Ideal Customer Profile

Quantity versus quality. Have you ever onboarded a customer only to wished that you’d never closed that sale?

This is what happens when you sell to a prospect that has a poor or non-existing match to your organisation’s product or service offering.

A sales rep has potentially up to 35% of poor prospects that they are engaged with at any time. These prospects do not fulfil the Ideal Customer Profile. They either do not purchase or do not offer the profitability that the company needs to run a successful business.

Planning and preparation are critical in sales success as much as in any other professional discipline. In sales, understanding what the characteristics of your Ideal Customer Profile is critical.

Ideal Customer Profile

An Ideal Customer Profile should represent your sales ‘Sweet Spot’. Alternatively, it should identify customers that have the best fit for your product or service. These typically are the segments of the market that benefit from adopting your solution. The aim is to target the type of customer where you win the most.

Sounds so simple, but so many organizations struggle to clearly articulate and document what their Ideal Customer Profile is.

It is important to know:

1. Where your sales “sweet-spot” is?
2. Where to “point” the marketing expenditure at?
3. The Ideal Customer Profile in order to create a Demand Generation strategy?
4. The relevant content to provide to the appropriate person at the right point in time.

The Ideal Customer Profile includes a cross-section of criteria that identifies your ideal target. Firmographic data is the foundation on which the Ideal Customer Profile is built.  Some of the most commonly used criteria in defining the Ideal Customer Profile are:

1. The average size of the company
2. The average company revenue
3. The ideal industry or industries
4. The ideal location of the company
5. Status & Structure
6. The duration of a firm’s existence, rate of growth & performance
7. Propensity to buy.

There are also psychographic characteristics that impact on the Ideal Customer Profile. These include features like, company values, attitudes & beliefs shared by the individuals buying influences within the organisation. Some of these include.

1. Importance placed by the company on reputation in the marketplace.
2. Ethical standards / Environmental standards
3. Attitudes towards stakeholders / business / social
4. Openness to innovation
5. Importance based on quality vs quantity.

How do you build an Ideal Customer Profile? 

Here are some easy steps that help in the creation of your Ideal Customer Profile

1. Pull reports or review past 18-24 months of sales data, by industry grouping and size of customer organization.
2. Determine the top 3 industries represented in your customer base.
3. Identify customer size that best represents your current install base (annual revenue, total number of employee’s)
4. Confirm that the customer size has at least the same statistical relevance to your top 3 industries segments.
5. Confirm the sales footprint for your current customer base.
6. Confirm the buyer of your product or service (this is the Economic Buyer who has the authority to sign a contract)

Based on the above, an Ideal Customer Profile can be created. Once you have this in place, the next step is to align your sales qualification with your Ideal Customer Profile.

How CRM can assist

A CRM system benefits an organisation through the visibility of its sales activities. This visibility is fundamental to the management and control of the sales process. This visibility enables management to understand why, when, who and how opportunities are being won, stalled, or being lost.  If it cannot be monitored, it cannot be managed. The visibility offered within the CRM system also allows management to make educated business decisions based on hard data.

ProAptivity are an independent CRM solutions provider. We focus on the implementation, training, and support of highly customised CRM software solutions. Our CRM software supported by our sales training provide customers with the tools needed to deliver successful sales process management.

Fundamentally, we help organisations embed CRM best practice throughout their organisation.

If you need help in understanding why my business needs CRM, maybe some of our eBooks could help! Alternatively visit Maximizer CRM or Pipedrive CRM for more information. Contact us today on 028 9099 6388 or via info@proaptivity.com. We can help you assess if your business is CRM ready.