Ideal Customer Profile for ABM programs (w/new template)
We cover 6 pillars of the Ideal Customer Profile, how to define account qualification criteria, how to segment accounts by tiers and how to define the buying committee.
Here is a standard mistake that kills all ABM programs:
Developing a broad ICP and targeting a sales wishlist.
This approach is like a lottery.
You target hundreds of accounts, praying that at least one of them will convert.
Why is targeting sales wishlist and broad ICP doomed in the ABM programs?
Here are a few reasons:
1. ๐๐ฎ๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ซ๐ซ๐ข๐๐ซ ๐ญ๐จ ๐๐ซ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฌ๐ฆ๐๐ฅ๐ฅ & ๐ฎ๐ง๐ค๐ง๐จ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ฏ๐๐ง๐๐จ๐ซ๐ฌ.
Nobody will be fired for bringing IBM, McKinsey, etc., but that's completely different for small unknown vendors.
2. ๐๐ฑ๐ญ๐ซ๐๐ฆ๐๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ฅ๐จ๐ง๐ ๐ฌ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ฒ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌ.
Doesn't matter if the company has a challenge your product solves if that challenge doesn't fit the key initiatives (which can occur in several years in a few years).
3. ๐๐จ ๐๐ฎ๐ฒ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ข๐ง๐ญ๐๐ง๐ญ.
Everybody wants to have Apple's logo on their website, but if Apple has 0 interest in your product, you're going to waste your budget.
Instead of building wish lists, you need to:
define clusters of accounts with a similar challenge
segment them by revenue potential, vendor awareness and product need evidence / buying signals
define account qualification and disqualification criteria to focus on accounts that are likely to become sales opportunities.
In todayโs newsletter weโll cover:
Why taking your broad ICP is a fast way to fail
6 pillars of ICP for the ABM program
How to set up account qualification and disqualification criteria
How to define the real buyers inside the buying committee, not generic VPs ofโฆ
FREE ICP template for ABM programs (in the bottom of the post) and the recording of the recent episode of Full-Funnel Live where we show how to use it.
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To generate sales-qualified opportunities and influence revenue metrics such as ACV, deal close-rate and sales cycle length, you need to run demand generation, account-based marketing, lead nurturing, deal expansion and sales enablement campaigns.
It might be frustrating, especially, if you donโt have a prior background or experience of selling to mid-size/enterprise accounts.
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Why broad ICP targeting doesnโt work in ABM
Here is a real example.
Product: Corporate learning experience platform.
Broad ICP: Enterprise organizations (industry-agnostic)
Target Buyer Personas: L&D managers and HRs.
Broad ICP challenge: These buyers are in charge of growing their employees, hence they need a platform that will enable upskilling.
They ran ABM for one year.
Here are the results.
Why did the program fail?
Well, after a quick analysis of the key accounts, we saw 3 clusters of challenges. Which means that if you want to run an ABM program, you have 3 different ICPs.
ICP 1 AND THE CORE CHALLENGE.
A corporation actively acquires smaller companies and needs to decrease the onboarding time, corporate policy, and standards implementation at the acquired companies.
ICP 2 AND THE CORE CHALLENGE.
A company regularly changes leaders instead of growing internal managers. That leads to talent disengagement (no career opportunity) and turnover.
They need an internal leadership program.
ICP 3 AND THE CORE CHALLENGE.
A company has aging leaders who have been working for decades. Their market is going through disruption, and it's clear that the old approach is not working anymore.
They need change management.
In all 3 cases, firmographics criteria and the buyers remain the same.
The only problem is that these buyers have completely different needs and challenges.
What happens instead?
Marketing doesn't dive deeper into different ICP clusters. Instead, they create generic content and messaging that should be appealing to every buyer.
The content and messaging is based on the product value, not on the needs or challenges of the buyer persona.
Results:
Decreasing marketing-sourced pipeline
Higher CPL (cost per lead)
Low win rates
Ghosting leads
Better copy or AI won't prevent the issue.
You need to define different clusters of ICP.
Research their challenges and the buying process.
Adjust your messaging to the cluster.
Develop cluster full-funnel programs, including how to solve specific challenges and required change management.
Below Iโll share the 6 pillars of a cluster ICP.
Drive pipeline THIS quarter with a full-funnel ABM programs.
If any of these challenges sound familiar:
You are aligned in theory with sales but donโt do anything in practice aside from receiving wish lists from sales and sharing with them your marketing plan. In reality, you work in silos and miss the revenue targets and are being pressured by your executives.ย
You understand that your marketing and sales playbook is broken (mqls, gated content) but despite many attempts you donโt know how to fix it
Your outbound, paid ads and organic pipeline drastically decreased while CAC increased mostly because most of your market is problem unaware and not buying.
You lack brand awareness among target accounts and sales canโt get even a reply.ย
You clearly see that you're already behind your revenue targets
We can help.ย
We'll develop a custom full-funnel ABM strategy aligned with your resources, budget and stack and execute it together to drive results THIS quarter.
6 pillars of ICP
Here are 6 pillars of ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) marketing and sales MUST work on when preparing an ABM program.
๐. ๐
๐ข๐ซ๐ฆ๐จ๐ ๐ซ๐๐ฉ๐ก๐ข๐๐ฌ.
Geo markers
Segments/verticals
Stack
Other important criteria
๐. ๐ง๐ถ๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐๐ฒ๐ด๐บ๐ฒ๐ป๐๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป.
Not all clients were created equal. If one company can generate 10x more revenue than others, why should it be prospected and marketed the same way?
Segment all accounts by three tiers:
Tier 1: Highest revenue potential
Tier 2: Medium revenue potential
Tier 3: Lowest revenue potential
Here is how.
Your goal is to define companies that generate the highest revenue and create 3 tiers and firmographic criteria based on your insights.
Analyze data and ask yourself:
- Are there a few customers that have a significant share in the total revenue?
(e.g. <10% of top customers that generated 65% of the revenue).
- Can you notice significant drops in the revenue between the customers?
(e.g. customers #2 and #3 generate 17% and 15% of the total revenue, while customer #4 generates 4%).
Define two areas where the drop is evident and underline it. You'll end up with three groups of customers (or tiers).
๐ฐ. ๐๐ฐ๐ฐ๐ผ๐๐ป๐ ๐พ๐๐ฎ๐น๐ถ๐ณ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ ๐ฑ๐ถ๐๐พ๐๐ฎ๐น๐ถ๐ณ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐ฐ๐ฟ๐ถ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฎ.
1. ๐๐ง๐๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ณ๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐จ๐ง ๐ฉ๐๐ญ๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ง๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ข๐๐ซ 1 ๐๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ข๐๐ซ 2 ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ ๐ก๐๐ฏ๐.
What makes an account a good fit?
ACV (average contract value) is above $50k
Actively hiring data analysts or data engineers
Raised >$10mln in the last 3 months
Checked high-intent pages on a website and spent >1 hour
Have a good connection with one of the buying committee members
3. ๐๐ง๐๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ณ๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐จ๐ง ๐ฉ๐๐ญ๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ง๐ฌ ๐ซ๐๐๐๐ง๐ญ ๐ญ๐จ๐ฉ-10 ๐๐๐๐ฅ๐ฌ ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐๐๐๐ฅ๐ฌ ๐ก๐๐ฏ๐.
What makes the account a bad fit even if it fits firmographic criteria?
Examples:
CFO is in the 1st year in a current position
Massive layoffs in the past 6 months
No funding in the past 12โ24 months
4. ๐๐๐ญ ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ ๐ง๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ญ ๐๐๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐๐ง ๐ฌ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ง๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ซ๐ค๐๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐จ๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ช๐ฎ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ข๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ข๐ฌ๐ช๐ฎ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ข๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐๐ซ๐ข๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ข๐.
Both teams should accept the criteria and apply them to list building.
d. Buyer personas inside the buying commitee.
Most B2B companies tell us they know their buying committee. They immediately name VPs of / C+ roles and forget one fact.
The buying committee โ target department + VP/Chief of title.
If you open any enterprise account in Sales Navigator, select target department and apply VP role, youโll end up with hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of potential buyers.
How are you going to approach them and define who is the right person?
Most teams take the easy way: put all of them into ads targeting and automated outbound cadence :)
How to define the buying committee in your target accounts.
1. Deal history analysis.
Analyze email threads and events in the calendar:
- Who was the main contact and who was in CC in all email communications -> Champions
- Who attended the meetings alongside Champions -> Influencers
- Who signed the documents -> Decision-makers
- Whose budget was used -> Decision-makers
2. Buying committee enrichment.
Enrich all contacts with LinkedIn Sales Navigator:
- What are their exact titles?
- What are their responsibilities and jobs-to-be-done?
- What are the repetitive keywords in their bios and job role descriptions?
- What common connections do you have? -> They can make intros
- Who worked for your existing customers?
The bigger are the accounts you are targeting, the more people are involved in purchasing decisions.
Make sure you understand who is your exact buyer.
Leverage common connections to get insights about the buying committee structure, key initiatives and challenges.
Become relevant with your nurturing and engagement.
You land bigger sales opportunities that way. Not by spamming and targeting everybody with VP title.
๐ฒ. ๐๐ผ๐ฏ๐-๐๐ผ-๐ฏ๐ฒ-๐ฑ๐ผ๐ป๐ฒ.
Define jobs-to-be-done, KPIs, goals, and challenges of a typical buying committee member. You'll use these insights for marketing messages, content, and buyer enablement.
f. ๐๐๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ญ ๐๐ง๐ซ๐ข๐๐ก๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ญ.
Your ICP won't be complete without understanding how your customers are buying and why. Here are 4 points you need to know:
Buying triggers
Research and vendor evaluation process
Value they got from your product
Channel presence: where do they get industry information? Whom do they follow?
*Check this post and watch this episode about running a customer research.
ICP template for ABM programs
Below is the recording of the recent Full-Funnel Live episode where we explain how to use it.
How to create an Ideal Customer Profile ICP for ABM programs
In a new episode we show how to use an ICP template for the ABM program and answer community questions:
What are the best ways to figure out buying intent for target accounts?
How many ICPs to create for an ABM program
Whatโs the difference between ICP for enterprises and SMBs
OUR SPONSOR - DEALFRONT.
What sets DealFront apart?
It has intent data, data enrichment, social signals, and data verification. You can identify the right accounts for the ABM program and quickly define target buying committee members.
DealFront meets Europe's strict standards, ensuring GDPR compliance competitors can't match.
Sign up for Full-Funnel Live
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