The ideal customer profile mistake that breaks sales teams

Key takeaways

• “We serve everyone” is an efficiency confession. The ICP should be the first question asked at the start of every project, campaign, and sales initiative.

• Multiple ICPs work when each is specific. Regan’s firm asks every partner for at least two, then finds the overlaps between them across service lines.

• Internal buy-in is change management, not persuasion. Create urgency, recruit a few champions rather than herding the majority, bank quick wins, and let stories convert the rest. Kotter’s model, cited on air.

• The bus-driver analogy: drive the same route repeatedly and you eventually pick everyone up.

• Big brand moves rest on the same foundation. The firm’s above-the-line campaign with Olympian Jessica Fox came after roughly a decade of groundwork: culture first, then sales methodology, then brand, plus a values match with the ambassador.

• Without a specific ICP, marketing and sales chase the ball wherever it goes. With one, everyone knows their position and the ball comes to them.

If you can go to anyone in your organisation and they can tell you immediately who your ideal client profile is, you’re fine.

Regan Barker, co-founder, Ricavi

An ICP isn’t just to know who you’re going after. It’s to make your sales process efficient.

Regan Barker, co-founder, Ricavi

Why does the podcast have a new name and a new co-host?

Because, as Luigi Prestinenzi puts it with some relish, there’s finally someone at the table who can actually sell. Regan Barker joins as co-host while running revenue operations and sales transformation at a firm turning over hundreds of millions of dollars. That covers inbound, outbound, and the firm’s first above-the-line advertising. It also covers an account-based marketing program she calls the most exciting thing she’s built in corporate life. She’s also a co-founder of Ricavi, which David Fastuca has to remind her to mention. The show becomes Revenue Leaders because that’s who’ll be at the table: three founders with very different backgrounds, plus the leaders they interview.

What’s the ICP test?

Ask anyone. Regan’s rule is that if a random person in the business can name the ideal client without hesitating, the ICP is real. At her firm the answer is private enterprise, mid-market, and it’s drilled into everyone. When she used to ask partners the same question and heard “I can serve everyone,” her reply was to ask how efficient that was. Luigi’s observation is that ICP is treated as foundation stuff and yet most companies he audits don’t have it. Multiple ICPs are fine. Vague ones aren’t. The profile exists to make the whole process faster, not just to aim outreach.

How do you get 180 partners to agree?

You don’t, and Regan is honest about it. What you get is a common horizon and a purposeful set of profiles per service line, with the overlaps mapped between them. The mechanism is change management. She uses John Kotter’s eight steps and doesn’t apologise for how old they are: create urgency, get a handful of champions early, win quickly, and tell the stories. The majority is too hard to move directly. It moves when it sees peers winning earlier and faster against the same clients. A board member’s version is the bus driver who takes the same route every day and eventually picks everyone up. The same sequence built the platform for the Jessica Fox campaign: culture, then methodology, then brand, over nearly 10 years.

Questions this episode answers

How do you know if your ideal customer profile is working?

Anyone in the company can state it without hesitation, and it’s the first question asked at the start of every new initiative. Hesitation or “we serve everyone” means going back to basics.

Can a company have more than one ideal customer profile?

Yes, and it’s encouraged, provided each one is specific. Multiple precise profiles create focus and reveal where service lines overlap. One vague profile does the opposite.

How do you get a sales team to adopt an ICP?

Treat it as change management. Create urgency, recruit a few early champions, bank quick wins, and use those stories to bring the rest along. Don’t try to move the majority on day one.