Every organization has an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) but very few have it written down. Even fewer have used historical data to define it. This email will focus on how to find your historical ICP and compare it to your aspirational ICP.

And this is hugely important. Why? Every person on your team thinks they know the historical ICP. They also likely have an aspirational ICP that they are moving to (larger clients, increased adoption of one or your products, etc). However, these are virtually guaranteed to be different from person to person UNLESS the conversation is grounded in data.

This Everpeak article, ICP and Buyer Personas, will teach you exactly how to:

• Use CRM data to find your historical ICP
• Enrich the data with new attributes as needed
• Define Buyer Personas within those ICPs

Historical vs Aspirational

Does the historical ICP as defined by your actual customers need to be your ICP going forward? NO!!! It is completely fine to have an “aspirational” ICP.

In fact, you should have an aspirational ICP. It may be a few degrees off your historical ICP - or it may be 90 degrees. What matters is that everyone in your organization knows the difference.

Write it Down

I had a boss tell me once, “Unless you write it down, it doesn’t exist.” It’s surprisingly accurate when dealing with internal business discussions.

Writing down your ICP grounds the internal discussion in data - not opinions. It also allows your sales and marketing teams to align on how best path forward. This requires collaboration. If sales is focused on a certain type of customer while marketing is focused on another, your close-rate will tank. Not to mention the internal finger-pointing from what department to another.

Write it down, discuss it, and establish some timelines. Everpeak can help you pull the data and ICPs together, and your internal meeting is 45 min. It’s a meeting going into 2025 that you won’t regret.