Consider the following when developing an ideal customer profile:

• What industry is your solution best suited for? What industries are unlikely to buy from you?
• What size company is best suited (as judged by headcount or amount of revenue)?
• Are there regional differences?
• Does maturity of the prospect matter?
• Do they use similar technology?
• What is the size of their customer base?
• Is your solution best suited for non-profit or for-profit organizations? Government entities?

There are hundreds of other parameters that you can use to develop your ICP. Choose what is right for you and your business.

Observing your existing customers is a great way to begin developing your ICP. Can you group customers into categories of size, location, entity type, or some other characteristic? Are there commonalities amongst your most profitable customers?

Interview existing clients and ask them questions like:

• Why did you buy our solution?
• What challenges were you looking to solve when you first connected with us?
• Has our product help you solve those challenges?
• How do you use our product?
• What is the most useful feature or functionality of our solution?
• Why do you continue to use our solution?
• Who was the final decision maker?
• Who was the financial decision maker?
• Where did you first learn about our solution?
• Where do you go for related information today?

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of developing an ICP that can guide your business. Take this framework, add to it make it your own. There are lots of good ICP templates available online to get you started. I get value from Hubspot’s.

If you put quality time and thinking into this exercise it will reap rewards down the road.

My friend and recruiter-phenom, Jim Krouskop, recently posted a great article on LinkedIn regarding building your personal brand. I highly recommend it (and him) . You can find the article here.

• Networking is not about you. It’s about helping and supporting others. If you take this perspective, your needs will be taken care of.
• Everyone has something of value to offer – find that thing and provide yours openly and willingly.
• Be generous in sharing your network – this will reap benefits for you and those that need your support.
• If you promise to do something, do it.

Over the years, I have had to coach more salespeople to pick up the phone and call prospects. It’s easier and more comfortable to send an email – but much less effective. Especially now as fewer salespeople call, it’s easy to distinguish yourself by simply picking up the phone and having a business conversation. Challenge yourself to make X-number of sales calls a day and watch your pipeline increase overnight.

You can take a deeper look at my selling methodology below. Of course, this is customized for each company I support.

Also, check out this article on qualifying Opportunities.

If I don’t see momentum in an Opportunity after ninety days in the pipeline, I begin to become concerned that the Opportunity is not real. Perhaps the Prospect is not ready; the solution isn’t the right fit; the Account Executive is padding their pipeline; or any number of other reasons. That’s not to say that this is a hard and fast rule. I recently had a deal with ABC resurface after two years of inactivity. Out of the blue. But that is by far the exception. All I’m suggesting is that you, as a sales leader, take a look at stagnant deals and ask tough questions about their progress:

• When was the Prospect last contacted?
• Have we identified and engaged all of the stakeholders (not just an executive sponsor)?
• What are the competing priorities?
• Has budget been allocated for the project?
• Has the Prospect settled on a solution to their challenge – is it your solution?
• What is the next step, and what is the timeline for that?
• What is the purchasing process and whois involved?
  • Where are you in that process?

Your Account Executives may feel defensive when you ask these questions. This isn’t about you trusting them to properly manage a sales cycle, it’s more about you normalizing the overall pipeline (some AEs are more optimistic than others) and providing the valuable service of an outsider’s view of progress. It has been my experience that after a few rounds of these types of questions, the pipeline begins to self-correct and become more accurate.

[Check out this sample pipeline report to get a sense of the metrics I track and review]

If I don’t see momentum in an Opportunity after ninety days in the pipeline, I begin to become concerned that the Opportunity is not real. Perhaps the Prospect is not ready; the solution isn’t the right fit; the Account Executive is padding their pipeline; or any number of other reasons. That’s not to say that this is a hard and fast rule. I recently had a deal with ABC resurface after two years of inactivity. Out of the blue. But that is by far the exception. All I’m suggesting is that you, as a sales leader, take a look at stagnant deals and ask tough questions about their progress:

• When was the Prospect last contacted?
• Have we identified and engaged all of the stakeholders (not just an executive sponsor)?
• What are the competing priorities?
• Has budget been allocated for the project?
• Has the Prospect settled on a solution to their challenge – is it your solution?
• What is the next step, and what is the timeline for that?
• What is the purchasing process and whois involved?
  • Where are you in that process?

Your Account Executives may feel defensive when you ask these questions. This isn’t about you trusting them to properly manage a sales cycle, it’s more about you normalizing the overall pipeline (some AEs are more optimistic than others) and providing the valuable service of an outsider’s view of progress. It has been my experience that after a few rounds of these types of questions, the pipeline begins to self-correct and become more accurate.

[Check out this sample pipeline report to get a sense of the metrics I track and review]

The first and best response to concerns regarding viability is to point to other prime logos that have already made the decision to buy from you. See this post on getting your first sale. Getting your first prime clients may not be enough to overcome the viability objection – here are a couple of other ideas:

• Many startups refuse to share financial information with prospects – whether or not an NDA is in place. Not only do you not want that information getting into the hands of your competitors, frankly they are often not very impressive and won’t inspire confidence. In lieu of financials, you can provide a letter from your prime investors (assuming you have Angel or VC backing) stating their commitment and support to your company.
• Consider partnering with a more established industry player that can bring credibility before you have established yours. Note that you may need to contract through the partner as opposed directly with the client to provide the sense of security the client is looking for.
• If you have a traditional software product, you can offer to put the code in escrow, reverting to the client if the company folds. Be careful with how this agreement is worded and what triggers the reversion.
• Ask your prospect to become an investor. Doing so allows them to more directly control the product roadmap, gives them insider knowledge (if they are on the board) and puts them in prime position pick up the pieces if the company begins to fail. Be careful about offering clients too much control over the company. Your company needs to remain independent – able to move with the market whether or not your client is moving in that same direction. Remember, you are (probably) not a custom dev shop and need to focus on creating a product that scales into the market.

Even if you ask all the right questions (“Now that it looks like we have a solution that addresses your challenge, what are your top three concerns about working with us?”) you may not hear the viability objection. If your Spidey senses are activated around this concern, I encourage you to ask directly (“Do you have any concerns working with a young company like ours?”). At least this allows you to uncover and address the objection if it exists.

Every major enterprise account allocates budgets at the beginning of the year, including budgets for HR and marketing spending. One would like to think that once the budget is set, the leaders of those teams would have the roadmap necessary to prioritize projects and allocate spend. My experience has been that the leaders of these teams feel empowered to prioritize and make decisions, but often need to go back to the well to rationalize significant purchasing decisions against the overall list of priorities and budget. As part of that process, those budgets are balanced against other enterprise-wide priorities and progress against the revenue and profit target. HR and marketing budgets seem to be the first to be reduced when profit targets are at risk.

The best strategy I have identified to combat this is to gain cross-functional support for the proposed project early in the sales process – hopefully during the front-end of the needs analysis process. See this post on gaining cross-functional support.