If I were to ask you who your ideal customer is, what would you say?
When I ask most new founders this question, I usually get an answer like, “Any technology company between 2-200 employees.”
I appreciate the optimism, but I have some bad news: When you try and sell to everyone, you end up selling to no one. New businesses especially need a more focused, specific market than “any technology company.” The problem is, they don’t know how to accurately define their ideal customers, so they just guess.
But guessing doesn’t cut it. Selling to the right customers is too important to gamble on. So let’s take some time today to create a realistic ideal customer profile.
If you already have one, read on anyway. Maybe yours could use some improvement.
What is an ideal customer profile, and what does it do?
An ideal customer profile describes the fictitious individual or organisation that gets the most value out of your product, and provides the most value back to you. We’ll go into what that means shortly.
This profile helps you find qualified prospects and protects you from selling to the wrong customers.
For outbound prospecting, your profile will give you a clear target to aim for, resulting in highly qualified leads. For inbound prospecting, you can compare incoming leads to your profile. If they don’t match the criteria, you’ll know to move on.
Simply put, an ideal customer profile helps you identify and sell to the type of customers that will most benefit your business.
Creating your ideal customer profile in 3 steps
Although ideal customer profiles describe a fictitious organisation, they need to be based in reality. The following steps assume your business has at least 10 customers. Without those customers, you won’t have enough data to create an accurate profile.
If you’re not at that stage yet, check out this guide to getting the first 10 customers for your startup.
1. List your 10 best customers
Your “best” customers are the customers who are the most successful with your product, not necessarily the ones who are the most happy with it.Happy customers like your product. Successful customers receive real, tangible value from your product, and offer that value back to you.
Successful customers should be able to easily quantify the value they receive from your product, and it should always be substantially higher than what they pay for it.
Once you have your 10 customers, move on to step two.
2. List their defining attributes
Create a simplified profile for each of these 10 customers that outlines their defining characteristics. For example, how large are they? What industry are they in? Where are they located?
The goal of this step is to create a clear picture of your customer’s business from all angles. It can be as long or short as you’d like, but here are the 10 fields I recommend including in each:
- Industry
- Location
- Annual revenue
- Total customers
- Total employees
- Years in business
- Why they need our product
- How they use our product
- How they found our product
- Primary pain points
Add any industry-specific fields you see fit, such as social media presence or brand awareness, then move on to step three.
3. Identify commonalities
Take a look at your 10 customer profiles side-by-side. What traits do they have in common? In almost all cases, there will be a handful of key elements that most (if not all) of your top customers share.
For example, are they all:
- In the same industry?
- Generating the same annual revenue?
- Using your to product solve the same challenge?
If you’re having trouble finding commonalities, it might mean you didn’t create a thorough-enough profile for each of the customers in step two.
Consider going back and taking a closer look. If you dig deep enough, you’ll find a handful of key elements they all share.
Compile all of those commonalities into a single profile, and you’re done! You’ve created your ideal customer profile.
Update your profile often
Your business is going to grow and evolve over time. As it does, make sure to update your ideal customer profile.
At least once a year, run through the three steps above. Update your list of high-value customers, identify their defining characteristics, and create a new profile.
You might be surprised how much your profile changes over the course of a year.
Sample profiles
You can organise your ideal customer profile however you see fit. But if you need some inspiration, here are three examples.
Example one: Short, sweet, and to the point
The shorter your profile, the easier it is for your reps to remember on the fly. By limiting your profile to a handful of information-dense sentences, you make it easy to learn and utilise.
Our ideal customer is a bootstrapped FinTech startup between two and five employees. This startup averages $1M in annual revenue and uses our product to better manage their growing list of prospects and customers.
Example two: The list
The list is an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand approach to the ideal customer profile. This lays out the most pertinent information in a format that is easy to review on an as-needed basis.
Industry: Technology
Department: Sales
Business type: FinTech startup
Funding: Bootstrapped
Annual revenue: ~$500,000
Number of customers: 100-500
Type of customers: VC-funded startups
Number of employees: 2-5
Years in business: 1-3 years
Biggest challenge: Managing a growing list of prospective and current customers
Our solution: Our software compiles their prospects and customers into one easy-to-use interface that allows salespeople to easily track data, follow up on accounts, and close more deals.
Buying cycle length: One month
Competitors used: None
Online presence: Established following on Facebook, weekly blog
Geographical location: Bay area
Product awareness stage: They are aware of our product because of our online presence, but have never been a customer and have not yet signed up for our free trial.
Example three: The novel
Sometimes there just isn’t a substitute for details. When you’re going after a specific niche, you might find it useful to start with a long-form profile like this, and then create a shortened version for reps to memorise.
Our ideal customer is a 1-3-year-old bootstrapped FinTech startup earning about $500,000 in annual revenue. This customer will have completed a startup incubator program within the last year. Although they service a handful of markets, the majority of their most successful customers are VC-funded startups who are struggling to meet projected sales goals
They employ between two and five people full-time, one of whom is a dedicated salesperson. The majority of their leads will be inbound, and need to consider branching out into outbound lead generation to meet sales projections.
Their sales team has been managing their accounts through an Excel spreadsheet and, although it worked for them in the beginning, the system has not been sustainable as they’ve grown. They are beginning to let accounts slip through the cracks and spend more time trying to manage current accounts than on-board new ones.
They need our software because…
You get the idea. This approach outlines every potentially valuable detail about the ideal customer to make it easy to spot them from a mile away.
Limit yourself, grow your business
If you feel like your profile is limiting your leads, that’s not a bad thing.
New businesses especially need a hyper-specific customer profile. If only 15 companies fit the specifications in your ideal customer profile, then go out and close those deals.
But until you’ve locked down your ideal customers, don’t step outside them. 15 high-value customers are worth more to your business than 30 low-value customers (that’ll probably end up churning anyway).
If you’re on the fence, I challenge you to give it a try. Set aside an hour or two this week with your team and create your ideal customer profile. Then use that profile to track down and close deals.
If you don’t notice a difference, forget about it. Shred the profile and keep doing things the way you were.
But when you do notice a difference, I want you to come back to here and share your experience, and your profile, in the comments below.
I can’t wait to hear your success stories. Until then, get back out there and crush it.
About the article
This is a guest post, courtesy of Close.io. The Bitter Business has no business relationship with Close.io other than enjoying the quality of their insights into sales and how to sell better.
About the author
Steli Efti is the co-founder & CEO of Close.io, an inside sales CRM that allows users to make & receive calls with one click, automatically tracks all your emails, and minimises manual data-entry.
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