Hacking Sales

Chapter 2List Building: Part 1Finding and Defining Your Ideal Customer Profile

Building strong lists to generate leads at the top of your pipeline is arguably the most important part of the sales process. Without leads or “Nets,” as Aaron Ross calls them, you have nothing. So start where your customers are. This is also called finding your ideal customer profile (ICP). Your ICP is a prospect who will most likely and most easily enter into a transaction or a business relationship with you.

To get started, ask yourself the following questions:

• What products are my customers using that I compete with, complement, or could translate into interest in my product? Following are two examples:
  • If you have a MailChimp-style service, you want to speak to MailChimp customers.
  • If potential customers are running Facebook Ads, they might also be interested in ad optimization or analytics software.
• Where are these potential customers living on the Web? Following are two examples:
  • Someone interested in your e-commerce service might have a store hosted on Shopify or built with Magento.
  • If you want to find people to create a course online, find people who have already created content for that subject in book form and are selling it on Amazon. Then convince them to try adding video content.
• Which potential customers do I consider my low-hanging fruit?
  • The people already doing what you want them to do, just somewhere else.
  • Someone buying or selling a service on Craigslist that your company ...