4 Keys to Successful Sales Management Meetings

    4 Keys to Successful Sales Management Meetings

    Sales Math: The Impact of Discounting

    Sales Math: The Impact of Discounting

    Revenue Operations Holds the Key to Unlocking Growth in 2022

    Revenue Operations Holds the Key to Unlocking Growth in 2022

    Sales Math – Pipeline Principles

    Sales Math – Pipeline Principles

    What’s The Purpose Of A Pipeline Review?

    What’s The Purpose Of A Pipeline Review?

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    The 21 Buying Methodologies

    The 21 Buying Methodologies

    What’s Your Ideal Customer Profile

    What’s Your Ideal Customer Profile

    The 5 Levels of Relationship in Sales

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    What’s The Difference Between Sales Enablement And School?

    What’s The Difference Between Sales Enablement And School?

    Training Reinforcement: Is it Back to Business as Usual?

    Training Reinforcement: Is it Back to Business as Usual?

    Give your Sales People what they need!

    Give your Sales People what they need!

    Which Sales Methodology?

    Which Sales Methodology?

    The Rise of Virtual Selling and the Implications for Sales Enablement

    The Rise of Virtual Selling and the Implications for Sales Enablement

    A Sales Enablement Conundrum: Who’s Coaching the Coach?

    A Sales Enablement Conundrum: Who’s Coaching the Coach?

  • Technology
    Data Science and Sales Operations: Driving Greater Predictability Together in Uncertain Times

    Data Science and Sales Operations: Driving Greater Predictability Together in Uncertain Times

    Building a B2B SalesTech Stack for Growth

    Building a B2B SalesTech Stack for Growth

    Does the size of our company determine which SPM platforms we should evaluate?

    Does the size of our company determine which SPM platforms we should evaluate?

    The Boom In Sales Technology

    The Boom In Sales Technology

    Setting your 2021 CRM Enhancement Priorities

    Setting your 2021 CRM Enhancement Priorities

    Do You Really Need Sales Automation?

    Do You Really Need Sales Automation?

    How the New AI – Authentic Intelligence – Can Improve Sales Productivity

    Use Tableau to Track the Virus Through Actionable Data

    Use Tableau to Track the Virus Through Actionable Data

    “You Are Doing Everything Wrong!”

    “You Are Doing Everything Wrong!”

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    What to Measure in Sales?

    What to Measure in Sales?

    The Pipeline and Forecast are Different

    The Pipeline and Forecast are Different

    Ignite Your Sales Performance at the Intersection of Purpose and Passion

    Ignite Your Sales Performance at the Intersection of Purpose and Passion

    How Sales Reps Are Hitting Quotas Without Hitting the Streets

    How Sales Reps Are Hitting Quotas Without Hitting the Streets

    Buying Is About People, Why Isn’t Selling?

    Buying Is About People, Why Isn’t Selling?

    The secret to High Performing Sales Teams – Analytics

    The secret to High Performing Sales Teams – Analytics

    Variable Compensation and the Gig Economy

    Variable Compensation and the Gig Economy

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    On Measuring Sales Performance

    “Look At Our Dashboards”

    “Look At Our Dashboards”

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Home Enablement

What’s Your Ideal Customer Profile

David Brock by David Brock
in Enablement, Excellence
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What’s Your Ideal Customer Profile
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Not every customer is “our” customer or even a potential customer. It’s common sense. We know we are supposed to focus on our Ideal Customers, those that are in our Sweet Spot. We develop, or at least we should be developing Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) to help focus our engagement strategies on the customers we can best help. Those that we help best are those that have the problems we are the best in the world at solving.

Too often, however, our “selection” of opportunities we pursue, seems to be based on the criteria like, “They hit on our website…..They downloaded a white paper…..They fogged a mirror.” Regardless of whether they fit our ICP, if, somehow, we have managed to generate some level of interest, we load them into our pipelines, commit them to a forecast and spend time and resources chasing them. Yet too often these are opportunities we have no business chasing, and low likelihood of winning (and if we do win, it’s more likely the customer made a mistake.)

We know we win more often and win better quality deals when we focus on our ICP.

RelatedPosts

The 21 Buying Methodologies

New Sales Leader? Avoid these 3 Common Mistakes

A Guide to OKRs for the Sales Ops Leader

The 5 Levels of Relationship in Sales

But too often, we define our ICP poorly. For example, recently, I was working with a team of product managers, product marketing, and sales. They said their ICP was “manufacturing companies.”

“That’s interesting,” I replied, “What type of manufacturing companies?”

“What do you mean, manufacturing is manufacturing! Our ICP is manufacturing companies!” responded one of the team members.

“Well, not really,” I said, “Are you focused on discrete or process based manufacturing? Are your target customers those that are high volume, low cost–or the opposite? Are they CPG manufacturers, Consumer Durables, Capital Equipment? What size are you targeting–the largest manufacturers in the world or small companies? What about….”

I continued, “What are the characteristics of the manufacturing companies where your solutions best fit?”

As we dug into things, they found “their customers” represented process based manufacturing companies of a certain size, working on certain types of materials, with a certain “enterprise personality.” They were able to characterize the ideal customer, learning their success rates, sales cycles, and ability to create value were significantly higher than any other customer. As they refocused sales and marketing on these customers, they found results skyrocketed. All of a sudden sales people were much more productive, marketing programs produced much more interest. They stopped wasting their time on opportunities outside this ICP, pursuing only opportunities within their space.

They realized there were thousands of customers they could reach, customers that were more likely to want to engage, customers that had a high propensity to buy. They were missing many of these customers because they were so busy and distracted by everything else they were chasing.

Are you focused on your ICP? Do you have it well defined–beyond just firmographics and demographics. Are you looking at the enterprise personality? Are you looking at their enterprise change maturity? Are you focusing on the customers having the problems you are the best in the world at solving? Are you focusing on customers who want to change?

The post What’s Your Ideal Customer Profile first appeared on Partners in EXCELLENCE Blog — Making A Difference.

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David Brock

David Brock

Dave has spent his career developing high performance organizations. He worked in sales, marketing, and executive management capacities with IBM, Tektronix and Keithley Instruments.

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