When you hit the core with the right content and messaging, that’s when you’ll see win rates jump, deal sizes go higher and the greatest lifetime value increases from your future and existing customers. But most GTM teams do not have a clear understanding of who their core is and why.
Most ICPs suck as GTM teams do not dig deep enough so that the ICP is predictive of the accounts that will most likely move forward and deliver the greatest revenue growth. As a result, GTM teams are always guessing who to talk to next.
In this ABM Done Right Podcast episode, Jonathan Spier (CEO of Rev Inc) discusses with Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) how to get the ICP right.
Key Insights From This ABM Podcast with Eric Gruber and Jonathan Spier:
- GTM teams are too focused on demographics and technographics vs. getting a better understanding of their existing customers to identify the common characteristics of their greatest wins. Teams are still giving the same old description of their ICP – and it’s about industries, geographies and the size of the companies. The list is too big and not even the right company names on the list. Focus is everything when it comes to successful execution!
- You don’t want the company that look right with surface characteristics that ABM and intent data platforms show – you want the ones that will go all the way through the funnel, sign the deal and become happy customers that stay and grow with you. There are signals that should form your ICP that are more predictive of sales success than technographics and intent data. For example, Rev.Inc has a client that drives its most wins with accounts where the HR departments are overwhelmed. They uncovered signals that will prove how overwhelmed the department is. For example, what is the size of the HR department compared to the rest of the organization. They also looked for signs of distress – is the turnover in the HR function match the turnover at the rest of the company or is it particularly high.
- We need to segment existing customers and look for the characteristics of key accounts that are delivering the greatest long term growth and are getting the most value from your solutions. This will help you identify the winnable, accessible market which are the ones that are part of your ICP where you have a differentiated, situational story to tell, the accounts are showing engagement and they have a strategic priority in place.
- Companies buy for underlying reasons that are related to the pain they have, which is often related to the structure of their company, the situation that they and/or their markets are in, the products they sell – and the way those products are received by their own customers. When you tap into those underlying reasons you can identify better, you can communicate better and you can make a more meaningful connection. This is why teams need to look into exagraphics – the executional details of the organization.
- Some exagraphics include are they an early adopter, what is their functional maturity, or are they tech centric or human centric. Another exagraphic is how complex are their offerings. Another one is the DNA of the company and what is their organizational culture and beliefs – and what is their business model. For example, is ABM part of demand gen, field marketing, product marketing or are they by themselves. When ABM is part of demand gen, it’s often about campaigns, which is a different belief than what we follow at Personal ABM so we do not put much time and resources on accounts that tie ABM to demand gen. Another example, is do they engage in centralized procurement of products and solutions or do they give more independence at the local level. The fastest way to growth for OpenWorks, a facility management services company, was with accounts where there was centralized national or regional procurement where they can get 8, 10, 15, 30+ locations at a time vs. local procurement where they get one site at a time. Yet, most of the companies in the pipeline were not with organizations that had centralized procurement.
- On average, only 18% of the current active pipeline matches the right ICP. This was the case for DAT Freight and Analytics as they were focused on industry and freight spend. They weren’t looking at the supply chain maturity of key accounts. They didn’t look at the exagraphics of target accounts. Click here to read the case study.
- Where the rubber meets the road and where it gets more exciting, more impactful and valuable to GTM teams is to tie the signals back to real results that you’ve historically seen – and therefore what you can project and predict statistically into the future. It’s not enough to just brainstorm exagraphics to identify your ICP. You get a more powerful result when you go a step further and correlate the exagraphic signals back to customer success that you’ve experiences in the past.
Here Are Additional Resources to Help You Define Your ICP
- Blog Post: Why GTM Teams Struggle with Selecting and Prioritizing Key Accounts for ABM
- Podcast: Uncovering Your Winnable, Addressable Market (WAM)
- Podcast: How Being Part of Your ICP and Showing Intent in Not Enough
- Podcast: Why Latane Conant at 6sense is Wrong When She Says to Focus Only on Those Accounts Showing Intent
- Podcast: How to Create a Compounding Customer Growth Engine with ABM