An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn’t a marketing exercise. It’s a strategic filter to focus your time, teams, and resources on people and companies you can actually help and who want what you offer.

Fictional personas. Get rid of them, they don’t belong here. Personas have manufactured problems. People in roles, the people you work with, real people. They have real problems.

Real ICPs are built from traits based on customers who you’ve had success with before.

Pick 5 clear, ranked characteristics. This gives you what we call Lines of clarity. Doing this will help you know who’s in, who’s out and why. The lines support decision making. The clarity creates focus.

***You might not be thinking - I’m not a revenue leader. You may be looking for your next hire, your next job, your next date. Here’s the cool thing. This model applies there as well.***

Are your sales, marketing, and success efforts aligned around a clear ICP? Or do you find yourself chasing every shiny opportunity?

Ask:

When you know your ICP, you stop selling and you start speaking to what your customer needs.

Clarity creates traction. Confusion stalls growth.

If your sales team feels busy but not terribly effective, it’s likely that the problem isn’t effort, it’s focus.

That’s why a clear Ideal Customer Profile matters. Not some persona or fictional buyer, but a real description of the people and organizations you are best equipped to help.

When your ICP is clear, a few important things happen fast:

As Mike says, if you try to serve everyone, you end up confusing everyone, including your own team. 😬

An ICP creates focus through lines of clarity that help leaders and reps decide where to put time, energy, and attention.

What You Can Do This Week (Hint - Keep It Simple):

You don’t need a full revamp to get started. Try this:

This same thinking can be applied to partnerships, hiring, even career moves. Use it anytime you’re trying to find the right fit instead of any fit.

If this sparked some “ah-ha” moments, we bet it would do the same for other revenue leaders on your team (or in your network) who are working through the same thing. Forward this to someone who could benefit from some lines of clarity.

If you want some help building or pressure-testing your ICP, at the individual and organizational level, a guided whiteboard session or a coaching conversation can shortcut months of trial and error. We find that a fresh set of questions can lead to finding your fit faster.

Clarity creates confidence.

Focus creates momentum.

We’re actively exploring speaking opportunities for Mike at upcoming conferences, leadership offsite, SKOs, RKOs, and team events. If you know of an open call for speakers, an event planner, or a team that could use a clear, practical voice on leadership, decision-making, and execution, we’d love the referral.

If someone in your circle is planning an event and they want people to walk away with clarity, alignment, and tools they’ll use, point them our way.

Curious what that could look like for your team or event?

See how Mike works with teams.

Decide Like a Leader - Free Live Webinar

If you’ve recently stepped into a leadership role and find yourself overthinking, second-guessing, or feeling the weight of every decision you make, this webinar is for you.

Join us on Tuesday, January 27th at 9:30am Pacific / 12:30pm Eastern for a practical session designed to help emerging leaders move from hesitation to clear and confident decision-making.

Register here.

Keep putting one intentional step in front of the other - the view gets better and better as you climb.

We’d love if you would share this with someone who is working on building out their ICP.

The Find My Catalyst Team