ACCELERATING Your Deal by Identifying and Engaging Your Champion
In this post, we will talk about the second “C” in ACCELERATION: how identifying your Champion can ACCELERATE opportunity creation and sales cycle. Determining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) can boil down to one simple truth - if you are not speaking to a specific someone, you are saying nothing to everyone. One of the biggest levers for revenue acceleration in early-stage startups is clearly identifying, defining, and targeting a single ICP. Here’s where many startups miss the mark:
Selling to Anyone Syndrome – In the early days of selling, chasing revenue and marquis logos is tempting. It may deliver short-term wins but, like a sugar high, it quickly comes crashing down. Initial deals lack true signal and net new logo growth stagnates due to a lack of standard buying indicators and repeatability in the sales motion. Worst yet, misaligned customers churn, draining sales, marketing, and engineering resources far beyond their contract value.
Shallow Enterprise Definition – Many startups mistakenly define ICPs with organizational firmographics (e.g., “financial services firms with 500-1500 employees”). There is nothing wrong with using a company profile to help inform your ICP, but a true ICP is defined at the human level. Sellers need specific, repeatable markers to identify the person with pain, urgency, and budget authority.
“We Have Multiple ICPs” -As John Madden said, “if you have two quarterbacks, you have none.” The same logic applies to an ideal customer profile. Early-stage teams must focus on solving one critical problem for one primary buyer. There may be other influencers, sponsors, or detractors but your ICP is a single individual.
So, how do you identify your ICP? One big clue: your ICP is the person in the organization who will be fired if they do not address the problem that your solution aims to solve.
Clearly pinpointing this individual is critical; here are a few tips to help:
Your ICP is a Person, not a Persona – First and foremost you are selling to a specific individual, not a loosely-defined group of people. They have a real title, real responsibilities, and access to the budget. They may delegate elements of the evaluation to their team, but your job is to keep them updated on progress, and to solicit continuous feedback, to avoid surprises and stalls in the sales cycle.
Listen Closely, Learn from Everything – The best founders and early sales hires extract information from every conversation. Your ICP is a specific person, but the pain, needs, and responsibilities of this person can evolve as you gather better information. Look for patterns across titles, challenges, business initiatives, objections, and goals to help inform and update your ICP to stay ahead of the competition.
Identify Common Buying Signals – The best sellers are highly skilled in rapid pattern matching and identifying a compelling event before it is widely known. This requires a deep understanding of your ICP, their company, and the company’s priorities. These sellers also understand how to capitalize on this compelling event by knowing who in an organization feels the pain first, who are the technical champions, who owns the budget, and how this organization typically expresses urgency or discomfort in their behavior.
A concrete understanding of your ICP is mandatory to run an effective sales campaign, at any stage of company maturity. With a clear ICP identified, focus shifts to building strong champions to win deals. Stay tuned to the ACCELERATE blog series as we will cover how to construct the optimal sales cycle or in Venture Guides terms “how to work the W” in a later post.