Audience selection

Pinning down your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)? Easy! Who’s losing sleep over your product?

A while back, I was discussing a product launch with one of our clients.

They were preparing to introduce a more ecological version of their core product. Redesigned in a new form factor that simplified logistics and storage. When I asked, “Who should we tell about this?” his answer went something like this:

Oh, I think we should tell the business owners within our professional market. They’ll be the ones to sell it to the end customer, they have to make it happen!

But also to the people on the floor, and the people at the buyers as well. Perhaps their purchase & facility management department?
Product manager at the client side

All about that ideal customer profile

And that’s a common trap, because not everyone matters equally. In sales there’s a thing called the DMU and that’s what he was referring to. The DMU (which stands for Decision-Making Unit) is a group of stakeholders (often internal only, but often in- & external at the same time) to be worked. Each with their own arguments, their own strategy, their own strategic value proposition on “why they should care”.

But the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) — for me — is something that exists on the “contact” level. Rather than on a “group” or at a “company” level. Our ICP? Is the one who’d lose sleep when your product tomorrow disappears from the world. The one losing sleep over the problem we help solve. The one domino at the start of the line! The one with whom’s support we’re able to start toppling the rest of the dominoes within a company.

Key-stakeholder selection

So, I told him: “We’re communicating a new formulation of our products, making them more ecological. We’re giving it a new form factor, but which also means a new way of buying them. In essence, it means less logistical headache, easier storage, more sustainable at a price which is only slightly higher than what they’re currently paying.”

I continued: “Now the people on the floor using it need to be trained on the new form factor. I continued: and the CSR(D) responsible will want to know about the ecological components. But the business owner? Now they’ll want to know! Because a product is never just a product! It’ll often have an impact on process, and on the people using them.”

By which I meant: there are always first- and second order effects when people buy your new product. These translate to buying reasons. And in an ideal world, your key stakeholder (or ICP) will be the all these buying reasons roll up to.

New products should improve the problem-solution fit

Going from a pickaxe to a jack-hammer means a new form factor. That means increased efficiency, and fewer people getting hurt (because the design is more ergonomically safe). So even though the solution is top-line more expensive (meaning you pay more per unit). The bottom-line is improved, because of all these second order effects:

less sick days,
being able to take on more work,
or (should the business owner want to cut costs) to do the same work with fewer people.

Now those are a great set of incentives for any business owner to take our call, and have an honest discussion on what their goals are for the company, and how we might best serve them.

Validating your messaging and upsell

So that’s what we did. We interviewed a few of our top customers and while they all cared for the extra benefits, we could really see that it was the impact to their bottom-line business they cared about.

Visiting all those customers also brought on a great extra. People were happy to hear what we were doing, but some of them hadn’t been visited in over a year (yes, sad, I know) and asked “Well what else have you been doing?”.

Well, you can’t have this without that
Alex Hormozi while launching
Money Models, 2025

And to be frank a lot had been happening! Older machines & products we sold customers were ready to be replaced, upgraded, or just no longer met their needs as their businesses had evolved.

And so I suggested compiling a list (ex-)customers and prospects alike to prioritize the accounts that’d be the best fit for the products in this launch in a process called account mapping. Now I know, I know. You know all about account mapping, but have you also calculated earnings potential, factored in their common payment delay, how much average discount you’ve had to give them to build a prioritized list?

If yes, big applause, if no, perhaps something to consider next time?

Demo’s disguised as roundtables

Now this is a relationship type business, customers select a vendor and usually stick to their vendor until a much better product or innovation sweeps them off their feet. (red.: It was especially true in this case, but in reality if there are limited switching costs it’s applicable in most verticals and with almost all types of products, build accordingly.)

Since these products were physical products, and it is a relationship driven type of business, we saw no better opportunity than to organize a roadshow. A roadshow where we’d demo a broader set of products (all related to the ecological frame by which CSRD will come to apply legislative pressure) but in which we’d also provide a guest speaker (easy to book for multiple sessions), networking amongst peers and of course the necessary food & drinks.

The campaign (to our professional buyers)

Now, people who know me know that — in sales — I’m a great proponent of “triple tapping” a customer, meaning you reach out by phone, e-mail, and use a form of social networking. Whether that’s social network is LinkedIn (or rather a message via iMessage or WhatsApp) I leave up to you and your companies policies, dear reader.

So when we put together our “roadshow hotspot” we made sure to tap first a set of our priority customers, and made sure to get in a lot of prospects as well.

In total, we did 5 touches:

Touch 1 was a save the date for a night out
Touch 2 was an invitation explaining a nice night of networking with food & drinks
Touch 3 highlighted the ergonomics of new solutions in the space and the opportunity to test a set of new products
Touch 4 highlighted the speaker and talked about sustainability and the impact of CSRD on what customers would come to expect from them
Touch 5 was a special and last reminder, which reiterated all the previous points and mentioned special launch incentives for those present, but also offered another option if they couldn’t make the date: book a meeting

The events were nothing short of magical, and although expensive, our deal sizes are such that one order per event would pay for the event in its entirety. And believe me, there was a lot more than one order.

Because while people tried the new products, talked, ate, drank, and a lot of new collaborations were formed. We even discovered that some new joint ventures were born on those nights.

Driving it home: co-campaigning

But we didn’t end things there, there’s a famous case of a well known copywriter (Claude Hopkins, My life in advertising, The Cotosuet story) who got bakers to buy his product “Cotosuet” (some type of margarine if I’m not mistaken) by doing great PR stuff, and then directing the populace to ‘his bakers’.

And we’d do the same!

Certainly for the large companies our professional buyers served (or would like to serve), we’d run both direct mail and digital campaigns talking about the impact and importance of selecting a vendor which carried (our) products.

We hired a few “people of authority” who helped us write great outreach, validating our claims (who were true for both us and for our competitors, but we were the only ones advertising them with validity granted by these experts). It’s also not the case that we explicitly named our products in the campaigns, but rather that we’d drive home all that made them great, which would set apart our professional buyers, who could then serve them.

All we had to do was add a small call to action to “discover … our type of service provider”. We’d then send them the leads, or even do co-selling with them! This solidified our relation with our buyers, and drove huge amounts of brand awareness on our products & partners.

Conclusion

Dear reader, I’ll candidly admit I might’ve written a tad too much, or too extensively on the campaign, but once started it can be hard to stop. Sue me! But I certainly hope I gave you some insight on defining and selecting the right ICP within the DMU, and how you can construe a clear campaign that drives action.

Questions? Drop them in the comments below!

Like this article?

Aaron

All Posts