- There's a normal ideal customer profile,
and then there's an unstoppable ideal customer profile.
Oftentimes when I work with founders,
they join my go-to-market program
because an ideal customer profile they built
wasn't yielding the growth and the results
that they were looking for.
So having worked with over a hundred founders
inside of my SaaS go-to-market program
to build unstoppable ideal customer profiles
to help accelerate their growth,
in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three most common mistakes I see
when founders are creating an ideal customer profile
on their own.
And when you learn about these mistakes,
they'll help you diagnose and understand
if you've got any old ideal customer profile
or you've got an unstoppable ideal customer profile.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody?
Welcome to "Unstoppable."
I'm TK, and on this channel,
I help SaaS founders like you
grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
Now, if you're new to this channel, welcome.
I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches
on how to grow your SaaS business faster.
So be sure to hit that Subscribe button and that bell icon.
That way you'll get notified
every single time I drop an episode with the TK energy.
Now, if you're already part of this community,
if you're part of my coaching programs,
my people, welcome back.
It's really awesome to see you over here.
So I remember doing an ideal customer profile exercise
when we were at $0 in revenues at ToutApp.
This was my last SaaS business.
When we got to about 10K MRR,
we revamped our ideal customer profile and we did it again.
As we approached a million in ARR,
we had to go back to the ideal customer profile
and do it again.
At 3 million, we had a big executive team
and we're building out our growth plans.
We grew 300% that year to get to 3 million.
We had to revamp our ideal customer profile again.
At 6 million ARR,
we had to revamp our ideal customer profile again
because we were in trouble.
The market had shifted, so we had to change it again.
And when we sold to Marketo,
I joined as SVP of strategy at Marketo.
Marketo was about a 450 million ARR business.
We were crafting that growth strategy.
At the heart of it was a very detailed
ideal customer profile exercise.
So firstly, building a proper ideal customer profile
is actually an art form,
and an art form that I've mastered
because I've had to go through it so many times
across so many revenue stages, now across so many companies.
So I've actually developed a framework
on how to build an unstoppable ideal customer profile,
having gone through it so many times.
And having worked with so many founders on their ICP,
I've seen some common mistakes.
In this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three most common mistakes that founders make,
how to avoid them, and how to make sure
that you actually have an unstoppable ICP.
So if you're excited to get into
principle number one, mistake number one,
go ahead and smash that Like button
for the YouTube algorithm, and let's get right into it.
So the first thing that I see,
the first most common mistake when a founder's like,
"Okay, we already have an ICP."
I'm like, "Cool, let's review it,
and maybe you're fine."
But like, "No, no, no, it's not working.
We already did, like, that's why we joined the program."
I'm like, "Okay, cool.
Then let's go through the process."
And what I find is they struggle with
finding the sweet spot of their ICP.
One big problem with an ICP is you go too broad.
It ends up being your TAM, total addressable market.
The other problem is you go too narrow.
And the art form is really having the experience
and having the strategic conversations
on where exactly in the spectrum
you are going to have the sweet spot.
And finding that sweet spot is a process
that you have to go through
when you're going through an ICP exercise.
And oftentimes people don't know that it's a spectrum.
People don't know how to pick the sweet spot,
and people don't quite know
how to actually think about the bounds
and what metrics to look at to figure out those decisions,
or even how to have that conversation.
Therefore, you end up with a stale ICP
that doesn't help drive growth.
So that's mistake number one.
Mistake number two that I see so often
is that ICP exercises are not backed by data.
People make a wishlist of an ideal customer profile,
but they're not really building an ideal customer profile
backed by data, both external and internal,
plus qualitative judgment,
to figure out what the ICP should be.
And so as you're going down this path
of trying to figure out how narrow or how wide you go
or how deep you go, what segment you go into,
there's internal data, there's external data,
there's certain datas to look up.
There's certain, none of it gets looked at,
and so the data part is not there.
And because of that, you end up with an ICP
that just sits in a silo and is kind of a wishlist
versus a true ideal customer profile
that is gonna work well in reality.
Those are the first biggest mistakes that I see.
And when you start to fix these mistakes,
then you start to get a real ideal customer profile
that you can mobilize in the business.
But that's not the most important mistake I see happen
or the most detrimental mistake.
So I have the third one, but before I go into it,
let me just pause here for a second.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
It's easy to just build an ideal customer profile
and check off the box.
It's a lot harder to really master the art form
and say, "Cool, is this ideal customer profile
actually gonna make a massive impact in our business?"
If you're starting to see the power in this
and maybe you've been here where you've built an ICP
but it didn't do anything or didn't drive the growth
or really didn't become a strategic asset
to guide you go-to-market.
If you're feeling the power in this,
if you're feeling the pain in this, I've been there.
I've learned it the hard way.
Maybe you are too.
Can't I just get a yes in the comments below.
Also smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm
if you're getting value from this video.
It really likes it when you do that.
Also, I run a SaaS go-to-market coaching program,
where we go in-depth on building
an unstoppable ideal customer profile.
So if you're interested in my help in building your ICP
and in building an unstoppable go-to-market strategy,
then you'll wanna check out the program.
Don't go anywhere right now though.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video
and I'll link to it below.
Let's go to principle number three
that really brings together the most common mistake,
the most important mistake the founders make.
And the third one is,
everyone thinks an ICP is a static element
but really it's part of a cycle.
In order to build a scalable go-to-market strategy,
something that's completely unstoppable,
you need three components.
And I've talked about this in my channel ad nauseum, right?
You need an ICP.
You need a manifesto,
which is your messaging and your positioning.
And then you need to run a Broadway show
which is a consistent set of marketing and sales activities.
And everyone thinks that once they do the ICP,
then it's like, cool, got it,
and then they move on to the next thing.
But the art form here is you do the ICP
and then you craft the manifesto
based on the decision in the ICP.
Then you test it in the Broadway show
and then you feed what you've learned back
to iterate on the ICP and the manifesto
to really hone it in.
So a lot of times what founders do
is they do it as a static exercise
and they forget about it or they say, yeah, we're good.
And then it gets compounded
in terms of a mistake with being too broad or too narrow
and then not being backed by data.
But then worst of all,
they start going in this one direction with that ICP
which may or may not be right,
but they don't connect it to the actual manifesto work
and they don't connect it to the Broadway show work.
And they never circle back to the ICP to say,
"Cool, what do we iterate?"
And these three are the most common mistakes
that I find when I'm working with founders,
or even founders that I advise
and they never join the program,
but then they come back a year later saying,
"Hey, I think we need to talk."
And I'm like, "Where did you go?"
And they're like, "No, look, we did this thing,
but it didn't quite work, so we wanna do it the right way."
And so this is the three big mistakes that I see.
And the reason I'm sharing it is I've done over 200 videos
on all aspects of building a go-to-market strategy.
And where I feel like I can add the most value
is helping founders avoid pitfalls.
So sometimes I bring the principles
and sometimes I bring the mistakes.
And I see these mistake so often,
I figured it would be worth it to do a video on it.
And so to recap,
if you're building an ideal customer profile,
make sure you don't make mistake number one,
which is you don't spend time figuring out
the sweet spot of how narrow versus broad you should go.
Make sure that you're using data.
You're not ignoring the data,
and you're really thinking about building an ICP
that is backed by real data.
And make sure that you don't treat it as a static document
that you do once, check the box on, and you forget.
Instead, consider it as part of an iterative process
where you're building your ICP and then your manifesto,
which is your messaging and your strategic narrative.
And then that feeds into a Broadway show.
And then you use the data to iterate on the ICP
in the manifest and you do it over and over and over
so you get better and better and better,
and then you can scale from there.
And those are the three big mistakes I see
that I help founders avoid
to make sure that they can build
unstoppable go-to-market strategies for their SaaS business
and drive growth.
Speaking of which, if you are in that stage
where you have some revenues,
and you really need a proper go-to-market strategy,
you need an unstoppable one
to scale growth for your SaaS business,
but you want the step-by-step process
on how to actually build an ICP,
how to actually build a manifesto,
how to execute on a Broadway show,
which is a consistent set of sales and marketing activities,
collect the right data and iterate on it,
and you want actual coaching on how to do that
so that you don't make common execution mistakes,
like some of these, then I invite you to check out
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Inside of this program, I work with you
to help you transform your go-to-market strategy
to a scalable one, to an unstoppable one,
with a proper ICP, a proper manifesto,
and a proper Broadway show,
and a proper framework that you can follow
so you can do it quickly, measure your results,
and iterate and scale and higher.
So if you're interested in working together
just go to tkkader.com/gtm.
tkkader.com/gtm.
Over there, you'll get all the details
on how I run the program.
At the end of it, you can apply to join.
The better the fit, the better the results,
which is why we'll get on a call
to make sure we can actually help you.
And if we can, we'll get you into the program.
We're off to the races to help you build
a scalable go-to-market strategy
that is completely unstoppable.
If you got value from this video,
be sure to smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Also, I drop an episode like this
with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches,
from working with founders
and from having actually been in the arena just like you,
every single Sunday.
So be sure to hit the Subscribe button and that bell icon.
That what you'll get notified
every single time I drop an episode.
If you have a fellow founder, if you have a team member
they'll get value from this video,
if you're going through an ICP exercise
and you're like, "Wow, we really need to think about
whether we're doing it right or not.
Do we have any old ICP or do we have an unstoppable ICP?"
Then please share this video with them.
We wanna help as many SaaS founders as possible.
And we want to help the community as much as possible.
Also, I have a bunch of related videos on go-to-market,
so we'll link to that below as well,
which this channel has for you.
Lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK.
I'll see you in the next episode.
(uplifting music)