Use AI to Find More Leads! Here's Why You're Probably Doing It Wrong! Part 1 - Ideal Client Profile

Hey there, revenue rockstar!

Ever feel like you're playing darts blindfolded when it comes to lead generation? You're not alone!

Over the years, I have worked with many startups that burned cash like a Tesla in ludicrous mode, all because they skipped the crucial first step: knowing WHO they're actually selling to!

Stat of the Week:

"Companies that clearly define their ICP see a 68% higher win rate in their sales process, while those without waste an average of 50% of their marketing budget on unqualified leads."

Gartner Research

This Week in AI Sales:

• Part 1 - Lead Gen: Why "Spray and Pray" Lead Gen is SO 2000

• ICP - Ideal Client Profile: Your Golden Ticket to Sales Success

• Customer Avatar: Getting Into Your Prospect's Head (Not in a Creepy Way)

• AI Prompts That'll Make Your ICP Research Feel Like A Cheat code

  
  

  Dive in the Deep

Deep Dive 1

Stop Burning Money, Start Getting Smart!

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Your Business's BFF

How It Works:

Look, if you're throwing marketing dollars around without an ICP, you might as well be using your money as confetti (which, let's be honest, would at least be more fun).

ICP, say whaaat?

Ideal Client Profile is a well-known term within Sales Ops teams, Marketing, and at high levels of the Sales Org. ICP describes a hypothetical customer (company) that is most likely to benefit from your product. Identifying your ideal customer profile helps you focus your team’s efforts on features and initiatives that will serve those organizations that are most likely to spend money on your product.

Put simply, an ideal customer is a perfect match for your product and business. It’s the type of user that:

• Gets the most value out of your offering

• Is highly engaged with your product

• Is easy to sell to

• Refers your product to their colleagues without prompting

For these reasons, identifying and doubling down on your ideal customer profile should be one of your primary and foremost goals when launching an early-stage product, especially as you begin to reach out to your first customers, lighthouse clients, and as you scale outbound lead gen.

From a best practices perspective, here is what is included with ICP.

• Company Demographics (size, revenue, industry)

• Tech Stack & Tools

• Pain Points (the stuff that keeps them up at night)

• Budget Authority (can they actually buy your stuff?)

• Decision-Making Process (who needs to say "yes"?)

  

  Identifying ideal customers upfront is almost impossible, especially before obtaining product-market fit. Usually, your customers are discovered over time as you talk to and sell to more and more people.

  But you have to start somewhere.

  Start by hypothesizing who your ideal customer might be and why. After all, you are building a product to solve someone’s pain points. However, once you sign clients or are having many prospective client meetings, it is then time to validate the Value they derive and Why, plus the User Behavior when using your product.

  Now AI to the rescue. The amazing thing is that AI does a great job with ICP. I recommend that you test a couple of different AI Assistants if you have access to multiple, then combine the best of the results.

  Below is a thorough prompt to get you 90% of the way there. it won't cost you $1,000s that a marketing pro will charge you. Then, as you get additional data points from your new clients, I recommend you fine-tune your ICP often (quarterly, in early-stage companies, and annually in more stable startups).

The Prompt: Ultimate ICP Research

Deep Dive 2

👤 Customer Avatar: Getting Personal (Without the Restraining Order)

Think of your Customer Avatar as your ICP's cooler, more detailed cousin. While your ICP is the client company, your Avatar is the actual human you're selling to. You know, the one who has to convince their boss that your solution is worth the budget!

Avatar Essentials:

• Personal Demographics

• Career Goals & Frustrations

• Daily Routines

• Information Sources

• Decision-Making Style

Here is the magic: As you select targeting on LinkedIn or do paid marketing, your targeting becomes much more specific. I recommend that you refine your customer avatar similarly as you refine your ICP.

Instead of a shotgun approach, you can laser target for your heat-seeking cold emails - less money for the same leads, usually also a more and better-qualified pipeline for the same money.

Want to supercharge your ICP research? Perplexity.ai is like having a research assistant who never sleeps (and doesn't drink all your coffee). It can help you validate your ICP assumptions with real-time market data.

It is also at the top of the head for web searches.

Reader Question:

"Steve - My sales manager wants everything in Salesforce, but updating it takes forever. Can AI help me keep my CRM current without spending my evenings doing admin work? Bonus points if it can help with the next steps and action items!"

Great question from a reader about using AI to assist with CRM updates - which suck but are necessary. AI can assimilate tons of data, including meeting notes, call transcripts, emails, proposals, etc. You can feed the weekly deluge of content into AI and ask for summaries. I present about it in a video in the free AI for Sales Starter Kit, which can be found here.

What You Learned Today:

• Why shooting in the dark with lead gen is expensive AND embarrassing

• How to build an ICP that actually works

• Creating customer avatars that feel like real people

• AI prompts that make all of this 10x easier
  

  Part II will cover the automated and AI solutions that are helping with the rest of lead generation, such as finding contacts and conducting outreach at scale.​

Don't let your lead gen budget go up in flames! Master your ICP and Customer Avatar game first!

Also - Don't let AI leave you in the dust. Supercharge your sales skills and learn AI now!