Developing an Ideal Client Profile not only helps you align your sales and marketing strategies and tactics, it also can help reduce the risks and unintended consequences that come with bringing on new clients. The Industrial Marketer podcast helps you get started.
Developing an Ideal Client Profile not only helps you align your sales and marketing strategies and tactics, it also can help reduce the risks and unintended consequences that come with bringing on new clients. The Industrial Marketer podcast helps you get started.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the industrial Marketer Podcast your place for the tips, tech trends and tactics for industrial who care about driving leads to their companies. I'm one of your hosts as always Joey strong industrial marketer advocate and all around neat fella. I am joined as always by my partner in crime, my cohort, Nels on the shelf Jensen, how are you? I'm a man. I'm doing really well.
Nels Jensen:Thank you, Joey, thanks for that nice introduction.
Joey Strawn:You're, you're very welcome. You know, it's always it's nice that when we can get to this time of year, the holiday season, pulled down our Nels on the shelf, put them on content, advice and strategy tips. It's just wonderful. Me and my kids love it. We hide the Nels on the shelf around every single day.
Nels Jensen:You never know, right? You never know when you'll get some incredible insight from Nels on the shelf.
Joey Strawn:Exactly. We come down every morning. And then it's like, hey, write a case study. We're like, yay. Oh, man. But today, we're not talking about case studies. Now today, because we're still in our quarter of sales focus is the end of the year, people are setting their budgets, people are getting their proposals and items in line for next year, people are looking for those new sales that are going to really fill in their bottom line in their pipeline for 2022. And so this quarter, we're dedicated to all sales topics that are important to beat a BS and industrials dealing with these markets, the pandemic has set crazy supply chain problems, companies are moving in all sorts of new ways and looking at new partners. And whether they're going in the sustainability route or looking for cheaper partners and supply chain manufacturing paths. Everybody is looking right now to find their best and most ideal partners. And that's all what this episode is about NetSuite you and I are really hyper focusing in on the ICP, or the ideal customer profile. Now in the wider sales world. That's a very general term. But now you and I were focusing on the industrial b2b markets. And that's where you and I are going to live today. How excited are you to talk about that? Well, that's where that's where we live every day, Joey. And it's, it's a, it's a narrow world in the sense of some of the some of the verticals, it's a, you know, elongated world in terms of buying cycles. And that's what makes this challenging, right? How do you might not have a, you might not have a large pool of clients. But if you can get aligned with the right ones, then you're golden. That is, and now that is such a great summary of kind of why it's so important. So a couple of things, we do have a special guest today now. So you and I have have gone into the world and pulled in a business development expert, someone who deals with this every day in the industrial sectors, and is talking to companies about their ideal client profiles. And he obviously has one for himself that he's trying to identify. So Jim, the jam man is coming in later. And he is going to tell us all about real world practical applications, and how he helps other people get numerical trackable ways to talk to the right people. But before we even do that, let's set the stage a little bit about what okay, what the heck is an ICP? What are we talking about here? And like, how is it different? Or is it the same thing as a target persona? How do b2b Is use them? And why and when might they use them? And then we're gonna let Jim tell us some specifics. So now, I want to start by giving the definition of an ICP. I know you and I talk about acronyms, we love acronyms, but the ideal customer profile. So when we talk about the ideal customer profile, what we are talking about a hypothetical company, or organization that you can map out on paper that would get the most benefit from working with your organization. So yes, step that best just a little bit. But yeah, no. So what do you take from that? What do you hear? So to me a definition.
Nels Jensen:To me, there's a couple of simple ways to look at this as well, definition spot on, but it's the intersection, right of your capabilities and somebody else's needs, right? Got to be a good match from there. And it's also somebody who will work with you to add value and work with you to reduce friction. You know, it's those those are two key components in any good business to business relationship, right? It's not just making a widget. It's not just providing software support, you know, it's about adding value. It's about, you know, how do you how can you work with this person? And that can be for in terms of all sorts of things that we're going to talk about, but we can talk about the pain points, we can talk about budgets, you There's there's a bunch of checkboxes almost that go into the ideal client profile. And obviously, one of them is the ability to work together to add value for each other.
Joey Strawn:I couldn't agree more. And I love how you put that as the is the intersection. And finding value is finding that benefit benefit is the intersection of all the data and all the things we know and all the things we do to really put together this profile of who is going to work best with us. And what we mean by that it's not who's gonna make the most money, it's not the biggest name in your market, there's a lot of ways that when you hear that term was like a hypothetical company that would like be the greatest that we could work with, you have to take a very serious approach to this, because it's not going to be just the biggest names in the industry, it's not going to be the biggest brands in the world, a lot of in a lot of cases, especially with the b2b and industrial markets, bigger is not always better, the more general and the more inclusive, that your ideal customer profile is, the more watered down so it can fit in more people and more companies and more brands, the less effective eventually it's going to be one of the things that really, really, I think we're going to pinpoint this with Jim later is that when you're thinking of an ICP, or an AI, deal, or profile, you need to think of the companies that are realistic to work with size, budget, timing, all of that. And we'll talk about those parameters in section two. But they also need to be a realistic partner for you. So if they don't have the accounting functions, or if they don't have the turnaround times, or vendor relationships that you prefer, there are some companies I know that are trying to get net zero on sustainability. So they're working with only suppliers who match their sustainability goals. So whatever your stipulations may be, as finding that ideal partner is more than just company is more than just Exxon who has $8 billion, and we want money. So that's where I really want to get more in with Jim in the weeds on this. But the idea behind an ideal customer profile isn't so much that it's just like a target persona. We've talked about target personas before. But those are the person you're talking to, you can have multiple target personas within in the ideal customer customer profiles. So you know, the company that you need to go after, and that's your ICP, but within any ICP, there may be a target persona of 123 or four stakeholders that will have to be convinced along the way.
Nels Jensen:Certainly, right. Especially in industrial where you're talking about engineering, you're talking about, you know, operations, you're talking about purchasing, you know, those three very divergent areas of a company. And so obviously, you're going to have that. So you know, one thing that I have not dealt a lot with ideal client profiles, but I always hear it associated with Lifetime Customer Value, you know, is that? Well, I'm sure we'll talk more with Jim about that. But that's also, you know, I'm not sure that that ideal customer could be a short term customer too, right? Obviously, it's great. You can have organic growth, you can work together, you could ever retainer, oh, you know, but um, yeah. So, you know, just helped me a little bit with framing, you know, how you view customers from a short term long term proposition here?
Joey Strawn:That's, that's a fantastic question. I do want Jim to dive into that. But from my from my standpoint, and from my experience, you can have an ideal client profile or ideal customer profile that targets project accounts, it depends on the company. And I know a lot of times in marketing as well, it depends. This right does. Because if you have a revenue stream, that's totally baked in on turnaround project accounts, like you have a machine that has downtime, and you're just pumping out projects, and that's a revenue stream that is valuable to your business, there's no reality in where I would tell you not to have an ideal customer profile around those types of projects. But for those, the ideal client profile parameters might need to be this time, this turnaround time. It has to use this machine, obviously the one that has the downtime and availability and that machine only does a couple of functions. So if you're using you know, a water, if you're like water jetting or water cutting, you're not going to be able to then turn around and fabricate a widget from that. So capabilities of the output is very, very, is very, very helpful. So project accounts and project revenue streams can definitely have some, most of the time though. 80% or more. When we're talking ICP, we're thinking long term customers, right? So I guess I practice revenue over over a long period. of time.
Nels Jensen:Sure. So So I guess my Let me try asking a question in a slightly different way, because an ideal customer might have four different metrics that you sort of view this from. But let's say that somebody comes along and they're in your sweet spot for men were awesome at doing X. And they want us to do X, and they have the budget, and they have, but they don't have a third or a fourth element, but they still could be a match. Right? So I, you know, are we talking ideal ideal? Are we talking more like a gradient scale where you just want to move more toward the ideal whenever possible?
Joey Strawn:Man, you ask some tough, great questions. Now, it's more the second, I would say because obviously, and Jim will tell you this, because Jim's on the floor, he's on the ground floor doing this. And he knows that, while you always have a framework, there are going to be situations that call for an audible or an aggression or,
Nels Jensen:We should hit we should hit we should hit Jim up with this, because this is the world he lives in.
Joey Strawn:Yeah, because that's, that's probably what you're looking for it and I don't want to put words in his mouth. And I'm going to, if he says at 20, I'm going to just burst out laughing, but probably at 20 is you want to have confidence enough, and about 80 or 80% of them, but you know that 20% of them are just going to be all over the place, you may have these parameters and these elements, but they don't have the budget, but that's okay. Because you can, it can be a door into a larger project, or someone that they're a vendor with that you need a collaboration with. So yeah, always gonna be those sidesteps, I'd say 20 to 30% of the time. But for most of it the core, you're trying to find something that will meticulously turn around consistent quality. And that's it sort of the same idea is, you know, nails when you and I are talking in the marketing sense of like a marketing qualified lead or a sales qualified lead, it's a little bit of that is where we have scores, we have very specific parameters in ideal world. But man, if someone is just a perfect fit, and they are not taking the activities that get them the score they need, and we noticed them, we still have to pursue that sale, that's still an opportunity. So yes, we can talk about we can talk with Jim about where you pivot, and how often you know, that becomes valuable. But at some point, you have to be able to draw the line and say, You know what? That doesn't fit? Like? That's a ticket. That's a deal. Sure, yeah. To quote 30 rock. Like customer budgets.
Nels Jensen:We all live that world
Joey Strawn:Exactly. Those are things that everyone is always thinking about when they're putting these ideal client and customer profiles together. You know, I think, I think we should probably mosey on down to the shop floor and see what Jim has to say, because I keep almost putting words in Jim's mouth. And I think he's just going to be able to tell us exactly how he's helped customers and clients talk about this and approach this and think about this. And so if we really want to give value to the industrial marketers listening to this episode, we got to get out of the shop floor and have Jim, start telling them what's what. Let's do it. All right, now, let's head on down and meet some gym the gym man. Oh, now, we made it to the shop floor. Welcome. Welcome to the shop floor with me. Are you ready to dive in and actually talk about ICPs? And how to put them to use with someone who does it for real?
Nels Jensen:Yeah, this is gonna be a good segment.
Joey Strawn:Let's go. Okay. I am so excited that we teased this earlier on in the episode, but we have a business development professional. This is a guy who works in the industrial spaces. He lives around b2b. He's he's talking to industrial companies every single day. We are so happy to have him on the industrial Marketer Podcast. Please, everybody. Welcome, Jim. The Jam man is back. How are you, Jim?
Jim Eisenbeck:Hey, Joey. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.
Joey Strawn:Oh, it is such a pleasure to have you here. Jim. Just to give you a little bit of a context and catch up, we spent the entire first half of this episode talking about what an ICP is an industrial client or customer profile. And you know, we were talking conceptually on how you put them together. And when, you know, some times you might want to think about using them. But we really got to a point where we were thinking, you know, what's really going to put this into context for our listeners, for the people that are dealing with this on a day to day basis is for us to actually talk to somebody who deals with this on a day to day basis. And when Nelson I put our heads together, we couldn't think of anybody more qualified to talk about ICPs and how to actually use them for a for benefit. And to ID ID eight on what is going to make and drive success for a brand then you So, Jim, thank you so much for being our expert on ICPs today,
Jim Eisenbeck:That's awesome. Looking forward to talking about it, Stevan?
Joey Strawn:Oh, right. So okay, so here's the first question that I have for you. And we're gonna start off General, I defined sort of my definition of, you know, the ICP, a hypothetical company that would benefit from, you know, working with a company or a brand. But I want you to dive in a little bit deeper. And tell me a little bit about what how you define an ICP and who needs them?
Jim Eisenbeck:Gotcha. Well, an ideal client is a representative of that kind of company, organization that you would most like to do business with. It's, you know, from an organizational standpoint, it's those companies that you can best serve those companies who can derive value and actually benefit from what your organization provides. So I, you know, where I find it helpful in my day to day is, it's, you know, it's, it's as important to know which potential customers are actually good prospects, as well as really understanding those that aren't and why they aren't. So you know, where to focus your efforts.
Joey Strawn:Okay, so So when, when you're thinking about it with every company out there need an ICP? Like, is that something that's going to benefit everybody? Or who are the types of people and companies that should be thinking about? I'm using them and really diving in on them?
Jim Eisenbeck:I would say anyone who relies on a customer to keep their business rely,
Joey Strawn:Okay. Okay, your client? Okay, well, that I mean, that that makes that make sense. I mean, what what do you think? Like, I mean, obviously, companies can't go after every person out in in the world. So what are some of the factors are what are some of the resources and some of the thought processes, when people are thinking of setting an ICP up or getting their mind around? Where they need to start when they're looking at their current portfolio or their client lists? Where would you tell people that are like, where should they start? What should they focus on?
Jim Eisenbeck:Well, again, you know, ideal is the operative word and an ideal client, it's not always going to be perfect. One of the ways that's common to start is by just understanding and looking at the customers that you already have, you know, and identifying some of those common traits, what makes them a good client for you? And really, what is the selection criteria that matters most for your organization, as you consider other new business partners to join with. And so ideally, at the end of the day, it's about creating the mix that works for you and your organization.
Joey Strawn:Okay, so it is going to it is going to differ, it's not just a set, you know that the ideal client profile isn't a set, like five bullet points that then every company on the face of the planet uses. So there is going to be a little bit of that mix. I mean, how do how do they think through some of those options? I mean, obviously, sighs reve...I know, you talk revenue all day long, with with companies, but I mean, like, what are some of the things that they should be considering or thinking of or prioritizing?
Jim Eisenbeck:Well, first and foremost, I always advocate for keeping it simple. And some of the common categories that you may consider prospective business partners, like you said, they might be based on size and revenue as one of the criteria. It might even be the type of organization or the market focus that they have, it might be the type or the volume of work that you can expect from them, depending on what your organization does. If you're making chips and parts might be volumes that you're looking for in production runs. It might be also something like the revenue target, even the billing terms, if they're favorable to you, Will the work be profitable? There, there are several items that those are just a few.
Joey Strawn:Right? Well, I mean, wow, that's, that's a that's an awesome list. One of the things we talked about it, it kind of goes in with revenue and profit and generation is we talked earlier in the episode about like, lifetime value, and you know, factoring in like the actual companies that, that provide value to the, to your universe, into your portfolio into your business preferences, and speciality and things like that. So I'm, I'm happy to hear you say that it's like, you know, they value the solution. They work alongside, you know, the companies that you would work with, and obviously, market focus, you know, you don't want to be targeting people that are outside your areas of expertise. So, yeah, I can I could totally see those being a major thing.
Nels Jensen:I got a question here. Is, is this an always on kind of mindset? Or is this more in play for a growth company or a company that's lost clients and is looking to replace work or when markets or markets are tight what you know, are there certain times when ICP is more applicable than others?
Jim Eisenbeck:I would look at this as an always on, because it is where you place your efforts, organizations have finite resources, there's only so much you can do in a day. And where an ICP really can come into play is it can be a framework for scrutinizing the business opportunities that you have in front of you can help you keep your focus and gain more of those customers who actually are a good fit for you. And without that focus, you know, organizations can find that they may be holding on to customers that really aren't a fit our drain taking resources away from more profitable work, and actually presenting preventing the growth. So, you know, it can negatively impact revenue, it can revenue, you know, negatively impact business strategy, operations, team morale, and it can have some some accumulative effects.
Joey Strawn:Yeah, well, and that's an interesting point that you made there at the end, Jim, about, you know, if you're holding on to a customer that may actually not be providing value to you, if it doesn't meet, you know, if you put this together correctly, then if a client doesn't meet that profile, then there are some questions to ask. And that's the tough part about like, this specific conversation is, you know, we won't beat around the bush, at some point in time, you may have to make the decision to fire a client or not go after a customer. And that sounds weird when you're talking business when you're talking, you know, revenue growth to say, Oh, we're gonna say no, to that business. But if you're following an ICP model, hope, you know, hopefully, it gives you the freedom to say no more often. I mean, Jim, have you found that talking with people in the real world are people who are trying, you know, companies putting these together that are that are struggling with the idea of like, well, how do we say no to people who aren't a fit?
Jim Eisenbeck:I've definitely heard it in action, from clients who use this framework to make decisions around those types of prospects that they're wanting to do business with, knowing that they might be resource constrained. And the reality is you never know everything right customer until you're actually doing business with them, right. So there's always going to be things that you'll learn. But again, if you use the ICP, as a guideline, it's just a way to scrutinize the opportunities.
Nels Jensen:That's, I love that. What so ideal is wonderful in theory, in practice, it's a target, right? How do you rank criteria? Or what? How do you? How do you decide what you can compromise on and what you can't compromise on, when honing in on ideal or nearly ideal customers?
Jim Eisenbeck:That's a great question. So in our world of industrial marketing, we have a defined set of criteria for those ideal customers that we would like to work with. We look at revenue, we look at things like leadership involvement, we look for accountable resources, we find that those make the best partners for us when we have someone that we can work with hand in hand, who has a key point of contact. But there are times when on paper, and opportunity might not look perfect. But it could be an initial engagement from a notable brand, that looks great on the roster, there can be any number of decisions that might open the door to other opportunities down the road, and things that we might consider those x factors, if you will, that helped us really determine is this an opportunity worth pursuing and something that we want to go after?
Joey Strawn:So there's always a little bit of I mean, we live in the world of marketing. So there's always a little bit of it depends in there. Jim, as I hear, that makes me feel better. Because we always love our it depends answer in the world of marketing. So it sounds like there's a little bit of bake that bake of that baked into the DNA here. Now, Jim, you talked about putting this into practice. And actually, you know, in a real world context, ideal is a key word. You had mentioned that earlier. So when it comes to the real world, and that's sort of what this on the shop floor segment is all about, is, you know, for people listening to this, what are some real world examples? How have you seen this, either benefit, or be something that someone had to acknowledge and create? And then, you know, reap the benefits from like, have you seen this play out with real clients and real people that you've talked with?
Jim Eisenbeck:Absolutely. And, and, again, real world is, is about practicality and fit, and it's meaningless. If it's not a decision making tool, you know, just to have it on paper, if it sits in a drawer, and you don't reference this or make decisions by it, then why bother? So, you know, and the other side of this is you have to be honest about your organization's ability to deliver, whether it be product or equipment or service, you know, geography, whatever it might be. And so, you know, I would, one of the questions that I always put on top of this is, you know, if it weren't for the financial gain, or reward of doing business, is the company that you're targeting, one that you would actually choose to work with. And so I think that's a really important decision making factor. That couldn't be considered as part of this.
Joey Strawn:Yeah, that's that's an interesting one. Like, again, it goes back to that, would you say no, if money wasn't a factor here, like ideal world? Would you want to work with this client? And if the answer is yes, then they fit into that, you know, ICP, they fit into that model and knowing and understanding what those parameters are, per the context of the realities of you know, your business. It sounds to be extremely important. Now, so I've been, I've been hogging. Jim, this whole time. Do you have anything that you want to ask before we kind of make him explain some more real world examples, too? Yeah.
Nels Jensen:Well, I think I was gonna ask about real world examples, too. So let's just skip to that. Can you? You know, even even in our own case, can you think of of how somebody worked out maybe to be an ideal client? Or conversely, maybe they didn't?
Jim Eisenbeck:Absolutely. So we've had a client who went through this exercise about defining an ideal client that they would choose to go after. And they actually use this framework to scrutinize some of the opportunities in their pipeline and actually decided at the end of the day, that they were not necessarily a fit, they looked great, nice. For for the revenue side, but when they really looked at the type of corporate philosophy and the type of work they would likely get, and they would probably be, you know, forced to reduce margins year over year, they really looked at, is this a business that's actually going to drive us forward? And the decisions were ultimately No, and I think that that is that can be as important as to what you don't take on, as is as to what you do.
Joey Strawn:Wow, that's yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, we see it in our world, especially in the production world, that Nelson I live in is that if you just say yes to everything, eventually the work suffers. And I see that, I would see that in the exact same scenarios. And analogous with this, as well as if you are trying to literally sell your specific goods and services or years, you know, in our world, industrial specific goods and services to everybody on the face of the planet. That's a lot of wasted effort. Not everybody can buy the stuff not everybody can buy, it can take advantage of what you have to offer. So really putting up those fences and putting up those gates can. I mean, it sounds to me, Jim, correct me if I'm wrong, Jim. But it sounds like it can save people from spinning the wheels and wasting a lot of time and effort.
Jim Eisenbeck:Agreed. I will say that, aside from size and revenue, and maybe market focus, some of the things that can also be considered for what an ideal client might be is, you know, a client that pushes you to grow, you know, if it provides significant growth opportunity, if there's potential for more work, if you know if they even can offer resources and insights that you might not have otherwise, on your own. And ultimately, you know, the ease of doing business you do you like working with them? And right, will they likely be an advocate for you? Or provide referrals? There are several things that can be at play here.
Joey Strawn:Well, the referrals is an interesting one, too. Oh, sorry. No,
Nels Jensen:no, I was just gonna say that, you know, as Joey, well knows, two of my favorite phrases are adding value and reducing friction. So, you know, how do you help each other you add value to each other? The growth point is a good one, you know, it's, it's you're going to learn and you're going to grow from an ideal client. And you're also going to help them by adding value and helping them reduce friction to I imagine. How about pain points? Are there? Are there certain pain points that are? This is kind of a weirdly worded question. You know, some pain is worse than other pain. What do you look for in terms of potential pain points in a in this evaluation?
Jim Eisenbeck:I would say if you can discern early stage, if there's enough potential growth, should you take maybe something that's not a fit from the outset, with the hopes of it flourishing into something greater, there's always a risk that you run, it may not work out that way. So you do have to do a bit of a risk reward analysis and see if something like that is going to pan out for you to see whether or not you take the step forward in partnership to try it out.
Joey Strawn:Yeah, that's, that's, I mean, there's going to be risk in anything in a gym. I thank you for bringing that up. And actually acknowledging that because it is a real, you know, stipulation in these there is going to be risk in the unknown, but putting up those, those ICP parameters, like we talked about can at least give some version of clarity and help you have those fifhost Those guideposts. But yeah, you know, acknowledging the risk is an important factor. You know, Jim, as we wrap up here, are there any kind of closing words or closing remarks that you You want to leave people they don't remember anything about what we've talked about today, which they should come on guys take notes while you listen to this podcast are you doing? But if they only if they're if they're going to remember some final words, what would you say to kind of wrap up the importance of the ICP mindset and what you're telling clients,
Jim Eisenbeck:I would say, remember that an ICP is a framework. It's not perfect. It's a good guidebook. Another factor is that an ICP can actually help sales and marketing teams together to be more efficient and more effective in how they target segment, even create content, personalize, and even nurture customers and prospects through the sales process. So this is a tool that can really bring harmony into two teams that really should be working together to ultimately help the organization grow through new business opportunities.
Joey Strawn:Man, I couldn't have summarized that better myself. And what a great way. I mean, we're here near the end of our sales and sales enablement quarter on industrial Marketer Podcast. And so we're getting into the weeds of what really drives, businesses and contacts and marketing leads that drive value and revenue for businesses. So Jim, thank you so much for for being here and chatting with through this with us today. It's always exciting for Nelson i when we're talking with people who are living the things that we're talking about every day.
Jim Eisenbeck:This was great, thank you.
Joey Strawn:Well, now, as always, it has been such a joy to talk about industrial marketing, and the tactics and trends and tips and tools that are going to help people in this weird, wild world that we live in.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, one more, one more power tool for the toolkit.
Joey Strawn:So it's, I know, it's, it's exciting.
Nels Jensen:I love the harmony with you get the sales enablement on the back end of this and you really get crankin This is good stuff.
Joey Strawn:It's it's connecting all the pieces is connecting all the dots, you know what you use the word and I'll segue off that it's harmonious and it's very pleasant. And honestly, this is the season when all of that is happening. We're getting to the end of the year and it's so pleasant and harmonious and there's songs and bells in the air and you know what should be in the air is you subscribing to the industrial marketing podcast, the bell that should be ringing as the bell that thing's every time we have a new episode coming out Silver Bells, subscribe to our podcasts. And if you already are an industrial marketer, listener, thank you all as always, for listening to our show this week. And if you haven't dived into the industrial marketer, podcast website to industrial marketer.com And we have articles and educational materials galore on there. If you live in the world of b2b or industrial marketing, you need to start that website you need to go find all the helpful stuff that we have there. And until next time, I have been Joey on the industrial Marketer Podcast and I've been joined by now as as my fearless fearless co host now, until next time, I look forward to chatting with you about industrial marketing again.