I hope you’ve been well!
I apologize for my brief hiatus over the past two weeks. Rather than sending you something half-baked, I’ve been focused on crafting high-quality newsletters that truly make a difference.
My mission is to inspire you to take action and elevate your sales career or business. If I can spark even a tiny bit of impact, it would be fantastic to hear from you.
It's been a whirlwind lately as we kicked off Elite Sales Athletes - Win High-Value Enterprise Deals cohort 5 last Wednesday. I’m thrilled to see such a diverse, engaged group of lifelong learners.
Elite Sales Athletes is a 3-week cohort I run on Maven. We delve into creating strategies, managing sales processes, and adopting consistent sales behaviours to help clients make decisions and win high-value deals.
One of the key conversations was how much harder it is to find clients.
How our prospective clients are bombarded with emails. Just check your own email. How much spam do you have? You must be thinking, how can these people just get it wrong? I am not your ideal client! Or the messaging is terrible, and you know you are being sold to, so you don’t trust the person. Definitely pitch slap!😬
Why does it fail
Wrong prospects, every attempt you make will be ignored or rejected because you are contacting the wrong person about the wrong thing.
Wrong messaging, you will still be ignored or rejected because it’s irrelevant; it doesn’t resonate and connect with your ideal clients.
No offer; if you don’t provide something of value, something that will help them move forward to solve their problem or save time, your efforts will not yield results. Your offer needs to be actionable and beneficial to your client.
If you reach out to the right people at the right time with the right message and offer, you can generate more interest than you can ever imagine.
This is why identifying our Ideal Client Profile is essential.
The right prospects—Avoid talking to the wrong people. Instead, focus on individuals or businesses that need your product or service.
The right message—Craft a compelling message that speaks directly to your target prospects’ needs and explains how your product or service can meet them.
The right offer—Provide a valuable offer that not only meets their needs but also offers additional benefits, making your product or service irresistible.
Here is a quick thought exercise:
Imagine you are a salesperson working for a Cybersecurity services provider, and you were asked to develop a new business and find new clients.
On your first day, you asked your sales manager who your target market is.
What would give you better results, ICP A or ICP B?
It’s pretty evident that ICP B will help you perform better in your business development activities. You will have a more solid understanding of your niche and service, which means you will have more sales angles to use when you reach out to them.
You create a “business hypothesis” or "sales angles" instead of asking, “What keeps you awake at night?”.
Being more specific provides more opportunities to personalise your messaging and schedule more meetings.
Creating Your Ideal Client Profile
Your Ideal Client Profile is your suspect.
Hypothetically, they are a group of decision-makers who need your help to solve their problems. The purpose of the ICP is to identify the prospects who need you the most and align with your values, culture, beliefs, etc.
There are two levels of ICP.
The Organisational ICP and Human ICP. If you use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, this is what you call the Account List, and the Human Persona is the Lead List.
Organisational ICPs have Firmographics and Technographics. Firmographics are characteristics used to segment and categorise businesses or organisations. They are essentially the equivalent of demographics for individuals, providing insights into a company’s profile and characteristics. It lists the Industry, Annual Revenue, Company headcount size, geographical location and industry, etc. I have also added culture and values. If you are providing innovation, then you can’t sell to a company that is quite pragmatic and conservative.
Technographics are a powerful way to understand your target audience and tailor your marketing and sales efforts. I have listed the key components below.
If their business uses technologies, what technologies do they specifically use that align with your solution?
Example,
a. A B2B SaaS company would need platforms and support tools.
Help Desk/Ticketing Systems: Zendesk, Freshdesk, Jira Service Management, HubSpot Service Hub
Live Chat/Chatbots: Intercom, Drift, Olark
b. Large IT distributors would need ERP tools, but it depends on whether they are Tier 1 or Tier 2.
Tier 1 ERPs (for huge enterprises): SAP, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365
Tier 2 ERPs: Infor, Epicor, IFS, Cin7
c. A sizeable private hospital has technologies for patient medical records.
Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems: Epic, Cerner, Meditech, Allscripts
Sales Navigator, Apollo, Lusha all provides technographic information.
Human ICP has demographic and psychographic lists.
Human ICP is a detailed representation of the perfect customer for your product or service. It goes beyond just who your customer is, diving into what motivates them, what challenges they face, and how your solution can uniquely address their needs.
Here is how to build your ICP template
Use the template here:This workbook is part of the Elite Sales Athlete Course.
There are 3 things we need to understand:
Who they are and what they do
What’s their biggest problem
How can you help them (your offer)
Once we nail this, we will find clients who can’t wait to work with us.
We have the right prospect list, the right messaging and offer that resonates. What are your thoughts?
Let me know how you go with creating your ICP.
Rooting for you!💜
Ren Saguil
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