Is your business attracting an abundance of leads but seeing no results? You’re probably attracting poor-fit leads that are less likely to convert to repeat customers and more likely to exhaust your company’s valuable resources! More often than not, these issues are directly related to a misunderstanding of your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). In order to maximise profitable business growth, the first step should be to clearly define your ICP so you can attract stronger-fit leads and increase your overall conversion rates.

An Ideal Customer Profile is…well…what it says on the tin! It succinctly details the perfect customer for your business.  

Establishing a detailed ICP allows you to consider the varying qualities that potential customers can be evaluated by, and analyse which of these qualities make your customers the ideal fit. Some of these qualities include, but are not limited to: 

o Budget
o Industry
o Customer base size
o Geography
o Number of employees

In order to assess a potential buyer by these qualities, you could consider using web forms, having a survey/questionnaire sent to prospects, or embedding a survey on your website with questions that extract key ICP data. Examples of questions to consider include:

o What industry do they operate in?
o What is the size of their customer base?
o What is the size of their employee base?
o How can your product/service help?
o What is their annual revenue?
o What is their annual budget?
o Where are they located?

An ICP is one of the most important elements of a sales strategy; it clearly defines which organisations need to be targeted and why. An effective ICP will allow SaaS companies to refine their self-service content and meet the expectations of B2B customers. Although not every customer will fit the brief perfectly, the process of defining your ICP brings real value to your business by tapering your focus to buyers that will procure greater and more profitable rewards.

Now everyone on your team knows who they’re targeting and why, let’s discuss how to attract more customers that fit your ICP requirements.

Capture leads in a centralised place

Having a clearly defined ICP to compare new leads against is massively important for qualifying leads and understanding if you’re attracting the right customers. With a variety of lead generation techniques existing in concurrent, it’s critical to have an effective and standardised system to manage leads. 

CRM solutions manage and capture all your leads in one centralised place, making outbound B2B communications less pain-staking and more successful. Capturing leads in a centralised place allows Sales teams to focus their efforts on leads that fit your ICP, as it’s these leads that are most likely to convert to sales. Having all this customer information in one place will allow your organisation to target multiple businesses that fit your ICP across multiple industries, taking that next step to automating the sales process. 

Automate lead management

In today’s modern age there are multiple methods for lead generation such as social media, email automation campaigns, webinars and paid ads, among many others. Inputting all this data manually into a spreadsheet simply isn’t feasible, so effective lead management with CRM ensures these leads are automatically fed into the system straight from web forms and emails. Part of effective lead management includes lead qualification which is tied directly to your ICP requirements and MQL/SQL specifications.

Other ways ICP helps with sales prospecting:
o Targets better qualified top-of-funnel leads
o Lowers churn & improves customer retention
o Streamlines the sales process
o Improves customer experience

Use Web forms

Smart or enhanced web forms, such as CRM Enquiry web forms, can be an effective way of gathering user information and can contribute to your ICP creation. Web forms can be utilised in an embeddable format within your website to gain valuable information from potential buyers and generate enquiries automatically in the CRM for your team to review and nurture through the sales pipeline. The information required in these forms should be able to determine whether the buyer fits your ICP.

Sana’s 2022 B2B Buyer Report found that 50% of eCommerce sites fail to meet the expectations of buyers. However, developing a greater understanding of your customers will not only benefit your organisation, but also your buyers! Attracting customers that fit your ICP reaps benefits that you might not have considered possible, making your lead qualification process a simpler task and instilling confidence in your Sales team that their efforts will lead to reward!

To read more about Prospect Enquiry Web Forms and how they can be leveraged to help attract more customers that fit your ICP, head here or try Prospect CRM for free with our 14-day trial today.