The cornerstone of any successful sales strategy is having clarity and organizational alignment on who your Ideal Customer is. This is achieved by identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This is not a one and done exercise, it continually evolves as your business expands.
If you asked five employees in your organization, “what is our Ideal Customer Profile for the market we operate in?“ would they all give the same answer?
The reality is, probably not! Every time I’ve asked this question, I get the same answer; NO! – often accompanied with a wry smile on their face, as if to say, “Yeah, we really should know this!”
This lack of knowledge and lack of alignment exist because the ICP is often not formally defined and communicated across the organization. Instead, it tends to be a collection of subjective opinions based on personal experience with past customers.
Gartner highlights this issue, stating: “In many companies, the ICP is either poorly understood as a concept or not properly defined.”
So what happens when a business lacks a clear, unified ICP?
- Wasted sales time spent chasing low-quality leads.
- Low conversion rates for customer acquisition.
- Marketing campaigns that fail due to targeting the wrong audience.
- Missed opportunities that your competitors are winning.
- Sales frustration, burnout and low team motivation.
- Wasted resources supporting the wrong customers who don’t fit your ICP.
The impact is three-fold; lost revenue, wasted resource and employee dissatisfaction.
This is not an exhaustive list and it doesn’t stop there. Poorly defined and mis-aligned ICP affects cross-functional teams and every stage of the sales process.
Consider lead management – Harvard Business Review found that: “Businesses lose up to $1 trillion annually due to poor lead management and qualification.”
To overcome this, companies must understand, define, refine and align on their ICP (or ICPs) using data, analytics and AI. This should be an on-going initiative – because the stakes are high, and trillions of dollars are on the line!
Every organization should prioritize its ICP, ensuring it evolves alongside market shifts and company growth. After all, success isn’t just about selling- it’s about selling to the right customers.