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New Framework: How to Implement ICP Scoring
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This week’s research note includes:
GTM Research: How to score your ICP
GTM is Better Together: Take our survey and be the first to see the results!
GTM Events: Events you should know about
GTM Research: How to Score Your ICP
A weekly deep-dive into new GTM research and insights
We’ve written before about how to find your Total Relevant Market, and why nailing your ICP should be the very first thing you do in your GTM plan.
Today we’re sharing a new framework on how to score your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Here are just a few reasons you should be considering scoring your ICP once you are at problem-market fit:
Prioritize leads based on fit and likelihood to convert, retain, and expand, ensuring your sales team focuses on high-value prospects.
Enhance personalization by understanding your best fit customers’ specific needs and pain points.
Shorten the sales cycle when you focus on leads more likely to be interested in your solution.
Align GTM teams by making sure sales, marketing, CS, and product all know who they’re building for, attracting, selling to, and serving.
Optimize resources by spending marketing dollars and sales time on best-fit leads.
So let’s do it. Here’s how to systematically score your ICP based on various attributes.
Step 1. Establish your ICP Characteristics
Brainstorm all the characteristics your ICP might have.
Here are some suggestions to get you started.
Step 2: Establish a Scoring Scale
For each characteristic, assign a score based on its potential impact on customer value and fit.
Here’s our suggested scale:
-5: Companies with this attribute churn at a higher rate than average.
-3: Companies may not churn as much but consume more time and resources.
-1: There’s uncertainty; you haven’t sold to such companies before.
+1: You can service these companies, but growth beyond initial contracts is limited.
+3: Clear advantages; customers are happy and there’s differentiation.
+5: High potential for growth; lifetime value is much higher due to upsell and expansion opportunities.
We strongly suggest that you do not use 2’s and 4’s, but only use positive and negative 1, 3, or 5. It forces you to make some decisions and increases clarity when you’re reviewing the results.
Here’s the scoring framework that we use with our customers and are sharing for the first time in GTMonday today:
Step 3. Score Your ICP Characteristics
Here’s an example of how you might apply scoring to the characteristic of company size:
Negative Scores: Smaller companies might churn frequently or demand excessive support (-5 to -3).
Neutral Scores: You’re uncertain about very small or very large companies due to lack of experience (-1).
Positive Scores: Medium-sized companies are serviced well, but growth is moderate (+1).
High Positive Scores: Large enterprises offer significant upsell opportunities and longer retention (+3 to +5).
Now let’s apply this scoring model to a real-world example.
Consider a company that is selling to two segments: Affiliate and Reseller.
They evaluate these two segments on seven ICP characteristics:
Industry
Company size
Revenue,
Whether or not they have a Partner-Led-Growth motion
ACV
How they staff partnerships within the organization
How much of their revenue comes from partner-led growth.
Note: These characteristics go far beyond the typical ICP characteristics of size and revenue to dig deep into what truly makes a best-fit account.
So let’s look at which segment is better: Affiliate or Reseller?
Common Strengths: MarTech, Sales Tech, HR Tech, and Productivity industries score high for both segments (all scores of 5).
Segment-Specific Insights:
Affiliate Segment: Excels with Product-Led Growth companies and smaller deal sizes.
Reseller Segment: Prefers non-Product-Led Growth companies and larger deal sizes.
Head of Partnerships: Critical for both, but higher scores if experienced.
These insights help refine target strategies for each segment.
Step 4: Activate Your ICP
Once you’ve scored your ICP characteristics, operationalize your model with these steps:
Data Partners: Rely on multiple data sources to populate characteristics. Firmographics and technographics are relatively static and sourced externally.
Intent Signals: These are dynamic and should prioritize high-fit accounts without altering their scores.
Sales Discovery: Use detailed sales discovery to fill gaps, especially for attributes that data providers can’t cover.
Targeted Messaging: Craft personalized messages to attract high-fit buyers and deter low-fit ones.
Putting It All Together
By scoring your ICP attributes meticulously and leveraging data and targeted outreach, you can better prioritize and engage potential customers, maximizing your sales and marketing efficiency.
Join our co-founder and CEO Sangram Vajre every Tuesday on LinkedIn at 12:30 ET for a deep dive into the week’s topic. Tomorrow, he will be talking about offsites and TRM scoring.
Sign up so the whole series is on your calendar, or join us on LinkedIn Tuesday!
GTM is Better Together
“GTM is Better Together” is a revolutionary new vision that the future of GTM is better together with unified teams, tech, and trust. This is a weekly feature where we will share the latest announcements related to this important initiative.
Join us on August 28 for our kickoff executive summit in Atlanta!
Tickets come in pairs (so you can bring a colleague from another department).
We are offering pairs of tickets at no cost if you meet all three of these criteria:
You’re a senior GTM Leader (marketing, sales, customer success, product, RevOps, or the leadership team)
You work for an enterprise company
You are a customer of ours and/or one or more of our partners for this event (Demandbase, Clari, On24, Vidyard, Totango, Catalyst, MadKudu, G2, Technology Advice, or ZoomInfo)
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Findings will debut at INBOUND in September, but everyone who takes the survey will get them early!
GTM Events
A list of upcoming events of interest to GTM professionals
August 28, Atlanta: GTM is Better Together
September 10, Boston: GTM is Better Together
September 18-20, Boston: INBOUND 2024
October 14-16, Austin, TX: Pavilion’s GTM 2024 (use code GTMPARTNERS20 for 20% off your ticket)
October 16, Austin: GTM Made Simple Roadshow
October 22, NYC: GTM is Better Together
November 20, San Francisco: GTM is Better Together
Are you a B2B company between $10-100M in revenue who needs help with your GTM strategy and execution? We’d love to chat.
We so appreciate everyone who has read this far. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it, or if there are topics you want us to cover, let us know! You can send it to sarah at gtmpartners dot com.
Love,
The GTM Partners Team
