Stop Using Spreadsheets for Your ICP

Your ICP might be the most expensive document you never use. If your ideal customer profile lives in a spreadsheet that nobody reads, you end up with scattered messaging, generic AI content, and a team that can’t agree on who you’re really for. We’re fixing that by focusing on one decision that creates momentum fast: choosing your one clear customer, the customer who’s happiest, refers you, values your strongest offer, and moves the needle for the business.

We walk through why the “please everyone” approach quietly breaks marketing and sales alignment, then show how clarity becomes a force multiplier across campaigns, landing pages, emails, and sales outreach. We also address the real reason so many teams feel disappointed with AI marketing tools: when the inputs are vague, the outputs are generic. NotebookLM becomes powerful when you treat it like a memory system for your best customer evidence, not a magic button.

You’ll learn a practical workflow for building a customer vision board and ICP assets using real source material: reviews, testimonials, referrals, sales call transcripts, service conversations, and customer interviews. Then we show how to generate an ideal customer description, turn it into an infographic, and even produce a simple slideshow that maps the onboarding journey so delivery matches the promise.

If you want sharper positioning, better lead quality, and a team that rows in the same direction, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with the one customer you’re ready to focus on.

Transcript

AI Made Simple And The Goal

SPEAKER_00 0:03

AI made simple again. If you've been following along, we use Nobook LM to get real clear and to communicate clearly to our customers, to our prospects, to our team.

ICP Defined As One Clear Customer

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Today we're talking about ICP. ICP, your your um ideal customer profile is what ICP stands for. At ROI, we call it the one clear customer. And so why is this important and why you know why saying stop using spreadsheets?

Why Spreadsheets Create Marketing Quicksand

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Well, in the day we used to we would take all this client information and then get it organized and produce this document. It's a it was a very powerful document, it's something that most companies don't have. They don't have clarity on on, I mean, they when you ask them who their customer is, and they have diverse products and services. Well, that we have all these different types of customers, but then what that does it causes delays, that causes confusion, that causes uh lack of focus. And so, therefore, we're trying to please everybody, but we all have heard it. When you try to please everybody, you please nobody. And so that that truth is also an effect in marketing. So if you have a if you have multiple services, you have multiple clients, then how do you know what to design your product information, your messaging, your your campaigns, your landing pages? And so it turns into this big uh project that takes time and implementation and back and forth. And it's just it's frustrating, it's quicksand. And so today it we're going to solve that problem because if you get clarity on your ideal customer profile, then let's let's just uh decide right now we're going to focus on your most important one clear customer.

Turning Clarity Into A Force Multiplier

SPEAKER_00 2:12

What customer is it that is always happy, always refers you, is fulfilling to work with, your team loves this. And then what happens is you that person, that happy customer, when you get more of those, it moves your company forward. Oftentimes, you know, the discussion in the organizations that I coach and and help implement this process with is if we can just focus, what is that one customer, that one clear customer, that when we sell this product or this service, it moves the needle the most for your company. I imagine, you know, I have this vision where we're in the ship and we have these different levels here on the dashboard. And each lever, uh, if we push it, is one one customer or one service that we can do, and we have multiple to decide on which lever to push on. And what we're deciding is let's pick the lever that when we push it, it we go further, we go more profitable, the team is all set up and ready to deliver this, and this is a big competitive advantage. And so when we look at this, it creates clarity. And what clarity becomes is a force multiplier. And so we're looking at this infographic here. And so one of the things we used to do is build out this spreadsheet. It's just common practice. Get this spreadsheet, and what are we doing? We're making an effort to get clarity on this and document all the things. You know, what does the customer look like? How old are they? Where what industry are they in? Why, you know, all these details on this. But then that all that work that's put into that spreadsheet goes into a file somewhere, and hardly ever is it looked at, hardly ever is it

Why AI Content Turns Generic

SPEAKER_00 4:14

read, and hardly ever is it used by the people that are going to do what? Create your messaging, create your assets, create your landing pages, create your emails. It's it is a it is an energy sucker out of the out of the team. And so with Notebook LM, what you can do is take that information, put it in, and all of a sudden create a vision board. Everyone's clear on what a vision board is. A vision board is what we hope, what we see in the future, what does that person look like? What is the service that they appreciate? What is the uh the big wins? And then if you can see this, if you can create a vision document of this one clear customer of your ideal customer profile, then a picture is worth a thousand words. All those thousand words are on that spreadsheet, but who reads a thousand words? Everybody knows that the attention span now, based on social media and all the information that's flying at you, a thousand words is a big expectation. And so when you put a picture in front of the folks that are helping you design your campaigns, the salespeople that are helping you go and find these, if you create this vision board with this visual of this one clear customer, then guess what comes into play? It's the mind, your brain, your bodyguard starts to push out all the distraction, and the focus starts to align on this clear

Feeding NotebookLM Real Customer Gold

SPEAKER_00 6:06

one clear customer, on the clarity that comes from creating an image or the vision board. So this is a great way to get your team to get momentum, to leapfrog, to go around hurdles and to start getting momentum and start getting results. And so today we're going to talk about how to do that. And so the visual anchor, visualizing one clear customer. You know, you don't have a oftentimes the strategy is clear about what the clarity is not clear. And so the clarity is the problem in most cases. And the notebook LM is just a great lever to get clear and to communicate clearly. And so when you look at, you know, you got a marketing, someone's marketing, and they're writing, helping you write the the content, and no content's better. I mean, some content's better than no content, but oftentimes it's generic. And a lot of complaints about these AI engines is that it's an expert on any topic. And if I was to ask it to create content for your specific um product or your company or your service, it's going to do a pretty good job. But guess what it's going to be? It's going to be generic, it's going to be the same or similar as the content that anyone else that asked that GPT or Gemini or uh Claude, it's going to create similar content. It's not going to be unique, it's not going to be powerful. And so when you you've got marketing producing generic content, you have sales that are chasing anyone with a pulse. And so having a this creates a fractured team. And your AI is just not, doesn't have the North Star, and it's generating content that's generic, and it's better than nothing, but it's not the competitive advantage you're going to learn about today. And so that spreadsheet that you spent the time on is valuable, but not in the way that you intended. You're expecting the humans to get in there and digest it and then to remember remember it and I'll always refer to it. But you and I know that everyone's busy, and that's an improper expectation. But when you take that content and you put it into uh No Book LMs, then all of a sudden you've got someone that's always going to remember it, always going to refer to it, and always going to generate amazing assets that are in line and and will give you the uh return on that investment of all that time in creating that spreadsheet and doing those interviews. So, you know, the tale of two systems here. We've got the 20-page spreadsheet, it's uh and then the visual vision board. And so it's using Notebook LM, now we're going to have AI output that's highly targeted with messaging, it creates the right customer or it attracts the right customer, and it you're unifying your team, and all of a sudden now everyone's rowing to that same point on the horizon in the future. If you were to ask your team, and you you've probably spent time, here's what we're doing. If you were to go around and just do a poll and ask them, who's our ICP, our ideal customer profile? What's the messaging that is powerful? That you're going to get all these different answers. And that's why doing this next step will unify your team and generate items that are awesome. And Notebook LM is this beautiful tool to do this. Notebook LM comes with basically an in-house marketing team that can generate the assets that you want based on all the investment. And so you upload these into your source documents, you to put that raw data in there, and all of a sudden you ask, all right, generate me a visual, such as these that I'm showing you, of a customer vision board. And you're taking these golden nuggets that are in your reviews. If you go and get the let's just go and collect all the reviews, what are the referrals? People write testimonials, people give you feedback, what's going on in your sales calls, transcripts, or service calls. If you collect all of this gold and get it put into Notebook LM, then what you're going to get is very clear assets that are going to help align your team's vision. It's going to generate these clear versions or visuals of your ideal customer, your one clear customer. And so the AI becomes this amazing tool that can take all of the scattered data that you were you innately knew you needed to put it in a spreadsheet, but it spreadsheets are yeah, they're just the best that we had until now. And knowing how to take it and put it and to create this vision board is huge. And so now we can have a very clear.

The Focus Effect That Builds Momentum

SPEAKER_00 11:41

You remember that time that you started to, you thought, I'm gonna I like this kind of car, I'm gonna start doing my research, and uh potentially I want to buy this car. And then all of a sudden, just by deciding or making that commitment to start doing investigation, what do you see everywhere you go? That particular car. And that is because you chose to focus on a particular point, a particular um car, and then everything aligns and starts bringing those to you. The same thing happens here, except it's not just for you, you just turned the brains loose on your whole team to do the same thing, to start seeing more of your perfect customer who values your most valuable product or service, the most profitable service, and it starts to be a major momentum tool for your business. And so everyone then on your team is starting to find and bring on board these great customers who love your service, who give you reviews, who uh give you referrals, and who like to pay their bills and appreciate what you provide for them. So the spreadsheet method is like, you know, you've got 10 generic messages to a thousand strangers, but your vision board method gives you a laser to go right through this hurdle and start to attract more. Then why do you start to attract more? Because you can clearly talk about the value that you can offer, what that solution looks like in their future for that. Why? Because you understand that ideal customer, then you're able to create the ideal messaging for that ideal customer, then you can start to create ideal campaigns to attract more of those. Your onboarding team knows what that ideal customer values about your business and can start delivering the service or onboarding to the product in a more focused way. And so clarity in this way is a big lever of momentum for your team, for your business, and it feels right to your ideal customer, your one clear customer. It's just a way to align everyone, but a picture communicates a thousand words, and your team knowing that you have a clear vision board for this customer, it attracts profits, it attracts it flushes out confusion, and now you have you have a powerful, clear path forward, and it's taking advantage of the uh visualization and storytelling powers inside of Notebook LM.

Step By Step Workflow And Closing Ask

SPEAKER_00 14:52

So, what is it that you need to get this information? Start going through your reviews, start looking back through your referrals, start listening to your customers that are happy and and start interviewing them and just collect all of this diverse material, and then you get it and you put it into your notebook. You bring that up into your source document, you start to interrogate it, you ask Notebook LM, create me a customer, uh, ideal customer profile uh description. Then, when that description is generated, you put it in as a source, then you ask it to create an infographic of that uh ideal customer. Then you can ask it to create a slideshow that helps that customer see what the onboarding process, what the journey is with you, just like in these slideshows that I present for you here. All right. AI made simple. It's not that hard if you think about it, right? If you're enjoying this, you're getting value out of it, you know that I appreciate if you hit like, if you hit subscribe, if you share this information, if you if you uh reach out, tell me about your customer profile. If you need a little help generating this, let me know. And we'll work together on this and get you set up for success. And that's another episode AI made simple.

unknown 16:32

Check the mic and make sure it sounds right, boy.