Narrow Down Your Damn ICP with David Politis
Plus, The best thing a Founder can do to impact growth
Ho Ho Holy moly, there are still way too many companies trying to execute their GTM strategy against MASSIVE TAMs, a million ICPs, and twenty billion Buyer Personas.
Ho Ho Hopefully this week’s newsletter and podcast episode will help everyone realize that they should stop trying to boil the ocean, eat the whole elephant in one bite, or some other metaphor when it comes to their customers. People, you’re never going to gain meaningful market share when you say everyone’s a potential customer.
While you’re increasing your caloric intake over the next few weeks, try decreasing the number of customer profiles and buyer personas you’re trying to sell to. When you distill the market down to one niche, one segment, one persona, you’ll be amazed by the progress you can make.
Also, just a quick note that Sam Guertin has returned as the Producer of the show and we couldn’t be happier. We’re getting the band back together because we’re on a mission from god.
Here’s what’s on deck the halls this week:
What Craig’s Reading
Our Most Popular Episodes for Sales Leaders
Our Most Popular Episodes for Marketing Leaders
Latest Episode: Narrow Down Your Damn ICP with David Politis
Did someone forward you this newsletter? I’m sorry about that, but since you’re here you might as well subscribe…
What Craig’s Reading
I recently got introduced to Dia Bondi. For background, I get a lot of business self-help authors and am usually skeptical. In this case, I respect the referrer and decided to listen to Dia’s Ted Talk. Great.
She came to a little workshop with my team and we loved it. Now I am reading the book - Ask Like an Auctioneer. It’s also great.
Our Most Popular Episodes for Sales Leaders
Our Most Popular Episodes for Marketing Leaders
Latest Episode: Narrow Down Your Damn ICP with David Politis - The Transaction - Ep. 34
What would you say if your CEO told you they wanted to speak with 100 customers in 100 days? That’s exactly what our guest, David Politis, did and he still thinks it’s one of the best things he’s done in his career.
David, the Founder and Executive Chairman of BetterCloud and Host of Not Another CEO Podcast, joins co-hosts Craig Rosenberg and Matt Amundson for a must-listen episode for founders, CEOs, and B2B execs. David explains why having a smaller TAM (Total Addressable Market) is actually good for smaller or newer-stage companies. There are also great discussions about when landing a big customer can be a bad thing for your company’s roadmap, why meeting with customers is so critically important for leaders, and how to stand out as a sales rep to book meetings with decision-makers at ideal customers.
Also, Matt gets a very meaningful head nod and Craig is called an inspiration, a high that his ego may be chasing for a long time.
Critical Takeaways
Narrow down both your ideal customer profile and your ideal buyer persona. While this may seem counterintuitive, the larger your TAM (Total Addressable Market), the slower your company will grow. When you try to go after too many customer profiles and buyer personas, your budget, time, and effort get dispersed across them and it’s harder to gain a real foothold in any niche from which you can later expand beyond.
When you focus on one key buyer persona within one ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), you can delve deeper into understanding not only how they will use your product, but also what your product actually means to them. For example, when Matt was working in marketing automation, he was able to understand that his product gave buyers a seat at the revenue table and made their jobs easier.
Especially for early-stage startups, there is nothing that is more valuable than talking with your customers. Those conversations function as critical data points that you can use in every aspect of the company, from writing messaging and crafting sales narratives to building new features and raising funds.
Proving to people that you and your email or message aren’t just automated is harder than ever now, so to really cut through the noise and get noticed, you need to do things that can’t be automated. In-person and handwritten things work well for this.
Epic Quotes
“In the early stage, every customer conversation is gold.” - David Politis
“There's nothing that you can do that's as valuable as meeting customers, once you're an executive.” - Matt Amundson
Connect with David
BetterCloud Website: https://www.bettercloud.com/
Work-Bench Website: https://www.work-bench.com/
Not Another CEO Podcast: https://podcast.notanotherceo.com/
The StartUp Founder Survival Guide: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidpolitis_startup-founder-survival-guide-david-politis-activity-7158455968194875393-QVdh
Shoutouts
Chris Degnan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-degnan-524470/
Nick Mehta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmehta/
Phil Fernandez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-fernandez-6902881/
Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/
Ryan Azus: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanazus/
Megan Eisenberg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meageneisenberg/
Follow the Hosts
Craig’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigrosenberg/
Matt’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-amundson-91657236/
Sponsored Segment
This episode is presented by Ringmaster Conversational Marketing, the go-to branded podcast team. To discover how your company can leverage B2B podcasts to deliver outsized ROI, visit ringmaster.com.
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