The 2 parts of a powerful ideal customer profile & how to personalize your message with Icebreakers.
The 2 parts of a powerful ideal customer profile & how to personalize your message with Icebreakers.
Hey - it’s Alex!
Today, I will share with you:
1️⃣ 3 actionable SaaS growth tips
👉 The 2 parts of a powerful ideal customer profile
👉 Lead generation: 3 non-obvious ways to generate leads with Linkedin
👉 How to personalize your message with Icebreakers
2️⃣ ‘Best tip, failure, & learning’ by Robert Coletti (Co-Founder and CPO of cello.so)
3️⃣ 1 software tool recommendation (Phantombuster )
… that will help you quickly grow your SaaS product 🚀.
👉 Before you read on:
✅ Create your own powerful SaaS Growth Strategy with my FREE Workbook (helped 1300+ SaaS professionals)
✅ Nail your Go-to-market strategy fundamentals with my FREE 1-page Notion Template (helped 600+ SaaS professionals)
✅ Unlock your growth potential with 90+ actionable SaaS growth tactics (helped 100+ SaaS professionals)
1. The 2 parts of a powerful ideal customer profile (ICP)
The biggest mistake you can make in your go-to-market strategy is targeting everyone.
Instead, start to focus on a specific market segment, a niche.
It’s a group of customers that share common characteristics, needs, and wants.
It will allow you to:
Understand your customer's needs better
Tailor your messaging to resonate with them
Create a product that solves their specific pain points
Once you dominate that segment, you can expand into adjacent ones (Or stay there forever).
So what you need to do is to create your ideal customer profile (ICP).
But an ideal customer profile is more than:
❌ company size
❌ job title
❌ geography
❌ hobbies
Instead, your ideal customer profile is a combination of exact information about:
1️⃣ The company (firmographics)
2️⃣ The persons involved (decision maker & user)
With a powerful ICP, you have everything to create your sales messaging and hit message-market fit.
This means your message resonates with the prospect.
They know it’s for them.
Your sales messaging in a nutshell is to combine the:
🔸the exact problem they have (in their own words)
🔸 the (shitty) status quo (Situation A)
🔸 the desired dream state (Situation B)
🔸 their motivation to go from A to B
🔸 their costs/risk of not going from A to B
🔸 their motivation to go from A to B
2. Lead generation: 3 non-obvious tactics to generate leads on Linkedin
Once you know your ICP, and you start doing outbound sales, you need to build a list of your potential customers.
Linkedin is a great source to generate leads.
Using Linkedin Sales Navigator is a very common (and highly effective) method to build lists of potential customers.
Here are 3 more unfamiliar ways.
1️⃣ Steal followers from competitors
Linkedin allows you to search for people that are following another creator.
2️⃣ Event Participants
Simply register for an upcoming event on Linkedin.
Once you are registered, you can see a list of all the other people who are also joining.
Since they are interested in the topic, there’s a high chance that they belong to your ICP.
You can easily export the leads using tools like Phantombuster.
3️⃣ Ex-employees of your clients
Your existing customer base is a great source to drive your growth (especially for generating referrals).
But ex-employees of your current customers are great prospects.
They already know your product and hopefully also like it.
If they move to another company, this can be a great door opener for you.
Linkedin Sales Navigator offers the lead filter Past Company.
3. Icebreakers to personalize your outreach
Your icebreaker is the part of your message, that is personalized for each prospect. Mostly it’s the first sentence (email opener) of your message.
💡 The trigger event is basically a specific Icebreaker.
You know that I’m a big believer in the TAPSA framework.
A powerful (cold) email always consists of the following 4 parts (simple framework):
Today I share with you a list of information you can use for your Icebreaker:
1️⃣ Job changes
You can use the information that someone left the company, moved to a new company, or took over a new role (e.g. promotion).
Especially in management positions that is a great time to reach out. Normally they are very keen then to change things (which means it’s a good time for you to help them solve their challenges).
2️⃣ Funding event
Especially if you target startups/scaleups this can be a very powerful trigger event.
3️⃣ PR & social media
Recent posts or comments on Linkedin. Group members or event participants. New Blog posts, newsletters, or another type of published content. All very useful to write a powerful icebreaker.
4️⃣ Industry news
This can be a new law, research, upcoming event, or the latest trends. As long as it’s relevant for them, you can make use of this.
5️⃣ Website information
Public information on their company’s website. Maybe changes in their pricing, new features or products or job offers, etc.
💡 Best tip, failure, and learning by Robert Coletti (Co-Founder and CPO of cello.so)
Tip: Minimize product surface area at the start
In Cello’s early days, our team was overflowing with ideas and excitement as we joined forces with our first customers. We had tons of experience in delivering complex products for big companies, but we knew Cello needed a fresh approach.
To help prioritize, we embraced a key principle: minimize product surface area early on.
Here’s how we did it:
When prioritizing features, weigh the complexity they add for both your team and the customer. Don’t just focus on the initial effort of building and releasing the feature; consider its long-term maintenance and support.
Limit the number of complex features with large surface areas. Instead, concentrate on what makes an outstanding core experience for your end-users.
Don’t sacrifice a delightful, end-to-end product experience for a long list of features. Find inventive ways to solve user problems while keeping it simple and engaging.
At Cello, this meant we dedicated most of our efforts to creating an effortless, in-product referral experience for easy customer integration. As adoption soars, we’re now expanding into other exciting areas like enhanced analytics and integrations.
Cello is the first User-led growth platform that amplifies word-of-mouth by personally incentivizing users to share products they love with a monthly percentage of the referred subscription.
🧠 Do you want to be next and share your best tip with 1200+ SaaS professionals? Reach out to me via Linkedin.
💪 1 software tool recommendation (Phantombuster)
Phantombuster is a no-code tool for lead generation.
For me, the 3 most powerful phantoms (usecases) are:
Exporting Linkedin Event participants (see example above)
Google Maps Search Export (e.g if you target local businesses like restaurants)
Linkedin Post commenter export (send follow-up messages to post commenters)
P.S. Check out my list of best software tools for SaaS startups for more inspiration.
Happy growth 🚀.
TL;DR
Firmographics & personas - the 2 parts of a powerful ideal customer profile
Lead generation with Linkedin: 3 non-obvious ways
5 different icebreakers to make your sales message unique
🚀 Whenever you’re ready, 3 ways I can help you:
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Work with me 1:1 to grow your B2B SaaS business - send me a DM on Linkedin or book a free 15min virtual coffee with me to learn more about my offering.
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