Alright.

Y’all, I know you’re still filing in, but we have Ali here, Ali Bloom. I’ve have I ever said your full name? I’ve always said Ali Bloom. Is it Blum?

It’s Blum. Yeah.

It’s Blum.

I think we’re the only ones to pronounce it that way. The German pronunciation is Blum. I don’t know how my family did it this way, but here we are.

Got it. Okay. Cool. Well, so we’ve known each other forever.

Mhmm. It’s been a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Like, ten years maybe?

I was counting it earlier. Yeah.

Yikes. Spoke at, MicroConf at least one time together. Got to speak to them by each other at the speakers dinner. That was fun.

And Ali’s been working a lot on, gosh, all sorts of things. Do you wanna give a quick background on what you’ve been doing the last few years? Sure.

Yeah. So I took technical I met Joe and took Joe’s copy technical training too long ago. Like, really, truly close to a decade ago. Doesn’t the pandemic makes it seem like it was just a year or two ago.

And since then, I have worked in almost every department in a software company. So before copy, I did PR and content and marketing. And I said, I wanna get closer to the sale. Like, I gotta get closer.

So I kinda did copy, and I was like, write all these copy, did a lot of onboarding emails, and then started to feel like, well, I the product needs some help. Like, I gotta go fix the UX. So then I started going to UX, and then I started going to research. And I worked with Sofia Cantero, the founder of EnjoyHQ to because I was like, okay.

Actually, no. It’s not just me who needs to know it. Like, everyone needs to know the research and VOC. So how about I go mobilize VOC for all these people?

And so I got to help a lot of people get their repos set up and get into research and then research ops. And then, had a chance to go zero to one on a like, as a fractional, had a product last couple of years, which has been so cool.

And now I’m going back my I was pretty fractional pretty close to in house, and now I’m going back to, consultant helping people get buy in on VOC, jobs to be done, and research. Like, how do we actually do this CLG thing that that we talk about?

Yeah.

Dig it. Love it. So yes. It’s amazing. And I really love the progression of going from, like, focusing on copy to working so much in product to see where you can go with this career when you focus on, like, strategy, research, listening to customers.

Right? Like, there’s so much room out there. I think it’s really inspiring.

And so this month, we’re working on the buyer handbook, of course, in Coffee School Professional.

Part of that is really understanding your ICP.

And so we’ve been talking about ICPs a bit so far.

And now, yeah, I wanted to bring you in, Ali, just to, like, share how to do research for ourselves potentially for our own businesses as well as when clients when you’re working with a client, maybe they don’t know who they’re talking to. Yep.

Happens a lot.

They may not know they don’t know who they’re talking to.

Yeah.

Yes. Right? Perfect. So, I know we’ve only got an hour. We’ve got fifty five minutes left, so I would like to stop talking.

I’ll let you take over. Everybody, please get your notebooks ready. And, Ali, please take it away with helping us understand ICP research.

Woo hoo. Okay. Cool. Alright. Let’s see how good I can be at sharing my screen.

Let’s see. I have the browser open.

Okay.

I should have done this while you were talking. Would have been a much more dramatic event.

Oh, no. It’s good. Everyone’s having time to, like, get settled in too.

So it’s Yeah.

Okay.

There we go. Okay. Here we go. We go to present, and then we say presenter view, and then we say sent, and then we say share, and then audience window.

Perfect. Thank you. Okay. So you guys can see my screen?

We can see audience window. Yes.

Okay. Excellent. So I close this. You can see a nice Canva color palette here. Okay. Cool.

Wonderful.

Alrighty. So we’re gonna talk about how to research and mobilize an ICP that actually gets used. So I see so, so often that we do all this work, all this work to get our ICP, and then it just sits on a shelf or somebody’s, like, you know, worst case scenario, fighting us, questioning the fact that we would even do this. I’ve seen all kinds of ignoring of ICP or jobs to be on or any kind of customer development work ignored. So we’re gonna talk about how to bake that part in from the beginning and how to actually do some of the research.

So today, we’re gonna talk about how we can make an ICP useful, unignorable, mobilizable.

Didn’t tell me spell spell check didn’t say that was a fake word, so we’re going with it. How do you build a coalition around your ICP?

And then the five steps of which building a coalition is one of them to research and mobilize your ICP, and then what it kinda looks like when you’re done, what you kinda get out of that.

So before we get into that, I’m gonna ask you guys, why bother researching ICP? Why are we doing this?

Anybody? Go for it.

Internal buy in right from the beginning?

Yeah. On what?

On who the client is and helping them see their client in a different light.

Yeah. Why do we need that?

Because they don’t understand the client and what they’re building it for. And then by the time they build it, it’s not what the client actually wants.

And then what happens?

They don’t use the information that they have, and it just stops right there. So, their copy changes, that’s not what they wanted to say. They don’t know who they’re talking to, and products just die on the vine. Yeah.

The products die on the vine. Yes. So often, if we do not get this right, and it it goes through all these different departments, we don’t get right, things die on the vine. That is that is a really good way to put it. Cool. So that’s what we’re doing this for. That’s why that’s our urgent reason to care here.

So before we get into some of the ways to make it succeed, there’s two main ways that I wanna talk about the how we can avoid failing and how you just nix these. Like, just crush them off your you’re not worried about them anymore. The first one is building something that I call a static ICP. So you’ve probably seen these.

If you’ve been working in marketing any amount of time, it’s like a list of attributes, and it’s fixed. I call it static because it’s fixed in a moment in time. It’s just a a description of of what we’re doing of who the person looks like. And what I call a dynamic ICP is something that’s constantly evolving and also speaks to how your ICP progresses through time.

So to give you an example, we might say, okay. Here’s a regional small business. They’ve got annual volume, hundred million dollars, ten locations, two to three hundred employees. They sell office supplies.

We could maybe sell them, like, CRM. Like, they’ve got some sales. We could maybe sell them HR software. Like, we can, like, there’s hints about things they might need, their business.

They need business things. But if we know, like, actually who their ICP like, who we’re talking to and what their moment in time is, then we might know. So I don’t know how many of you guys have seen the American Office, but we know that there are many different characters with many different roles, many different sets of circumstances. They go through mergers.

They go through getting spun back off. They go through potential downsizing. They have cost cutting. They have all of these different scenarios, some of which, result in buying decisions.

And they don’t the important thing about this is that we’re also looking at the individual, like, not the the company as as a whole necessarily. We’re selling to the company, but we wanna also make sure we we we talk about the individual because people buy things, not companies.

So pothole number two. So pothole number one, making sure that we have, like, a it’s a more, dynamic. We know the storyline in time. Particle number two is thinking you only need to research your customers.

So do you have any idea who the other person the other people we need to research as they’re doing this project?

The client.

Okay. Client, customer, pretty, like, a good product.

Any other guesses? So it’s your coworkers. It’s your colleagues.

So you’re going through this process. You’re gonna be researching your customer, but you’re going to be researching them the you’re going to be building a a tool that’s going to be used by your colleagues. So you wanna make sure you don’t exclude them from the process.

So this is especially, it’s especially important no matter if you’re in house or if you’re a consultant.

But it’s especially important to keep in mind because so often we and I used to do this all the time, and it it often got me tripped up. We’re often hired for expertise. We say we’re gonna go do this thing. We go off, we do the thing, and then we come back and we say, I did the thing.

Here’s the ICP. And then that can kind of sit on a shelf. So we wanna make our ICP stick. So part of what we’re gonna be doing here is making sure that we get that, get that understand who we’re going to be getting that buy in from before we start.

So that brings us to our five steps here.

Yep. So the five steps that we’re going to research and, to learn to research and mobilize your ICP. First is building your ICP coalition.

So we’ll talk about how to do that. So making sure you know who the people are that are going to be in part of this. Then there is quant research, two types of qualitative research, leading indicator and lagging indicator, and then, share as you go steps. So this is kind of a step you do every step of the process, but it’s a really important thing to keep in mind.

So the first step, building your coalition.

So your colleagues are your ICP for your ICP project. If you’re doing jobs to be done, you wanna do your the jobs to be done on your clients, on your colleagues. You wanna know what circumstances they’re in. You wanna know their stage of awareness.

Right? Because if we come in and we say, let’s do an ICP to someone who doesn’t even know they need an ICP, they’re totally unaware, you’re we wanna avoid going from that unaware or that problem or stage to just like, hey. Be most aware. Have high intent.

Let’s just do this thing now. It’s a very, very hard jump to make in a single conversation. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe your maybe your skills are better, but it’s really, really challenging.

So we wanna nurture people along those stages of awareness by understanding where they are.

So and why this matters? Okay. So miss Congeniality, Ocean’s eight. We wanna be less of this think of yourself less of this, like, lone wolf who’s like a like a genius and has it right, but is alienating everyone around them.

Miss Congeniality, Sandra Bullock plays a, FBI agent who goes undercover in a beauty pageant, and, she’s not taken seriously. She’s also really mean to all of her coworkers. She’s right. She saves the day, but barely with the help of her teammates.

Versus Ocean’s eight, she’s leading this coalition of people to do a heist. So she knows that she’s really good at planning the heist, but she’s gonna be bring in people who are really good at at safe cracking or, like, rebuilding jewelry. Fencing is a thing you need to know how to do if you’re in a heist. So we’re going to be working with other people. So we wanna make sure that we’re in a scenario where we’re setting ourselves up to have that pro social kind of collaborative, heist that we’re making we’re doing together.

I should think of a fun way to work in heist heist, jokes here. Okay. Cool. So this brings us to our first activity.

So, Sarah, I will take you up on that offer. If you could send that, doc out to everyone. So I have a coalition building workbook.

You guys are the ones getting to see it for, like you’re gonna be the first people to ever see it. I am so excited to hear what you think of it. There’s a lot more that I wanna add to it. But the way that I want you to think about it is these are the different things. These are the blanks to fill in as you’re going through to build your ice to research and mobilize your ICP.

So you should see in the first section, build your coalition, there should be a couple of different blocks, and it should say name, title. Some of the titles will be filled out, stage of awareness with respect to ICP, and a problem that they complain about.

So, for example, if you are working with a CEO and the CEO is just like, god. Our churn sucks. Our churn sucks.

Marketing can’t get it together. Product can’t get it together. Like, our churn sucks. That’s what they’re complaining about. They’re not complaining about not having ICP. They’re complaining churn sucks.

So I want you to, I have a couple there. You’re gonna wanna do this for, like, three to five people ideally, but for right now, I’m gonna put five minutes on a timer. I’m gonna invite you to think of like, to fill in the blanks that you can for one person.

So other people, you’re you’re gonna have three different people that you can invite in types of people to invite into your coalition.

Your champion, this is prompt someone who’s not terribly involved in the nitty gritty of the work. That’s the CEO most likely.

Your allies, these are people in other departments. You’re like, you’re you’re doing some of the work together and then your coconspirators.

This is your work bestie. This is who you’re gonna come in and be like, okay. I can’t can you believe this? Ding dong.

Like, that kind of person where you can have that kind of relationship where you can talk through how to actually do this. So five minutes on, I’m gonna ask you guys to, fill in one just the profile for just one coalition number. I’m gonna put five minutes on the clock, and then I’m gonna ask one of you to share and tell me about this person. And if it’s not if you’re, if you’re a consultant, you can do it for, like, your client point of contact.

Okay. That’s just about five minutes. Does anybody want how’s it going? And does anybody want to share a member of your coalition?

Anyone dare to?

I’ll dare. Okay. I was gonna call on you, Claire. You look like you might want to. That’s awesome.

Well, it’s like I’m so curious. I wanted a feedback.

Cool.

I have, for example, the director of marketing, who’s stage of awareness for ICP is probably about a five out of five because it’s their job.

Okay.

And they’re probably complaining about low conversions. Put all this effort to get leads in, and they’re not converting, and they’re complaining about it because it’s messing with their interests.

Okay. Is this a real director of marketing or a hypothetical director of marketing?

A hypothetical director of marketing.

Okay. If you were to, turn this to a real director of marketing you may have worked in in the past, what would you do to take that one level of one level more specific?

I don’t think I have worked with the real director of marketing, to be honest.

Okay.

Yeah. I’ve worked with the head of sales.

Okay.

She was kind of like a three out of five.

Okay.

And sort of at a loss, one between departments. Like, everyone’s going like, this is the thing that you should be focusing on. No. This is it. No. This is it.

So she was really struggling to know, like, what do I what am I telling my reps? What is the message that we’re putting through to people?

Yeah. And what were the specific go ahead.

I’m sorry. I’m just asking if that was the more specific Yeah.

A lot.

What were some of the consequences of not knowing what she could tell her reps about what kind of pitch to make?

I think it was more emotional than actual, like, real life consequences. So I think it was more just like, I need to prove results, prove myself, and I’m not sure that I’m going to.

So many things are changing. I’m confused. They’re confused. Like, we need a ground base.

Okay.

I’m not sure.

Yeah. I’m not sure what her internal conversations look like.

Okay. What kind of was she hitting her her quotas? Was her team hitting her quotas? Their quotas?

I actually don’t know. We mostly had a conversation about, like, what she’s seeing in customers at the moment.

It was more of like a discovery call for me to understand Okay.

What they’re hearing from their current customers. Cool. But yeah.

Cool. Okay.

Excellent. Anyone else wanna share theirs?

It’s a small group. There’s not much room for you guys to hide.

I’m I’m saying this to, like, try to give you an out if you don’t want to.

But Jessica, I know you’re on your, treadmill right now, but, is there anything that you this is a good chance to get some notes as you work through what you’re working on.

Any thoughts? Anything you wanna share? If you’re talking, you’re on mute. Just trying not to be called on.

You came off mute, Jessica.

No? Alright. Everyone’s shy today, Ally. Oh, Katie’s down. Katie, are you down?

I’m mute. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. But I got on problem agreement evidence. Could you clarify what you were looking for there?

Yeah. So this is where we’re going to find, this is something we’re coming to later. So this is great feedback for me of how to work out with this. So that’s research that you’ll get to find that you can say, okay.

I see you head of sales. I see you head of marketing. This problem’s real. I know I I found some evidence.

Like, I’m not I take your word for it, and I want to go track down some evidence. So what I do with these this is sort of the starting point, but what I ultimately like to do over time is keep a problem library. Anytime somebody complains about something, I write it down. And at first, I’m not trying to prove it.

I’m not trying to solve it. I’m just like, okay. Someone’s not meeting their quotas. Sales is about product and marketing.

Like, some there’s problems. I’m just gonna keep track of them, and I’ll add all that data as I go.

Any other questions?

So but the problem agreement is around you finding evidence that that problem exists and that the product that you’re selling, in this case, like, an ideal client profile, could solve that problem Exactly.

Yeah.

To support the need for what you want to sell. Okay.

Yeah. The key to getting your project to to be really, really popular is to position it as a solution to other people’s problems. So we wanna be the experts. I don’t know too much about Margaret Thatcher, except I know that she was a politician who was famous for knowing more than anyone else in the room. So you wanna show up to these rooms knowing more about that problems that other people are having than they do, and that’s looking for some of that evidence as you go. We’ll talk about the ways you can do that in a second.

But there’s also a second kind. So you’ll also see that there’s this quant research step as one of the next, channels. So this is the or one of the next blanks to fill in. So this is one of the other areas where we wanna be collecting a lot of data.

So this is the second step of looking for our ICP, and this is where we’re going to figure out how we can make sure that this is an ICP grounded in reality and an ICP grounded in what people actually do versus an ICP that’s maybe a flight of fancy as many many of them are. Now anybody here do we have you can say in the chat or not in the chat. Anybody here, like, Okay. Okay.

Four out of three people are bad at math, and I’m the fourth.

So Great.

Okay. Cool.

So I’m not either. I love having numbers. I want them. I need them. I crave them.

I don’t wanna make a decision without them. I am, like, very data driven, when I make decisions at work. Not at home. But at work, I’m very, very data driven.

However, I’m not a numbers person. A day when I have to go fight a dashboard tool is a bad, bad day. I know SQL. I would prefer not to have to write my own query.

So how do you what do you do with this? So you can say, like, alright. This is actually a good opportunity to really break down what we mean by quant and what we want our quant to do. So we’re really asking a question with our quant data.

How do you measure ideal? Like, when we say our ideal customer, what does that even mean? Like, how do we know that they’re ideal? What’s the type of, thing that they’re doing in our product?

So that might be activation metrics. It could be churn. It could be volume.

Some indicator that they are picking up what we’re putting down.

Are there any other, are there any other metrics that you guys use when you’re talking about ideal customer profile that, I might be missing here? I’m sure there’s many.

I mean, I feel I’m, like, less in the software space and more in coaching, but I think, like, success, like, they achieve the outcome that was promised in the in the original pitch.

Yeah. Did they actually get a benefit out of the product or the service? Yeah.

That’s a big one. What else?

Everyone’s being so quiet today. Everyone is shy. No.

We’re talking about key metrics. Correct? Really, what we’re looking at are key metrics. So you can really look at that for driving could be primary goals.

Could be driving revenue growth. It could be reducing costs. Would that be correct? So you could say, like, maybe one person wants to have cost savings, one person wants to increase conversion rates, one person wants more ARR, one person wants to have more MRR.

Would that be correct in what we’re looking at for metrics?

All of it. Yep. Yes.

Depending on the person and the ICP you’re interviewing. Correct?

Yeah. That’s a that’s exactly it. So we’re we’re going to want to see customers that are not going to cost us money to serve. So those higher margin, that’s a customer, that’s a one way to look at it. All the other ones that you outlined as well.

And sort of like what what you were saying, Claire, around that that person that’s head of sales had a really emotional component, they all there are some numbers they care about. So it’s we can figure out, okay, what are the numbers that they care about? And we can say, alright. Let’s point our lens. So like I said, I’m not a numbers person, but here’s how I use that as an opportunity to pull other people into my coalition.

So what I do is get really good at framing the questions that I wanna ask. Depending on how much time you guys have get to spend with data, the the opportunities are really endless for the queries and the questions you can come up with. And that is really a huge, huge part of the data work that that happens on data teams. So you can get really good at saying, this is the number I need to understand, and here’s how I need to understand it changing over time.

And then you can find a quant person either at your client, like, hey. Do you have a date person chartered data? Maybe it’s it’s gonna be somebody different at every at every type of company and say, hey. Can we pair on this?

Because I have some things that are really important to some of these these execs that I wanna figure out how it works. And then you can also use that as an opportunity to ask the data person, hey. You guys you you seen any numbers that we gotta pay attention to? Because those data people are probably getting ignored because they’re probably coming up with number after number after number presented in a very numerical kind of way with without the story, without connecting it to a problem.

So you can also help them and bring them into your.

Okay. So that’s it. Step two, quant data. You wanna know you wanna be looking at who has done things that indicate they are the the kind of customer you want to do that with again.

So the next question or the next step is, first of two qualitative research steps. And This is leading indicator qualitative research. So this is happening a little early on, in our relationship with the customer, and I call it the magic question email. I actually call it the magic question email automation. I don’t I left that word off here.

Okay. So I this is another thing that I learned from Joe ten years ago that still works.

So this magic question is, what’s going on in your world that led you to do the thing? And with every client that I work with, I set up a welcome email that has this question at the bottom. Then I pipe the replies to a folder and a qualitative research repository. I use EnjoyHQ.

And then over time, you have a single location with, I’m not exaggerating, I have one client. I think there’s, like, twenty five hundred responses in there right now. And one of the engineers on the team came to me and said, she reads every hour. Every day, she’ll go in and just read replies from an hour.

So when she goes into her product engineering meetings, she’s the Margaret Thatcher in that room because she knows whether or not something’s gonna fail or succeed before they even build it. Whether or not they listen to her, that’s we’ll come we’ll have a master class on that another time, but this is a really, the most powerful thing for building, again, that dynamic ICP. Right? So this is going to give you the answers to questions that pea or the data that people have.

Let me start that over.

Sending this out right after somebody has signed up to start using a product, that’s the moment of that high tension. That’s in that exact switch moment. That’s when they’re really heightened to say, I wanna make sure that I I’m doing something. Like, something has just changed that makes me actually wanna do this.

That energy is gonna be really high. You’re gonna wanna make sure that you capture as much of that as you can. So this is an email that I wrote for a company called Mural many, many moons ago. This is an example of the the type of formula that I use.

There’s a an introduction. I wrote it from CEO.

We had some VOC at the time from people saying Mural was a missing piece they were looking for, so we included it. We added some credibility around the different types of companies that we worked with. We said what’s gonna be coming next because Mural, like many whiteboard tools, blank slate. And at the time when we wrote this, this was not an established category. People did not know how to use these things. And then the one question.

So our activity now is to write your magic question emails. So you’ll scroll down, and you’ll see that’s one of we’re gonna skip quant because that’s not my, that’s gonna be different depending on where you are and because I hate it. And I love this. So we’re gonna go to a magic question email. I can just be so much more useful for you here than I can with the quant stuff. Make a good friend in quant is my quant advice. So, put another five minutes on, and I’ll invite you to write a first draft.

And then I’m gonna ask somebody to read their email if they want. If they’re too shy, then I’ll just go on to the next part. But anyway. Okay.

Sorry. Quick question. Who are we writing this email for? Like, to our ideal client? Good question.

Pick it to a new customer if you work at a for a pro a company where you work or for a client that you might have or maybe one that would that you had, in the past.

Okay. That’s just about five minutes. Does anybody have a first draft that they want to share?

Sure. I’ll go.

Alright.

Doing it. Jumping straight in. Full disclosure, it’s the end of my work day. My brain is fried.

It’s a first round.

No worries.

I’ve written it from, like, a really old client of mine that was super interesting to work with called Pave. So it’s, welcome to Pave name. I’m John, the CEO, and I just wanted to take this time to say we’re really excited to help you grow your newsletter’s revenue.

Pave is the new kid on the block, but thousands of independent newsletter creators have already used it to sell recurring sponsorship slots to big brands like Monday dot com, Masterwork Masterworks, and company Abe. You will find all the tools you need to monetize without spamming your readers with relevant ads. But before you get started, I have one quick question for you. What was going on in your world today that led you to sign up to Pave?

Just hit reply to this email and let me know.

Awesome.

Yeah. Cool. So it sounds like you had this new product in an established space that had already gotten a lot of success. I’m sorry.

You’re celebrating that, making it really exciting. Look at us. You’re or look at you. You’re joining this cool cool new kids club.

And and that’s a great question. Awesome.

I have a question about the question, though. Yeah.

I’ve used it before, and I found, like, people don’t respond to email as much as I’d hope if if there’s, like, a large user base.

So would you ever use, like, a segmenting link, you know, where you just have, like, two options?

So I would probably want to know a little bit more about the situation where you weren’t getting the responses, because I have I worked in one category where I I basically could not get anyone to reply to my emails, but I’ve not experienced that elsewhere.

I have experienced times where, somebody comes in and changes my magic question email and the responses go down for a little bit. So there’s a lot of different factors. But what I would say definitively is that I would leave this question open ended for as long as you can because we don’t know the finite number of reasons why people signed up yet. And the goal that or the the biggest, benefit of having this run continuously, build that repo, is that you get a repo a repository of voice of customer data, and that is part of your dynamic ICP.

So your your ICP is an artifact, but it’s also where your customers are talking, and they’re people. They’re humans. They say things. They complain.

They’re disgruntled. They’re happy. They’re sad. The way they talk about things also changes. Like, I’m sure you guys are seeing with with a lot of the AI things that are coming on, the way that somebody may have responded to this email two years ago, they may be talking about the same things, but in a very different language now compared to them.

So we wanna know that keeps us keeps us sharp with what folks are knowing. So I I don’t really use the segmenting, links unless I know definitively, unless I’ve already built, tested, and had my ICP working for a long period of time, and I I know it’s good, then I wanna start with open ended.

Got it. Okay. So you just send these all to, like, an inbox, where you can access them.

I’m guessing if they go straight to, say, the CEO’s inbox, he might not be active in pulling them to your Yeah.

So you’re gonna want there is some coordination that you’re gonna wanna do with the from name.

So you’ll see on that workbook, there’s a lot of different moving parts to this email. So the the copy is, like, that’s your first thing to get it going, but you’re gonna need to make sure that you have sign off from the person who’s going to be using their from name. Maybe you use a fake email address that’s from the real person and you send the CEO the best emails.

And your I use a qualitative research repository as my receptacle. So there’s a tool called EnjoyHQ, Dovetail, notably, Aurelius. There’s several of them several of them now. I send it all to a folder inside one of those tools.

Great. Okay.

Thank you.

There’s probably other ways to do it.

The only thing I like less than quant is figuring out how to use software. So there are ways to do it that or not this, but this is the one that works I have found that works the best and the easiest for me.

Cool.

Okay. I’m gonna keep going because we’re at step three, and I wanna make sure we get to get through everything. So thank you for sharing. This is awesome.

And like I said, you’re gonna generate tons and tons of responses. In almost every case, there are few limited ones where even tweaks won’t won’t help you too much. We can probably, we can still get other data points here. So step four.

So that leading indicator, you’re gonna say, like, they’re coming in. They they’re right in this switch moment. Then we’re gonna look at our lagging indicator. So this is where we’re going to talk to people who are already successful with us and kind of look back at how they made their decision.

So this is where we’ll do some jobs to be done documentary style interviews. So I chatted with Joe a little bit beforehand. I think you guys have some familiarity with it. Jobs to be Done is its entire own, master class series, so I’ll just hit some of the high notes here.

What I I use the jobs to be done, the job story artifact as the main artifact in an ICP. And the top of that artifact, you’re going to have a sentence that describes your customers, what we call their job story.

So their job story is when I am in a set of circumstances, give me a way to make some kind of progress so I can achieve some kind of outcome. And they’re all going to have this sort of story flow. Once upon a time, I was ahead of sales, and everyone was telling me all of these different things that I needed to do. And I couldn’t figure out who was on first, and I wasn’t meeting my quota. So I need a way to figure out how I can tell my team the single sales pitch to make or the couple of sales pitches to make So I can hit my quotas. I can hit my numbers. My team can all get their commissions.

Right? So we may have a job story come out something like that, and that’s what we’re we’re going to be driving towards here.

Lots of great resources on jobs to be done interviews if you haven’t done them before. I don’t have a a desi dedicated script I use for everyone. I mapped them out based on the category.

But I do have five questions here that I wanna share as an example of how to how to get good data.

First, I always wanna ask somebody about themselves and the role of the company. So much gold in there. I wanna know when they first signed up. I wanna know when they first started looking.

I wanna know what else they considered and what they liked about those other solutions. And I wanna know who else was involved in the decision. This will vary drastically. Like, I have one client.

There’s fifteen people involved in the decision. I’ve worked with others where it’s you’re selling to the buyer. Like, the buyer is the user.

So keep so there’s lots of ways to do it. The the important things to remember are how to, ask good questions to make make sure you get really good data and some just some do’s and don’ts.

I don’t know why I said just some do’s and don’ts, like diminutive as if it’s not, like, the the main takeaway for research. That was a weird thing I just did. So what you want to do is imagine you’re a detective or a documentarian. You are studying a thing that has already happened.

You want to know the moment when somebody switched, when they said, I can’t take it anymore. I gotta get something else, And that already happened. You wanna do that instead of imagining that you’re that they’re a fortune teller. Imagining you can say, like you you don’t wanna say, what would you do in the future?

Or do you think you would do this? Or blah blah blah blah blah. You wanna know what happened.

Another thing that you wanna do is focus on having questions that start with what, when, who, and how.

And there’s a lot of reasons for this, but there’s two main reasons to avoid why. Whether you are a student of linguistics linguistics, psychology, hostage negotiation, patriarchy, all of these systems as you study them, they will tell you to avoid the question why because it is very often accusatory, and it has this kind of accusatory note baked into it. So we wanna avoid it. The second reason is that it can be kind of hard to answer.

I like to give the example and I may have learned this one from Joe too. If we say, you know, why do you love your spouse? Oh, well, why do I love my spouse? Versus what do you love about your spouse?

Hopefully, there is a long, long list and you don’t stop talking until we shut you up. So we wanna make sure we’re asking these kinds of questions that are going to elicit good responses.

Do record the call. One thousand percent get consent and record the call. Do not trust your notes. This is one of the biggest beginner mistakes. I know you guys are learning all about VOC.

I also say if you’re talking to other people who have not done this, those low awareness colleagues of yours, make sure if they’re having calls, get them to record it. Expect it to take two to three months before the message really sinks in. Just keep just kinda keep reminding them. Hey. Thanks for the notes. Did you do you have a call? Whatever.

And then two other techniques I like to probe on general words. If someone says, well, it was just better, what does better mean? What about it was better, versus letting a throwaway word lie. You can’t use better in a in a headline.

That’s not gonna get you anywhere. And then recap and restate. So this is a great way to find, where you may have gotten it wrong and to elicit a response. So you may say, oh, okay.

I heard you say that you were, you had three different meetings in one day, and everybody gave you a different, thing they wanted you to sell.

Do I but you weren’t sure which of the people you should listen to. Do I have that right? And then your head of sales might say, well, actually, it was really the CEO told me to go talk to these people because the CEO didn’t know, and he wanted their opinions or whatever it is. So that gives you an opportunity to get someone to correct you while agreeing with you.

Do I do I have that right? Like, am I picking up what you’re putting down? You can say, oh, no. Not really.

It’s still, like, a kind of agreement type mechanism. Okay.

Step five.

Share as you go. So remember at the beginning, we talked about building our coalition. We talked about wanting to get that trust early on, bringing people in. And, someone I don’t remember who asked a question about this problem agreement evidence.

So you’re going to go through and do this research. You’re going to get evidence of other people’s problems, and you’re going to hear it. You’re gonna be able to share it with people. And And you know what you’re gonna get to say? You’re gonna get to say the three best words in the English language. It’s not I love you. It’s you were right.

Very, very few of us get to hear that in at home, at work, and you’re gonna get to hear that. Like, you’re gonna get to or people you’re working with will get to hear that from you, further endearing them to your cause. So I like to say you’re we’re doing less, like, launching the new iPhone. We’re not going off doing our engineering.

We would’ve built them. We would’ve given them a faster horse if we asked them what we wanted. We’re not doing that. We’re not up on stage.

We’re not separate. We’re a lot more Julia Child. Like, this is how I crack the eggs. Do you wanna taste some of this soup before I add add a little bit more salt in?

We are cooking together. We are involved in this. You’re the expert. You don’t wanna diminish your expertise, but you’re involving people, as you go.

And so there’s a lot of different ways that I like to do that.

My favorite, favorite, favorite thing is to take an interview that you’ve done, get a sixty to ninety second clip where somebody where the customer is talking about a pain point someone else cares about. So if I was working with this head of sales and I’m talking with a customer and that customer is like, you know, I thought you guys were, like, I thought you guys were a CRM, but then I started using you, and I couldn’t, like, I couldn’t do this one thing that is essential for CRMs.

Snip it, put it into the script audiogram, send it to the head of sales in a very casual, informal way. Hey. I heard remember that thing you were telling me the other day? Like, I just got off the phone with this customer. I think you’re gonna wanna hear this. And the reason for this, nobody wants to listen to an hour long interview. Nobody.

You we will do them only when we have an external or internal push to do so. I actually have this story of when I had there were some jobs to be done interviews sitting in the repo for a year that I knew I needed to listen to, but I didn’t listen to them until I found something in the data that said, oh, I gotta fix that. Where’s the data? Okay.

So and so did the research. I’m gonna go get it. So we need to give somebody a push. Ten hours of research, one hour of research, half hour call, this is a big ask.

But there is nobody who is going to hit say no to a sixty second clip that breaks up their day, gives them something really easy to listen to that says you were right.

So highly recommend it. Descript, there’s other tools. Descript is the I haven’t it’s the one to beat. So okay.

So you do all of this, and then what happens when you’re done? So you have all these steps. You’re building your coalition. You’re doing your quant research.

You’ve got your leading lagging indicators for qualitative research, and you’ve been sharing as you’re going.

So at the end, we’re not just getting a document, not just getting an artifact. So at the end, we’re getting a team of people who are bought in and want to see ICT succeed. Their awareness is higher. Their engagement with the work is higher. The how like, what’s in it for me? That’s a question that’s been answered answered months ago. They’re really they’re really with you there.

You’re getting a metrics informed ICP. So because you’ve been incorporating so much data in how you’re pursuing the people that you’re going to research, you’re going to get something that has a lot more data, like, grounding in data reality by the time you ship, and that’s gonna make so much of the work that comes later easier to ship.

So ICP, it’s not just an artifact. It’s something that can seem like, it’s an understanding. Like, it’s it’s not just a piece of paper that says this is who we sell to. It’s I know this is who we sell to, and I know what that’s like, and I know what it feels like. I have a qualia of it. So that that magic question email automation, that’s gonna keep building up your, database.

And then you’ll get that dynamic artifact ICP from your jobs research. And then most importantly, you’re gonna have a team of people who trust your ICP because they were a part of making it. It’s not just Thelma’s project. It’s Thelma and Louise’s ICP.

Everyone’s part of it now. It’s not just my thing. It’s our thing. So thus concludes your introductory crash course lesson, researching and mobilizing ICP.

Thank you so much. This was so fun.

What questions do you have?

I’ll start with you.

So good, Ali. Okay. Amazing.

I’m just so glad that I know that some people couldn’t make it today. I’m so glad that they’ll be able to watch this replay, and the documents you put together too. There’s just a lot of really good stuff here. Even things that are just like, are you saying lagging and leading indicator when you’re talking to a client?

Like, are you using the sorts of jargon? And I know it’s not just jargon. There’s so much more to it than what that. Yeah.

But when a CEO or CMO or anybody hears you use the right words, Your invoice gets paid. Right? You’re the person that knows what they’re doing. So Yeah.

I just love this for, like, introducing people more and more or, like, expanding on, the way that they already talk in organizations.

Yeah. So lots of good stuff here. Thank you, Ali. Yes. Does anybody have any questions for Ali today on ICP research? Or I want you to anything in particular to what we just saw?

No? How are we gonna go forward and use this? What do you think your clients would want to know from Ali if they were here?

That’s a different story. Yeah.

No? Are we good?

Yeah. I think there’s a lot to think about. Oh, Jessica is here. Okay. Jessica has, a question.

Feel free to play. Oh, Clara already asked her. That’s right. So, Jessica, come off mute.

Let’s hear your question. Normally, I would like a win first, but I feel like, I think, honestly, everybody is kind of, like, a little bit scared right now. Yeah. A lot.

Yeah. In a good way, though. Right? Like, there’s a lot of information downloaded on a very specific thing, that is so high value, and now they can go out and talk about this, but it’s, like, processing time.

That’s what I’m thinking of at least. Okay. So, yeah, that’s, Jessica, please.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay. Sorry. I’m on the iPad again. Okay. So hi. Thank you so much. I I so I announced in our group last week that, I’ve shifted my business a lot.

So I’m moving away from freelance copywriting to building a book publishing agency. And so this has really shifted all the things because what normally I would go you know, all this focus on companies and, you know, teams and things like that, I’m starting to feel like it might focus a lot more on the thought leader themselves, and there may be a limited number of team involved if at all.

And so I guess I’m just kind of wondering what your thoughts are on how to really identify even the people I’m focused on even for step one. Because the one person that comes to mind for me is the person who wants to either write their book or get their book written and published and marketed and all that.

But I’m not sure, especially in the book writing stage, how much of their team will be involved. So I guess I’m again, all new. This is a very recent shift. So any insights you would have would just I’d really appreciate.

So you are you are starting a book publishing agency. Have you published any books yet, or you’re very, very early?

I’ve published books before, but since this shift in the agency in doing this, no. Not since then. K. We just closed the first.

You just closed your first Yes.

Project since shifting this bus to back to this. Yeah.

And if you had to describe the people who are the authors here, their thought leaders, and their team may or may not be involved in the authorship of the work that you publish?

Yes. I’m not I I haven’t encountered a situation where I would be working with the team, especially in the writing part of it.

Okay.

So your your an ICP can be an an individual.

Is there a reason why you’re feeling like you need to in include the your customer’s team or your client’s team?

No. I just in step one, when you had it broken down, I was like, okay. Well, obviously, the person we would be writing the book for, which is typically, like, the CEO, the founder, the person who wants to build up their authority, you know, that part.

But in terms of any other roles that might be involved, I’m not sure at this point, but if I were working on their marketing, then I could see team more involved. But I was just curious, you know, if yeah.

I was just trying to get any I know it’s a very niched, market I’m talking about.

But Okay.

Good. This is good good point of clarification.

So the people in that first section, like the CEO, your work desk, whoever it is, those are going to be people who are going to be part of the develop development of your ICP.

So when you are working, when you’re working on this agency, the people for you might be your editor in chief, whoever edits the books that come in, or maybe it’s the person who’s responsible for getting the manuscript from digital to paper form or working with the Amazon, some kind of coordination liaison. So you would be working internally with those folks. And then Yeah. If you need to be looking at your your client’s ICP, so the the ICP that they may have would more likely be for their readers if the product that they’re going to sell is a book.

So that would probably be how I would shift that. I it sounds like their team is probably not super significant here.

Yeah. That’s what I was thinking at first. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Sure.

Awesome. Yeah. It’s quite tricky when you’re figuring out something almost brand new. Like, in Jessica’s case, she has, of course, done lots of this work for other people before just over time, and now she’s, like, turning it into an agency.

But the people differ. You know? And it’s been years of doing this work, so, really tough to to figure out your I mean, this is a huge challenge. Right, Ally? Like, nobody easily lands on their ICP. Or do you know anybody who has?

No. No.

No. Just fully no. Yeah. Exactly.

I mean, maybe maybe maybe maybe people who had a very clear idea in mind before they started, like, the founder of American Girl Doll, I think, had the vision for that entire company, but those are so, so rare.

That’s true.

But I can tell you. Okay. So I’m actually doing jobs to be done research now on people who hire jobs to be done providers because I’m so curious about this. Yeah.

So, what I would say to you, Jessica, is I don’t I would go, like, do some interviews with people who’ve hired a publisher. Like, there’s the one that, what’s it called? I don’t know. Nine or two.

It’s I don’t know what it’s called. I think April Dunford used them.

Page two.

Page two. Okay. There’s a number. So I would go say, like, did you, you know, did you hire an publishing agency and do some interviews?

Find people who are making that switch to go from all just make an ebook or I’ll or, or, actually, I don’t even know what the switch they’re making it from. I shouldn’t make the assumption. I love this game. I’d love to guess what the research is gonna tell.

I am wrong. I’m right fifty percent of the time and way wrong fifty percent. So that that’s what I would probably do to to investigate that.

That’s so smart. I love it. Cool. Excellent. Ali, that was amazing. Thank you so much.

Where can people do you are you on Instagram people can, like, reach out if they have further questions or wanna learn more? Yeah.

Okay. So I’m on LinkedIn now. The other socials, not so much.

And I’m working now on getting a more detailed, like, building your coalition around buy in for jobs to be done, DOC, etcetera.

Yeah. Email, course and a more detailed workbook with a little bit more. So I don’t tell Joanna, but my email my business’s email is not really that great. So, so, anyway, I’m getting that all done. It’s alie blum dot com, and it should be done hopefully, hopefully, middle of August.

Okay. Alie bloom dot com. Well, pop that in there. Amazing. Cool. Thanks again so much.

Thank you.

Thanks from everybody, and we look for I look forward to seeing you again, hopefully, at some event we both planned at somehow. Yeah. Hopefully.

Me too. Yeah.

Cool. Alright. Thanks, everybody.

Have a good day.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye. Bye.