It's YOUR Job to Define Your ICP, not Marketing's

Hey CS leaders, it’s YOUR job to define your ideal customer – not Marketing’s.

Here’s how (including handy ChatGPT prompt).

An Ideal Customer Profile is meant to focus your resources on the customers you want.

So you don’t waste time and money on the ones you don’t.

The problem is most ICPs are designed by Marketing.

They’re focused on, “who will BUY?”

When you should be be focused on, “who will be SUCCESSFUL?”

If you’re a CS leader and have tried to have this conversation with Marketing, you know how frustrating it can be.

Stop wasting your time.

It’s not their job to define your ICP, it’s YOURS.

You’re the one that lives and breathes customers every day.

So take the lead, and define your true ICP.

1️⃣ Break your customers into 3 buckets: Top 10% that are wildly successful, Bottom 10% that have churned (or will), 80% in the middle.

2️⃣ Ignore your 80% bucket for now.  We learn at the extremes.

3️⃣ Brainstorm with your post-sales teams.  Capture everything you know about these two buckets.  Include their priorities, leadership, readiness for change, internal skills, how they were sold, the promises you made, how they were onboarded – EVERYTHING.

4️⃣ Make sure #3 isn’t just about them.  What did YOU do differently to contribute to their success or failure?

5️⃣ Give this data dump to ChatGPT to identify the 5-8 key characteristics that differentiate these two groups.  I’ve even given you a prompt below. 👇

Now you’ve got the foundation for a true ICP based on customers that can SUCCEED, not just customers that BUY.

Compare it to what Sales and Marketing use.

It explains everything!

P.S. If you need help, DM me.

<ChatGPT PROMPT>

Act as my strategic customer success advisor. I will provide you with detailed information on two types of customers: ones that are were wildly successful, and ones who struggle or churned. This will include everything we know about the companies (leadership style, priorities, industry context, people, data, etc.) and how we managed them (how we sold to them, transitioned them, supported them, etc.) Provide me with two company profiles based on this information: wildly successful customer and struggling/churned customer. Include a list of 5–8 key characteristics that differentiate the two groups — not just based on who the customer is, but also what we did differently.