What’s an ICP?
Good question! ICP stands for Ideal Customer Profile.
An Ideal Customer Profile is the type of company that would most likely buy your product or service.
This is not the same as a buyer persona.
A buyer persona is the person buying your product or service.
And a user persona is the person using your product or service. Usually your user persona and buyer persona are the same person, but there are many cases where these are different people.
For example, a business selling an employee benefit to HR teams (buyer persona), but used by employees (user persona). (Although technically HR are employees as well!)
Why is defining an ICP important?
If you don’t define your ICP, you’ll waste time and money going after the wrong customers. By doing the research upfront, you set yourself up to create the best product possible, and reach those customers in the most efficient way. It’s worth it.
When you find the right ICP, and build your product to fit them, you find your early-adopters, and you turn them into advocates.
Why your ICP should be as specific as possible
Founders usually have an idea with a large TAM (Total Addressable Market).
After all, if your idea is too niche, you’ll reduce the number of customers you can win, right?
Every founder starts out thinking this way. But making your idea too broad will mean it’s less relevant to the people who struggle with the problem you’ve identified most.
Alex Hormozi uses a great analogy to illustrate this.
Think how much you could charge for an eBook on losing weight? £3?
How about if the eBook was on losing weight for 50+ year old men? Maybe you could charge £10 to those people.
Or how about if the eBook was on losing weight for a 50 year old Londoner working in Finance? £250?
Making your idea more relevant to a smaller audience inherently increases its value. Customers feel like you’ve made the product for them, and because of its relevancy, they’ll pay more for it.
It also focuses your products/services to solve problems for a very specific person. This guides your decision-making and keeps your focus narrow.
Facebook started for students on college campuses
Mark Zuckerberg didn’t set out to change the world with Facebook. Instead, he and Eduardo Saverin built thefacebook.com to create a directory of students at Harvard. They didn’t start out with a grand vision, they set out to solve a very small problem on a local level. By doing that so exceptionally well, word of mouth grew and the company grew to what it is today.
"I never started this to build a company. I was just trying to help connect people at colleges and a few schools".
Airbnb started for conference attendees
In 2007, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia rented out air mattresses in their apartment for conference attendees, as they noticed that all the local hotels were sold out. Only from this very niche use case did the idea grow. Today for every 1500 dollars spent around the world, $1 is spent on AirBnb.
How to define your ICP [use our template]
Step 1: Desk research
Think about your experiences - do you already know from your professional background where this problem is really felt the most? If you’re not sure, research communities. Reddit, Discord, Slack & Facebook have active members asking questions and openly sharing their challenges in small, niche groups. Use that to validate who your ICP could be.
Another interesting method of identifying your ICP is to list all the possible use cases for your product. Particularly for SaaS products, maybe the underlying tech could be used in a myriad of ways. Thinking in use cases can help you increase your list of possible ICPs.
After your research, pin your ICP ideas to a dart board like the one below. This should challenge you to start with the ICP ideas who stand to benefit most from your idea.
Step 2: Setup interviews
So now you should have a rough idea of who your ICP could be. Great.
Next, you’ll need to organise a call with several members of your ICP. You’re doing this to learn about them, their organisation, their goals, their challenges, and most importantly - do they see the same problem you do, and do they see the same future you’re trying to create?
To clinch getting your ICP to show up and speak with you, here’s what you’ll need to do.
1. Use Lemlist or Apollo to get the contact data you need to reach out. You should be able to source email addresses and phone numbers, searching via job title, industry etc.
2. Next, write an email, reaching out to them.
Here’s two different options we’ve used that have worked well:
Hey [name],
My name is X, and I’ve just started a business (wish me luck!). [Your friend’s name] suggested I talk with you about ______.
I have been trying to do customer development and would like to hear more about how I should do _________ and __________.
I’d really value your thoughts.
Are you free for an e-coffee? It would really be a big help. I’m available:
9:30am on Tuesday
3pm on Thursday
11:30am on Friday
Feel free to suggest another time if those don’t work!
Best wishes,
[Your name]
Hey [name],
“My name is _________, and I’ve just started a business (wish me luck!). I’ve been reading your blog and was hoping I could talk to you about ________.
I’d like to get some honest feedback on my idea and I’d really value your thoughts.
Are you free for an e-coffee? It would really be a big help. I’m available:
9:30am on Tuesday
3pm on Thursday
11:30am on Friday
Feel free to suggest another time if those don’t work!
Best wishes,
[Your name]
Step 3: Interviews
We have a full article here on conducting a customer development interview using the “Mom” test framework. Have a read.
Step 4: Reflect and analyse
Does this group of people “get” the problem you’ve identified? Do they feel it strongly too?
Is it a passing annoyance, or a burning problem?
You’ll want to remove your bias here, and really think about whether this group of people need to solve this problem, and if they would pay money to do it.
Step 5: Stick or twist
Answer “Is this my ICP?” and choose one of these options:
- Not sure - Speak to more people in this ICP
- No - Go back to the research stage and identify a new ICP to interview
- Yes - you’ve found your ICP
Enter your ICP here
Example (Loom)
Industry: Tech
Region: London
Budget: £10 per salesperson
Company size: Scaleups 100-500
Buying committee: SDR Team Lead, VP of Sales
Tech stack: Sales prospecting tool (ZoomInfo, Cognism, Apollo), CRM
Organisational goals: Increase revenue
Challenges: SDR team has a low response rate via cold email / Linkedin DM’s
Aspirations: Increase the number of first meetings being booked
How to know if it’s not the right ICP
We could write an endless list of requirements here. But every business is different, and not all will apply. So we’ve thought of the 2 most obvious examples of when you know it’s not the right ICP.
They give you “nice” feedback, not “oh my god you get my problem” feedback
“That sounds cool”
“I like that idea”
“Great idea”
“That would help”
“That’s interesting, really cool idea”
These are examples of “nice” feedback. They make you feel warm and fuzzy. You’re like “They like my idea!”. But that’s just it. They like it, but they’re not OBSESSED. Never settle for nice feedback. We want obsessed.
“This is SO good”
“I need this now”
“That is EXACTLY my problem”
“I really love it”
This is what we want.
Their eye’s don’t light up when you talk about solving this problem
90% of communication is nonverbal. You may hear nice words, but body language can really tell what you what they mean. Do their eye’s light up. Do they suddenly have more energy. Are they using their hands expressively. All these things indicate passion in response to what you’ve said. Again, this is what we want.
Don’t leave it late
Before you go and speak to potential customers/users, define your ICP. If you leave it late you could end up building your solution around the wrong ICP. That might mean you’re taking the company in the wrong direction, wasted marketing spend and creating product features that aren’t right long-term. Getting the right ICP early fixes that.
It takes time
You may nail your ICP first time, but chances are you won’t. That’s ok.
In truth, most founders don’t nail it right away. Make an educated guess, and go and speak to handful of those people. Stay open-minded and record the feedback. Repeat this process umpteen times.
It’s not uncommon for founders to still be trying to nail their ICP 2 years later. Forever in search of their true ICP.
You’ll get there.
Good luck! You’ve got this 💪
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