Client Onboarding Checklist: Steps, Templates & Best Practices
Sales teams benefit significantly from well-defined sales processes. However, for B2B companies, the ideal customer profile framework is the icing on the cake.
An ideal customer profile (ICP) helps you identify, target, and prioritize prospects most valuable to your business. When an ICP is well executed, it can help you speed up your sales cycle, gain more customers and increase sales conversions.
Why does ICP matter in sales? According to a study by Salesforce, 85% of companies expect sales reps to fully understand their business. The same study revealed that 84% of business buyers are more likely to buy from companies that understand their business goals.
If you don’t take the time to figure out who your ideal customer profile is, your sales process will be flawed. You’ll end up wasting your time, effort and resources trying to close deals with clients who don’t need your product or services.
Ready to quit playing an aimless guessing game and start targeting the perfect customers? We’ve got everything you need.
In this article, you’ll find a detailed guide to creating sales ICPs, including how they benefit your business and how to incorporate them into your sales process.
An ICP (ideal customer profile or ideal buyer profile) describes the type of client that’s a perfect fit for your company. This includes fictitious or hypothetical accounts with all the qualities to become your most valuable customers.
Defining your ideal customer is critical if your company uses account-based marketing. That’s because it allows your sales team to focus their efforts on accounts that will get the most value from purchasing your products, services or solutions.
The beauty of understanding ICPs is that it helps you define the problems your target audience is facing and matches your product or service to meet their needs. Even more, you’re able to set out your future road map for updates and adjustments to your product or service.
ICPs can be developed through surveys, qualitative and quantitative analysis, competitive analysis, brainstorming and more.
Now that you understand what an ICP is, how does it relate to sales?
Without a well-defined sales ICP, your sales strategy will be a hit-or-miss. Your sales team will spend time, budget and other resources on leads that aren’t a good fit and won’t close deals.
A sales ICP provides high-level information about the characteristics of clients who’d most likely splash the cash. This means your sales team can tailor the messaging to resonate with them.
Beyond sales, understanding your ICP is a win-win for the entire company. Your product team can tweak the product to meet their needs. Plus, the customer success team can connect with them on a deeper level and gain their loyalty.
When defining your ideal buyer profile, you want to focus on relevant characteristics, such as:
Keep in mind that this isn’t a comprehensive list. But it’s a great place to start, especially if you’re starting a new business or mapping out a new brand strategy. You can filter and expand your criteria as you refine your sales strategy and understand your ideal customers.
Why bother about creating ICPs in sales? Why not cast a wide net, go after every lead and send them to the sales team? The problem is that targeting everyone will yield little or no results.
Here are some benefits you’ll enjoy from creating a sales ICP:
Creating an ICP gets your sales and marketing teams in sync. And when your sales and marketing teams align, they are well-positioned to drive conversions and increase revenue.
When you prioritize ICP in marketing, the marketing team becomes familiar with the ideal customer profile. As a result, they can seamlessly:
The result? The sales team doesn’t just get leads. They get leads armed with the right information and ready to convert. They’ll also spend less time and effort trying to nurture the client.
Ultimately, when the marketing team reels in qualified leads, the sales process and cycle become shorter, leading to more closed deals. Boom, harmony at its finest!
When deploying account-based marketing strategies (ABM), you’ll have to concentrate resources on accounts that hold the most value for your business.
For example, let's consider this logic. Why invest 5 hours selling to a $1k account when you can spend the same amount of time sealing a $500k deal?
It doesn’t make sense, right? But how do you know which companies are more valuable for your business? You guessed right—the ideal customer profile.
Detailed sales ICP not only reveals your prospect's annual revenue but provides information about the budget and average contract value for each account. Therefore, you can spend more time closing sales and building stronger relationships with high-value accounts that significantly impact your bottom line.
Without a defined ICP, you’ll be throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks. And these experiments are costing you money, time and resources.
When you understand the distinctive attributes of your ideal clients, you’ll stop wasting resources on accounts that won’t make purchases.
Instead, you’ll be able to cut out the noise and laser-focus your marketing efforts and budget on prospects more likely to convert. Plus, you can easily score and prioritize leads and allocate sales resources to achieve a positive ROI.
When you try to serve everyone, you end up serving no one. Focusing your efforts on the right client type will increase the number of won deals.
Start by mapping out and optimizing the buyer’s journey. From there, you can easily figure out what makes the client tick and offer immense value at each step of the marketing funnel.
Ultimately, prospects who are a better fit turn into perfect-fit customers. And over time, these customers become loyal to your brand, leading to a lower churn and attrition rate.
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ICPs and buyer personas are terms most salespeople use interchangeably. But sorry to burst your bubble, they don't mean the same thing.
Your ICP represents the business or companies you want to sell to over time. Buyer personas, on the other hand, will be the people who would benefit from your solution within your ICP. These people in your buyer personas could be decision-makers or end-users.
Simply put, the ICP targets the customer at the account level, while buyer personas target the buyer at the role level or based on their job title.
Let's take a look at this ICP example.
Let’s say you’re a B2B software service provider. Your ideal customer profile might include companies with the following attributes:
Your buyer personas will describe the employees you want to target at these companies. Your buyer persona may include decision-makers or users with the attributes below:
Now the big question is: Do you need to create buyer personas and ideal customer profiles? If you're a B2C or DTC company, you’re okay with just creating a buyer persona.
However, if you’re a B2B company, ICPs and buyer personas are an excellent combo. At the beginning of the sales cycle, ICPs help you identify and qualify accounts that are a great fit.
The buyer persona gives you information about the individuals you should target within these companies, their frustrations, needs and critical priorities. It also informs how you’ll sell to them, the content you should create, the questions you should expect and much more.
Once you’ve sorted out your ideal customer profile and buyer personas, you can move more prospects through the sales pipeline and close more deals.
Visualize the characteristics of your ideal buyer with this easy-to-edit template below.
We’ve got more templates where that came from. Tap into our rich template library to find one that catches your eye and meets your needs.
So how do you create an effective sales ICP for your business? There is no one magic formula for creating ICPs. That’s because businesses are unique and target a variety of audiences. Not to mention that ICPs will change as your business evolves and goals change.
No matter your business type, here are key steps you should take when creating ICPs.
The first step you should take is to gather your team. Don’t make the mistake of building your sales ICPs in silos. Otherwise, you’ll miss out on crucial details that can move the needle to your advantage.
ICP should be a joint effort between the sales, marketing, product, customer success and management teams. That way, you can gather deeper insights and a balanced perspective on the subject.
For example, the customer experience team is closer to your ideal customers and can feel their pulse. They know their pain points, how they feel about your products and what value truly means to them.
The sales team knows the highest-paying customers, while the product team knows what features excite them the most.
Collaborating with different teams can be overwhelming. But Visme has everything you need for asynchronous and real-time collaboration.
You can use our online whiteboard tool during the brainstorming meeting to gather ideas. Also, you can invite users via a shareable link to view, edit or comment on the document, tag collaborators in comments and assign tasks, reply to and resolve comments and more.
Watch the video below to experience our intuitive collaboration features for teams of all sizes.
Before investing resources in data collection, customer interviews and profiling, you'll have to identify your goal.
We get it; you want to define your ICP for sales. But it’s more important to figure out what type of ICP-related information will be valuable to your sales team.
For example, knowing the industry, budget, revenue and company size are great intel. But data such as age, interests, or hobbies are practically useless (except when you're defining your buyer persona).
Defining the result ahead of time will keep you on track. Plus, it prevents you from wasting resources on factors that have no bearing on your sales ICP.
The next important step is to identify your highest-paying customers. Start by downloading a list of your current customers from your CRM, sales intelligence tool, or whatever you use to track sales. Then filter the list to identify the high-value accounts.
These accounts may include the largest deals you've closed, ones you've created case studies from, or it could be companies that have effectively utilized your product.
But that’s not all. Here are other common yardsticks for measuring high-value accounts:
This list can guide you in deciding your best users, as well as creating or revising any future user personas. However, you should work with other stakeholders to agree on the best criteria.
Use this interactive worksheet below to create your list. Or, if you're brainstorming your ICP with your sales team, Visme’s whiteboard tool can come in handy. Perhaps you've created this list in Excel or Google Sheets; if so, you're one step ahead with Visme. You import data from external sources with a few clicks.
Once you've narrowed down your data to high-value accounts, it's time to analyze your data further. The goal is to spot trends and common attributes of your potential ICP.
During your analysis, some similar characteristics may quickly jump out at you, such as:
Some trends may be harder for you to see at first glance. So you may need to dig deeper to uncover information such as
For what it’s worth, your ICP should be based on real customer data. This means the customer data from your CRM or sales management tool may not be enough.
Why not connect with your existing customers and collect data to supplement what you already have? You can connect via email, send a survey or organize customer interviews.
During the interviews, you can ask questions like
Here’s why this step is critical.
Based on the data you’ve collected, define the problems your ICPs are facing and how you’ll address them.
For example, our ideal customer profile at Visme includes sales teams, marketers, designers, HR teams, project teams and more.
Sales teams work closely with the marketing team to boost sales and increase the bottom line. However, we’ve uncovered a few pain points that may make it difficult for them to hit their sales target. We found that salespeople:
Here’s how we address these challenges at Visme. Our tool has a wide range of features and a rich template library to help you create sales materials that warm leads in your pipeline and encourage them to convert.
Make sure to outline the opportunities that exist for your company. You may find opportunities for creating new products or improving existing products to provide more value.
At Visme, we regularly create new templates and features to help sales teams maximize sales activities and close more deals.
Now, it’s time to create your ICP. This step is pretty straightforward. Collate all of the data you’ve collected about your ICPs, extract critical insights and record them.
Be sure to keep it brief. Your sales team doesn’t need endless pages of information. ICPs should include high-level takeaways and trends spotted while analyzing your top customers.
Rather than use a spreadsheet to record your ICPs, eye-catching and visual-rich documents like the one below can grab your audience’s attention.
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Finally, it's essential to regularly monitor and adjust your ICP as your business grows and evolves. This may involve updating your ICP based on new market trends, customer feedback, and changes within your target companies.
By staying up-to-date on these changes, you can ensure that your sales ICP remains relevant and effective.
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Creating sales ICPs from scratch can be daunting. Thankfully, Visme is here for the rescue. Visme comes preloaded with ready-to-use templates and features that can make the process a breeze.
Follow these steps to create your next sales ICP with Visme without hassles.
Take advantage of Visme’s eye-catching templates to organize your ICP information in an interactive way. Our comprehensive template library gives you the perfect starting point for creating effective ICPs without prior design skills.
You’ll find professionally designed templates that span different industries and use cases, including customer persona, ICP documents, B2B customer profile templates and more. Also, you can create your ICP from scratch by opening a blank canvas.
Next, fill in the data about your customers and their attributes in their respective columns. In Visme, you can easily embed tables within your projects. Also, you can connect and import live data from external sources (such as Excel and Google sheets) into your project.
No matter your design level, Visme gives you the creative freedom and inspiration to level up your ICP document. First off, our templates are not set in stone. You can beautify your content with attractive images, icons, fonts, colors and other design elements.
For example, you can use different colors, icons, charts and interactive elements to depict attributes like budget, pain points, growth rate, company size, etc.
Create immersive experiences and drive more engagement by adding interactive elements to your ICP document, such as:
Here’s the best part about using interactivity. It ensures your document isn’t cluttered with too much text. For each ICP attribute, you can provide more details by placing them under hover effects or pop-ups.
With Visme, you can download your document in PDF, PNG, JPG or HTML5 format. Also, users can easily share their ICP online, either publicly or privately, via email or an online URL. Your team members can view the information and interact with it to move sales forward.
If you’re going to present your ICP to an audience, Visme’s presenter mode is your best bet. Simply launch the presenter view from your dashboard, which enables you to control the presentation and view presentation notes. You can control your presentation pace and easily switch slides.
Now your sales ICP is ready. Great job! But the job isn’t done yet. The next important step is to use your sales ICP to grow your business.
Let’s show you how.
Prospecting is a key part of the sales process. However, it would be best if you had a well-structured plan of prospecting activities to convert a prospect into leads across multiple channels. And it should never be a one-size-fits-all process.
The best part is that with ICPs, you’re able to group clients using a set of defined characteristics. This makes it easier for your sales team to build their prospecting sequence, which includes the following:
Make sure to pick outreach channels for each ICP you’ve created and craft messages tailored to them. Everything you do, from emails to call scripts to LinkedIn messages, must match each use case and resonate with your prospect.
For example, your initial call script might look different for two different ICPs. Each script addresses the pain points most relevant to that ICP.
Now you’re armed with information about the needs of your prospects and how they use your product. Don’t stop there. Find out how best to improve their product or service experience.
Tweak your offerings or improve your product to address their challenges or better match their expectations. These may involve enhancing existing features or implementing new functionalities.
Secondly, your ideal customer profile reveals how deep your customers' pockets are. Leverage this data to determine a pricing model that works for each ICP.
For example, bigger corporations may prefer long-term pricing, where they lock in a contract and continue using the service. Conversely, small business owners may opt for monthly payments due to cash flow and ROI.
Your sales and marketing collateral are instrumental in nudging clients down the sales funnel. So you should create one with your ICP in mind. This will up your chances of drawing your prospects in, engaging them and closing more deals.
That being said, your sales and marketing collateral should be one that:
For example, when creating product sell sheets or brochures, you want to focus on information that communicates value, like product features, benefits, pricing, specifications and social proof.
If you’re ready to arm your sales team with engaging and high-converting sales enablement content, Visme is the perfect plug.
Access thousands of sales-related templates across different industries and use cases, including sales playbooks, sales plans, videos, case studies, whitepapers, ebooks and guides, brochures, reports, presentations and more.
Read this article to learn about the 20+ types of marketing collateral your business needs in 2022. Also, we’ve rounded up 20 examples of sales collateral to use in 2022 [+Templates].
Be intentional about your copy and messaging. Ditch putting out vague content that doesn’t appeal to any specific audience. Instead, lean toward copy and jargon that sparks genuine interest and entices your ICP.
Switching up your sales copy can have such a big impact on conversions and sales. So how do you curate copy that attracts your ideal customer profile?
ICP segmentation, or Ideal Customer Profile segmentation, is the process of dividing the overall target market into distinct segments based on specific criteria or characteristics.
The goal of ICP segmentation is to identify smaller, more focused groups of potential customers who share similar traits, needs, behaviors, or preferences.
By segmenting the ICP, businesses can better allocate their resources, target their efforts, and customize their approach for maximum impact. It allows for more personalized and relevant interactions with customers, leading to improved customer acquisition, retention, and overall sales performance.
ICP development, or Ideal Customer Profile development, is the process of identifying and defining the characteristics, attributes, and traits of the ideal customer for a company’s product or service.
Here are the key steps involved in ICP development:
While both a Sales ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and a Customer Persona are valuable tools in sales and marketing, they serve different purposes.
The ICP is a broad description or profile of the ideal customer that a company wants to target. In contrast, a customer persona or buyer persona, is a fictional representation of an individual customer within the target market.
An ICP in business is more focused on identifying the right companies or organizations to target, while customer personas target individuals, providing insights into their mindset, needs, and behaviors.
ICP stands for Ideal Customer Profile. The Ideal Customer Profile is a description or profile of the type of customer that is most likely to benefit from a company’s product or service and has the highest probability of becoming a successful and satisfied customer.
ICP in sales will vary depending on the company, industry, and product/service being offered. Developing an ICP involves analyzing and identifying the characteristics, traits, and attributes of the ideal customer for a particular product or service.
This includes factors such as industry, company size, demographics, psychographics, pain points, goals, challenges, buying behaviors, and more.
ICP is a concept commonly used in sales and marketing and it refers to the description of a company’s ideal or perfect customer.
Here’s an example of an ICP for a software company:
“Our ideal customer profile is a mid-sized technology company with 100-500 employees operating in the software development industry. They have a strong focus on innovation and are experiencing rapid growth. Their pain points revolve around managing complex software projects, scaling their development teams efficiently, and improving overall productivity. They value cutting-edge technology solutions that streamline their workflows, enhance collaboration, and deliver measurable results.
Their decision-making process involves key stakeholders from both IT and management departments. They are willing to invest in long-term partnerships and prioritize vendors who offer excellent customer support and customization options.”
In this example, the ICP provides specific criteria such as company size, industry, pain points, values, decision-making process, and preferences. This profile helps the sales team target their efforts towards companies that closely match the ideal customer, increasing the likelihood of successful sales engagements and customer satisfaction.
If you’re running a B2B company, knowing your ideal customer profile is critical to your sales process. Clients that match your ICP will most likely purchase and continue to use your product, making them crucial for revenue and business growth.
Now it’s time to abandon the spray-and-pray method and start targeting customers that are a perfect fit for your company.
Visme offers various customizable templates and features to help you build your ICPs and other sales enablement materials. Collaborate with your sales team to nail your sales ICP, close more sales and increase your bottom line.
All the best!
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