When I launched Inscaler, I knew clearly my ICP. And I was incredibly lucky.
Why? Because it manifested multiple times.
Before Inscaler was born, I received 10-15 early-stage founders asking always for the same thing: help us build and scale our first sales team.
Same ICP in Jan 2023, same today.
Slightly smaller - as I started with scaleups and turned into early-stage - but same bucket.
But not so many people who build companies and sales teams are as lucky as I was.
In fact, what I see around is the opposite: founders selling to multiple industries, tiers and job titles.
Trying to find their best ideal customer profile in the process of selling and GTM.
And after building hundreds of ICPs with founders across Europe, I can tell you something essential:
When your ICP is wrong, everything becomes painful.
When your ICP is right, everything becomes lighter. Easier. Smooth.
Your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is the customer who is MOST likely to buy from you.
Your ICP is the customer who:
For example, "CTOs of SaaS companies in Italy 0-50 employees".
Some people give their ICPs' names, ages, and genders to visualise them in the best way possible.
Whatever - as long as you're specific.
We usually guess. We hope. We mix five different customer types into one big bucket.
We try to go to big companies, to small, to scale up, and to startups, to founders and marketing managers. At once.
Then we go and ask SDRs and AEs to "go sell."
Of course, sales feel slow. Of course, messaging feels weak.
We are mixing ICPs, we are getting mixed messages, and we are sending out mixed messages.
Our offering starts suffering too because we now have multiple pricing, going from 1K to 20K.
I always start with a straightforward exercise:
Take your best 5 customers. Put them next to each other.
Spot the patterns.
Then, ask yourself:
If a customer fails these three, they're not your ICP today.
Maybe later.
But not today.
This is something coming up strong lately, and to be honest, it is gold, and it helps close faster.
Triggers tell you exactly when a customer is ready.
Examples:
When you know the trigger, that's the time for you to go all-in and to add value.
"Ehy, Mrs Customer - I have seen you are looking for Y, usually [your role] like you when face [problem] they do X, Y, Z and achieve M, N, O. This is why [our company] was built, and it is known for serving [success stories]. It is worth reviewing together your [process] and seeing if [our company] can help you?
Your ICP is ready when:
When this is in place, everything moves better: Pipeline grows.
Outbound feels easy.
Discovery calls become sharper.
Closing gets easier.
There are millions of templates out there, and mine is just one of them.
A good is this Inscaler template.
You start by listing the problems, the solution, and the unique selling point of your product, and then connect those to a certain target: role, industry and size.
After you have this nailed, you can add more complexity to it and expand into buying signals.
ICP is a simple yet essential exercise you need to do after you have sold a few hundred thousand already.
Doing too early may limit your scope, because you are still "figuring it out" - doing too late may derail your sales cycle, completely hitting you with high churn and low conversions.
Find the balance, but do not skip it - it is a crucial stage in the phase of building your early-stage startup.
Thanks for reading this far, have a good weekend everyone!
