ICP vs IOP
There was a time when the term “Ideal Customer Profile” didn’t exist.
That doesn’t mean that salespeople didn’t know who to sell to or what a good prospect looked like, because we did. What we relied on mostly was the “Ideal Opportunity Profile”, even though that term didn’t exist either.
What’s the difference and how might you reconsider your Go To Market ( GTM ) strategy?
From my perspective, Ideal Customer Profile (ICP ) is the property of the marketing team. As examples we need to know-
- What verticals are best suited for our solution(s)?
- What size companies?
- What personas?
- Geography?
- Tech stack?
That tells us where to look, however it may not tell you who can actually BUY. The Ideal Opportunity Profile (IOP ) tells you who can buy what you have to sell. We learn it at the qualification stage.
Let’s use this as an example. You have a solution where your ICP is as follows:
- Financial Services
- Between $250M-$1B in revenue
- North America HQ
- Salesforce.com ( you sell a Managed Package )
- CFO is the Economic Buyer
You get a lead that is-
- Hospitality
- $150M revenue
- North America HQ with global affiliates
- Salesforce.com
- CIO is the contact
If you follow your ICP, you may discard this lead. If you want to instead use IOP, you will want to have a conversation to qualify the contact to understand why they reached out.
Using the 4 W Qualification questions ( more on that in my next article ), what you may learn is the CIO has a business problem that mimics what financial services institutions deal with and that is what lead him to your offering. He has done considerable research including watching online demos and the BOD has directed him to implement at a solution immediately and thanks to a new round of funding, budget is not an issue.
Do you say, “sorry but you are not in my ICP” or do you schedule your discovery call?
This abstract may seem absurd to you however it is not. This may even be one of the reasons you are struggling with pipeline and / or deal conversions. We have to be aware of “what good looks like” and then be able to teach it to the sales organization, starting with the BDR team.
What we need to be able to ascertain at deal qualification is
- Can I solve their problem?
- Can they achieve the desired business outcome?
- Can they buy?
If the answers are yes, you have your IOP answered and it is time to sell.
