B2B Market Strategy – Figuring Out Your ICP Without Needing a PhD
Over the past decade the startup/scaleup world has seen the emergence of a few key business concepts that quickly became three-letter acronyms, such as “PMF”, “MVP”, “PLG” and, more recently, “ICP”. Whereas PMF (Product-Market Fit) and MVP (Minimum Viable Product) – concepts popularized by Eric Ries in “The Lean Startup” – have helped startup founders and their teams to prove out their value propositions in more funding-friendly ways than happened previously, and whereas PLG (Product-Led Growth) has become code for designing consumer-friendly products to virtually sell themselves at lowest possible cost (i.e., without needing a sales team), the task of defining or refining your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) has recently become a recognized high priority for management teams in scaleups and even maturing tech companies. Without a tightly defined ICP, companies struggle with their competitive positioning, often coming across to prospective customers as trying to be all things to all people but great for no one. It also causes some to chase every possible opportunity yet struggle to fulfill any the needs of any one set of customers. Most such companies end up either missing their growth objectives through poorly qualified sales pipelines and/or high customer churn or, in the