4 Mistakes Businesses Make When Creating an Ideal Customer Profile

4 Mistakes Businesses Make

If you want to keep evolving and growing in the sales industry, you should not neglect one of the most significant elements of your marketing and sales strategy – Creating your ideal customer profile (ICP).

If you sell to everyone, you are selling to no one – at Persuade, we have emphasized this point many times! Creating your ideal customer profile is incredibly useful when planning your marketing and sales strategies as it focuses your intent on specific people instead of a large market.

As simple as it might sound, creating an ideal customer profile is not so easy! Many companies unknowingly make mistakes during this process that leads them to down dead-ends and loss in revenue. Let us dive into them.

4 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating an ICP

Here are four of the most common mistakes businesses make and why you need to avoid them.

  1. Profiling ideal customers instead of existing customer and their buying habits

That is the number one mistake that many companies make! While creating their ICPs, they tend to focus on what their perfect customer would look like instead of defining what their real and existing customer looks like.

It is important to remember that your ICP will help you understand your real or existing customer. Hence, it should not be created based on assumptions that are not verified. Profiling your current customers will help you have an ICP that fits your business. Moreover, it will allow you to focus your marketing strategy and target the right people.

Remember, your current customers are your ideal ones. Use the insights from them to attract more of the same potential buyers.

  1. Relying on firmographic data

Firmographic incorporates the different data points that help create your ICP, for example, company size, geographic area, industry, and more). Despite being useful, relying wholly on it is not enough. The firmographic data is just a starting point to help you develop a more thorough representation of your target audience. You need to understand what drives your target customers to make purchasing decisions.

  1. Not creating your negative customer profile

When creating your ICP you need to think not just about those who will buy your products or services but also about those who will not! Chasing prospects who are only ever likely to prove unprofitable is a big waste of time and money. Thence, you need to create a negative customer profile.

Having a negative customer profile will be useful and spare you unnecessary effort that is not likely to be rewarded with sales and revenue.

  1. Not involving the rest of your company

When creating your ICP, you should not only necessitate your marketing team or sales team. Although they should be the ones to lead the process, you also need to bring in the insights of staff from other teams and departments to see what they can contribute. That will also help create alignment among all teams. They will be working towards a common goal and help you understand who your best and most ideal customers are.

Let The Experts Help You Create Your ICP

At Persuade, many businesses reach out to us daily to discuss their sales tactics and challenges. Our team of experts listens, dig into their process, understand the gaps, and then always ask the same question: What is your ideal customer profile (ICP)?

Often time, our clients and prospects are clear about their target but a lot of time, we also hear a lot of responses that are too broad, generic, and un-researched.

We understand it is hard to nail down the right ICP. Our team is always ready to assist any type of company, whether small or big. If you need help creating yours or want to ensure your ICP is correct, talk to us today!

Related tag: How to Grow Your Sales

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