The 80/20 way to figure out your ICP and how to get more of them in 5 steps. You can execute this in hours. 1. Pull a list of your top customers, as defined by - have renewed (annually) at least once - use your core products - top spenders (ACV/LTV) - mostly happy with you (you can meet their needs) 2. Feed that list into AI (eg Chatgpt) and ask it to find common threads Tweak this prompt to fit your reality: “Here’s a list of our top B2B customers: [paste your customer list here]. Please analyze each one’s industry, employee headcount, typical revenue range, total funding (if available), and technology stack or product-led approach. Then, identify common patterns that could define our ICP, highlight any outliers, and cite sources (e.g., Crunchbase, LinkedIn). Provide a concise summary of the core traits that unify them—such as team size, funding stage, and business model—so I can refine our ideal customer profile.” 3. You will learn one or more groupings of ICPs. Use your own judgement and other data sources to confirm these make sense. For Wynter, this is what it looks like: * Fast-growing B2B software/SaaS * 200–2,000 employees. * Have raised over $50M * Product-led or partially self-serve approach * Emphasis on tech-enabled efficiency - DevOps, security, collaboration, AI/ML, or fintech. * Common titles of buyers: Director or VP Product marketing/VP Marketing/CMO Now you need to know their priorities, the situations they are in, what they're struggling with, what they're using you for. 4. Interview customers matching those parameters. Divide up among team members to do it fast. You can ask about 10 questions in a 30min meeting. Use these as a starting point: - How did you first hear about us? - What specific problem were you looking to solve? - What triggered the need to solve that problem? - How did you talk about us internally to get buy-in? - What objections or questions did the stakeholders raise? - What is the main value you’re getting out of us? Mention specific instances and outcomes. - How do you measure success or ROI after using us? - How does the wider organization engage with our tool? - What parts of our tool could be improved so you’d get even more value? - What would make our tool indispensable so that renewing is a given? 5. Run a target customer survey on Wynter, targeting companies/titles that look like your ICPs. If you have multiple ICPs, survey them separately. The goal is to learn about their needs, pain points, how they solve the issues now, symptoms they're experiencing, the channels they use to learn more about the kinds of problems you solve, thoughts about your category players. The insights will inform you - which messaging to use that will resonate with their pains and desired gains - which triggers to use for reaching out - which channels to use to reach them - how to differentiate Now you know whom to go after, and how to get more of them.
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