OUR APPROACH

HOW WE DEVELOP IDEAL CLIENT PROFILES

How We Deliver This Service

Our approach to delivering this service includes these key phases:

• Identification of a handful of current ideal clients
• Brainstorming session with your executives to establish initial ICP
• Invoice analysis for existing ideal clients.
• Market research with your existing ideal clients
• Interview analysis and report generation
• Update of your ICP
• Recommendations for how to use your ICP

Identification Of A Handful of Current Ideal Clients

In this phase, we unveil to you the 7 characteristics of ideal clients and the 7 outcomes of serving primarily ideal clients. We ask you to identify a small handful of ideal clients from your current client roster. We help you analyze how closely the clients you selected match up to the 7 ideal client characteristics and 7 outcomes.

The result of this phase is that you will have a much deeper understanding of what an ideal client looks like and how they behave. You’ll also achieve alignment on your executive team about who is and is not an ideal client. This creates the foundation for unity between your marketing, sales and delivery teams, which prepares you for rapid growth.

Brainstorming Session With Your Executives To Establish Initial ICP

In this phase, we take the first step toward building your ICP by analyzing and articulating the demographics and psychographics of your ideal clients. To do this, we ask you to bring together leaders of your marketing, sales and delivery teams, if you have those leaders. If you do not have leaders for those functions, we help you choose alternative executives who should be a part of this process.

Using the clients identified in the previous phase, we help you develop a clear initial list of psychographics. We say this list is “initial” because it will be amplified and improved in the market research phase.

We ask you to step into the shoes of your ideal clients and look at the world from their point of view – something that often is not easy to do. We ask you to recall their motives during their inbound journey – why they picked your firm and what they wanted to accomplish as a result of buying your services.

We help you organize these motives into a master list of psychographics that includes:

• The top 5 goals that your ideal client absolutely must accomplish.
• The top 5 opportunities that excite their imagination.
• The top 5 challenges that prevent them from achieving their goals.

To develop the demographics of your ICP, we put forward our standard taxonomy of demographic characteristics and ask you to choose which of those characteristics you deem to be important. We analyze your current ideal client roster to identify similarities between them. Then we add the characteristics they hold in common to the demographic taxonomy.

The result of this phase is that you will have clarity and unity among your stakeholder about who ideal clients are, why they buy your services and what they want to achieve from working with your firm.

Invoice Analysis Of Existing Clients

In this phase, we analyze the invoices you generated for the prior 24-36 months for a number of clients who fit your ICP. We look carefully at the services they acquired, how much you charged and what the outcomes were for those clients. This analysis often yields insights about why your existing clients acquired your services and the promises you made to them.

The result of this phase is that you will develop a list of meaningful promises that have effectively generated revenues in the past for your firm.

Market Research With Your Existing Ideal Clients

In this phase, we interview a handful of clients who fit your ICP. We ask them specific questions about their inbound journey, why the acquired your services, what they wanted to realize from your services and how they made the decision to work with your firm.

The result of this phase is that we develop a clear and concise set of motives for why your ideal clients acquired your services, how they came to know about you and how they made their decision. This information is invaluable to have and most clients will simply not tell you this directly. There is great value in having a 3rd party firm ask these questions.

Interview Analysis And Report Generation

In this phase, we analyze the gaps between the initial ICP that was developed and what your ideal clients reported. We often discover that client interviews can produce a treasure trove of new concepts and organic language that you can use both in positioning statements and in Content Marketing. Then we build a report that details, on a client by client basis, why the acquired your services.

We often find that the client research doubles the number of reasons that prospects should buy your services. We also find that the organic language that clients use is more powerful and succinct than the language our clients tend to choose. The turn of the right phrase at the right moment is the difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt.

The result of this phase is that you will acquire what often amounts to a much stronger set of reasons about why prospects should buy your services and what promises you should make to them.

Update Of Your ICP

In this phase, we share the report with you and help you sift through the client responses to select a set of messages and reasons to buy your services that were not included in your original ICP. We draft a final ICP that contains a clear articulation of demographics and psychographics.

The result of this phase is that you will have a clear and strong ICP that everyone at your firm recognizes as the ultimate yard-stick for who you want to do business with and why they will want to do business with you.

Recommendations For How To Use Your ICP

In this phase, we recommend several different ways to use your ICP to make it actionable at your firm. Some of those recommendations often include:

Topics for blog-posts, webinars, videos and other Content Marketing.
Language and key phrases that should be included in your services Messaging.
How to structure a story that begins with the goals, opportunities and challenges of ideal clients – not your firm and services.
How to select stock imagery for your Brand Identity that represents ideal clients and what they care about.
How to use your ICP to create advanced searches for Social Selling strategies.

The result of this phase is that you will be prepared to use your ICP to unite marketing, sales and delivery teams to produce the impact that your ideal clients deeply crave.

See What Can You Expect for details about the outcomes of this service.

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