by Tom Fedro
The ICP identifies prospects most likely to have PAM dancing in the halls of their buildings. Your ICP will describe who is most likely to invest in your product or service, and will become the guiding light for all of your marketing and sales messages. Your ICP places a laser focus on the specific prospects who will love your product, derive the most value from it, and — once they become customers — will stay with you, buy more, and become a strong advocate and referral source for you.
Correctly identifying the ICP shortens the sales cycle, as these prospects are probably already feeling the pain that your product will reduce or eliminate. The most qualified of these prospects are already seeking a product or service like yours and may already use one of your competitors. Your sales and marketing team will be much more effective with an identified ICP as it will put their attention on repeatable and scalable sales strategies with the right message targeting the right prospects. You can nail down a universe of potential suspects into pre-qualified prospects that fit in the box where your product or service will do the most good — helping them reach their goals and alleviating their pain to the benefit of all.
Established companies can identify their particular ICP by asking questions of the existing customer base. Determine their defining characteristics, and then classify the people that are currently using your product or service. Ask how they feel about it. The answers to these and other fundamental questions will give you a strong feel for your ICP.
Look at your existing customers, and identify common elements such as these.
Who is getting the most value out of the product?
Who is getting the best return on their investment?
Who has stayed with you for the long haul?
Which of these customers is providing you with the most profit?
Who is returning your product?
Who is calling for support?
Who continues to buy your product?
These questions will reveal the general shape of your ICP, allowing you to drill deeper with more specific questions such as these.
• Market What is their industry or vertical market?
• Pattern In which SIC code are they classified?
• Size How big are they by employee count and locations?
• Income What’s their annual revenue?
• Geography Where are they located — domestic to the U.S. or international?
• Maturity How old are they?
Are they a startup or newer company?
What kind of pattern can we find in the age of the business?
Is it growing or shrinking?
Are competitors moving into their market?
Or are they being bought?
• Technology If you are selling a software solution, you’ll want to know what systems and software they have in place, and how that impacts your offering.
Will your offering work with whatever they have in place?
For example, if they’re an ORACLE ERP shop and your product only works with SAP, you could have a problem. Do they have enough people for your offering? They may have substantial revenue, but few employees. If you’re selling payroll software or HR software based on employee count, that’s an important metric.
After you collect and analyze the answers to your questions, you should have a solid ICP describing the most profitable prospects to pursue with your advertising and messaging.
Let’s say you’ve analyzed the relevant and critical demographic categories to build your ICP. You’ve learned the following.
They’re based in the United States.
They bring in $300 million and above in annual revenue.
They’re in the healthcare industry.
They’ve been in business for 20 years.
They use a particular kind of clinical database (that you sell).
With that profile, you can confidently nail down a tight group of prospects. The next step for each of those prospects is to identify the key personas in your ICP.
Opportunities don’t happen; you create them.
– Chris Grosser
What’s a persona anyway?
According to an article by Amy Wright with the title “What Is a ‘Buyer Persona’ and Why Is It Important?” (Social Media Today, October 17, 2017),
“A buyer persona is a research-based profile that depicts a target customer. Buyer personas describe who your ideal customers are, what their days are like, the challenges they face and how they make decisions.”
She adds,
“It’s common to have multiple buyer personas for a business — for example, if the end user of your product needs to gain the approval of others before making a purchase, each individual involved in that decision is a separate persona. They’ll have different criteria for evaluating your product, and you’ll need different strategies to address those needs.”
The ICP should include the demographics of an account and the people you’ll target, such as the influencers and decision makers; this is where defining specific buyer personas becomes critical. Add these details to the overall ICP to help you prepare. For example, if you’re selling a software product, you’ll want to talk to the engineers or technical people within an account. In many cases, they will be at the level of director or manager.
What are their potential goals?
As you get deeper into defining the ICP and buyer personas, ask what it is they are looking to accomplish; what their near-term and long-term goals are; and what they feel to be the critical issues that keep coming up meeting after meeting, quarter after quarter. Find their pain and develop an understanding of the hot buttons for that particular group. Going through this process with your existing customers (or focus groups for startups) will define their pain envelope and prepare for validating it across your prospect base.
Who is the end user?
The end user is a separate persona, who will be much more interested in how easily the product fits into their daily efforts, rather than a technical evaluator, who will be looking at how easily it fits into their existing environment. Will the product increase or decrease the amount of time they’re sitting behind a computer? Which benefits and messages will resonate with the end user?
What is the message for the authority?
Generally, the financial buyer in high-value, million-dollar-plus transactions will be the CFO, a vice-president of finance and in some cases, a director — the individual who will be evaluating the nuts and bolts on the return on investment. Although they release the funds, Finance is NOT the ultimate decision maker in most cases — so who is? Who inks the deal? Whether that’s an individual manager, director, VP, the CEO or a group of nameless faces that are on the committee, you must determine the best message for the authority. The titles may vary for each prospect even though they are grouped in your ICP database.
After running through this maze, you’ll have mapped out the account. You’ll know the ICP, the demographics, the four or five persons involved in the sale, and you will have developed particular messages for each one of them.
Now get out there and make it happen!
2. Engage the prospect.
There are multiple ways to initiate outbound engagement, but the most direct and effective vector is email (ideally that they’ve opted in to receive), followed by phone, then text message, then FedEx and then direct mail — with the shared goal of every outreach being to entice the prospect to meet, in person if appropriate. Use LinkedIn’s platform to engage the prospect, hammer social media where your buyer personas spend their time, and start a webinar series to deliver valuable content. Be visible at industry trade shows where you’re building your brand in front of the right crowd, many of them fitting your ICP. Do what you can to find out what your particular prospects will respond to and leverage that insight.
Email has proven to be the most effective method for reaching out to large groups with targeted communications. A tight message will get the best response. That, however, is your ‘
air cover’ to provide great overall coverage. Be aware that you’ll be dealing with many spam traps and anti-spam rules that might prevent your email from reaching your target, so makes sure you’re getting people to opt in to your mailing list via your website, and find other ways to engage as well.
When you’re dealing with million-dollar deals, you’ll need to be assertive and creative in reaching your prospect. Beyond email, you must hit the phones, text messaging, follow up with a FedEx, UPS or DHL package if necessary (since it’s a million-dollar deal, the extra cost is worth it — as long as you direct it to the right person’s desk), followed by another voicemail and more outreach on social media. Do whatever you can to snag their attention and get in there!
In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity. – Albert Einstein
Figure out the right avenue to get to the prospect, whether it’s through originality, repetition or passion. Perhaps you can land an introduction through your business network or a friend of a friend. You’ll need to be incredibly resourceful to make it happen, but that’s the job. With your ICP, it’s a foregone conclusion that they’ll enjoy a significant return on investment, just as your other customers have. Closing the deal also means a huge revenue win for the salesperson’s company which means a big commission check for the salesperson. Win, win, win — the circle of life in business!
What about the gatekeeper?
Many books have been written on the gatekeeper, so we won’t spend much time on the subject. At this level of selling, you’ll be dealing with senior-level decision makers, making it more likely that you will encounter a gatekeeper. My advice is not to play any games. Don’t pull ridiculous stunts to get someone on the phone. I’ve been witness to some crazy stuff, including hearing someone drop a line like “Hey, your guy owes me money. Let me talk to him.” Another tactic would be to leave a voicemail and after listing your phone number, pretend to be cut off right before telling the prospect how much they won in the lottery.
These tactics won’t work. Don’t do it! Once your cover’s blown, they’re not going to be too impressed by your level of deception, and they’re going to shut you down. I recommend that you always be honest and explain precisely why you’re calling. Instead of being deceitful, make the gatekeeper your advocate. Explain the value you’ve provided to other key players in the industry. Share that you have some insights on their competition that would be very helpful to the target. Offer to send them some of the info directly. Sell them on the value of a few minutes of their charge’s time with you and your information.
In many cases, they’ll put you on the calendar — if you’ve done an excellent job presenting yourself. If not, they may recommend you to somebody else who is the key influencer or a potential decision maker. It’s always going to be much more powerful to come down to that person with a recommendation from the CEO or CTO than to call them out of the blue. The gatekeeper must be your friend, and you must do whatever you can to convince them that you’re worthy of time with the target.
If that doesn’t work — say the gatekeeper takes the form of a lower-level manager yet claims to be the decision maker — you can utilize multilevel selling. For example, say you’re speaking to an IT director, and you need to reach the vice president, who is the authority. Request an appointment by saying, “I’d like to bring my vice president to meet with you and your vice president to review our understanding. We can give you a briefing on the industry from our perspective, and provide competitive information that we feel you would find highly valuable. Can we set up a meeting?” You can secure the audience you need by using someone within your organization to do a multilevel sales call.
This method is highly effective. If you’ve got some good details, it’s going to make this director look good to put you in front of their VP because the company’s going to get some inside information that otherwise they’ll never have. It’s a powerful tactic to use with everybody up and down the executive suite in your company to close deals.
Every sale has five obstacles:
no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. – Zig Ziglar
How do you establish your credibility and show that you’re somebody to be taken seriously?
If you have good reference accounts, it always helps to talk about the other people who are successfully using your solution. If you’re a new company and you don’t have many customers in your particular market, how do you establish your credibility? Create the opportunity for that first prospect to become an excellent reference account! Do whatever is necessary to close with them — you could give them special treatment such as free engineering resources, extended maintenance or new features that can be leveraged by future customers and delivered at no charge. Again, it’s all about being creative in pursuit of your goal — that’s the nature of the sales business.
Remember my Hail Mary story from the previous chapter? To win that first big deal (or even the first deal), there has to be a clear incentive for the prospect to take a risk with a small upstart. Everyone understands that choosing a newbie would result in much more scrutiny if something goes awry. I suggest that you identify and engage an internal champion — somebody in the account who is not afraid to take chances and make a name for themselves. A champion inside can be the key (and many times the only way) to win that business.
Most people think ‘selling’ is the same as ‘talking’. But the most effective salespeople know that listening is the most important part of their job. – Roy Bartell
For a small company to compete, it’s always helpful for them to find somebody on the inside with a mindset focused on making the right decision, regardless of anything else. The brand on the service or product they’re buying doesn’t matter; they don’t have to buy from the biggest name in the industry. They want the right deal with the right perks, and if it’s a small company that can prove themselves, they’ll go ahead and choose them. Finding and leveraging this type of champion in these potential reference accounts is the fastest, most efficient path to victory.
What if you have some reference accounts, but now you want to move into adjacent markets?
As the salesperson, it’s your job early in the process to make sure you’re dealing with an innovative organization as the first prospect for a new vertical. It becomes clear quite quickly if you’re dealing with people who are not going to take chances. You’ve got to be able to go in and lay it out, saying, “We haven’t been in this vertical before. We haven’t been in this market before. We believe, though, that we have the right product. We have done our research and know how to solve the pain just as we have for our customers in market X, and we know how to deliver our value on time and under budget.”
Lay out all your research, and confirm your ideas along with the benefits and perks they will receive as your first reference account. Review the go-forward plan, and if it’s on target for this new prospect, ask them the fundamental questions about going with your company. If you’re a new name, brand or solution provider in their space, are they willing to take on the risk together with you in a partnership? If not, it’s time to move on. PAM is not in the building; it’s time to go.
Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.
– Sam Levenson
To be successful with new prospects in new industries and verticals, make sure you get plenty of practice. Step out of your comfort zone and get into situations where you may feel awkward and uncomfortable, yet you’re still required to perform. The more of those environments you can master as a salesperson, the faster you’re going to grow, and the more skilled on your feet you’re going to be. For an inexperienced person, of course, it’s helpful to have a mentor or a resource that they can talk to and learn from. Get some training, onboarding and online role-playing, then go out there and be awkward — the more, the better for long-term success!
You must persevere. Believe in yourself, have confidence, and stretch your mind and social skills. I recommend practicing these
types of skills in everyday interactions. For example, be nice to people and engage strangers. Talk to people at the supermarket or on the elevator. Practice making connections, and learn how to build that rapport as quickly as you can with each new person. Being a nice person and interacting with people improves your confidence, and you can take that to the sales table.
Here’s a tip. Always have your trusty question list in your notebook; if things go sideways, you can get right back on track with quality questions ready to go. These are your roadmap to PAM.
It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. – Yogi Berra
When reaching out to prospects, the possibility exists that you could blow it. What if you leave a negative first impression? What if you don’t click with the person you’re talking to, or there’s a faux pas? You apologize (if necessary) and try again. Sometimes, you catch people at the wrong moment or you remind them of someone they don’t like. Perhaps their boss just chewed them out. Maybe they don’t want to talk, and you happen to walk in or call right at that moment. That happens; people can be complicated. Try a different method of communication and get back in there. Your job as a sales professional is to get into that account and help them see their pain in the right light.
It’s important to remember that you, as a salesperson, are there to help them become more profitable. You must have PAM and it must be a win-win scenario, or it’s time to move on.
Sometimes, a company might want to assign a different salesperson to that sale, particularly if it becomes blatantly obvious that there’s a personality conflict among those currently involved, or if some non-recoverable situation has taken place. It depends on what’s gone down — but you can never give up if you know the prospect matches the ICP and shows signs of PAM; sometimes, you have to find another way in.
In some cases, it makes sense to go above the problem, avoid the initial contact altogether, and have a higher-level individual make contact with a peer in the prospect’s business (for example, VP to VP or perhaps CEO to CEO). A multilevel approach can sometimes change the vector of the relationship for the better. If you believe that there’s pain to be solved and you can do it, it’s in everybody’s best interests to get past the personality conflict and get down to business. It might be necessary to back off for six months and then come back. People move; people change. People get fired; people leave. It happens all the time. Don’t ever give up if all the ingredients for a significant win are within reach.