Ideal Customers (ICP)

“Everyone” is not a customer. The single most useful thing you can do early is decide who you are not for, so your message and your time stop leaking.

What an ICP is

An Ideal Customer Profile is a specific description of the customer who gets the most value from what you do, is easiest to reach, and is most likely to pay. For a business-to-business product that usually means an industry, a size and a role. For a consumer product it means a particular kind of person in a particular situation.

How to find yours

• Look at your best current customers — the happy, profitable ones — and find what they share.
• Look at who complains, churns or haggles, and describe them too, so you can stop chasing them.
• Describe the trigger: what happened in their week that made them look for you?
• Write it in one sentence and pin it where you work.

Local starting points

If you are testing an idea in Central Alberta, the region’s real industries are a gift: agriculture and ag-tech, oilfield and energy services, manufacturing and fabrication, construction trades, tourism and hospitality, health and seniors’ care, and the many trades that support them. Pick one vertical and go deep rather than eight shallow.

Do this next in Central Alberta

• Red Deer & District Chamber — meet business owners in a range of sectors
• CARIN — regional industry focus

Go deeper

• Y Combinator — how to talk to users — pairs well with customer interviews

Take the next step

Reading is cheap; doing one small thing and talking it through with someone is what moves it forward. Come to a meetup and bring whatever you are stuck on. No pitch, no sign-up, no sales — peers over beers.