After years of clarifying their ICPs to grow faster, SaaS CEOs are discovering that the accelerating AI shift this year is causing a shift in their ICPs. Surprise!
If you added AI-powered features to your app, launched AI agents to do work, or changed your GTM tactics with AI tooling, then your ICP is very likely to be moving around right now.
Remember, your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a prospect/customer who is efficient to acquire and onboard — and gets great value from your product and solution.
They stay a long time, buy more from you, and tell their friends about you.
If your product has changed because of AI this year, then your “-market fit” needs to adapt too.
If your go-to-market GTM changes this year with AI help, then your product probably needs to adjust to the new audience.
Here are some examples I have heard in the last week:
1) Software businesses between $2M and $10M ARR that have been around for a while launch a new and important AI feature in their SaaS app or a new AI add-on to their platform.
They soon realize that only a subset of their existing customers are early adopters of AI, and most of their prospects are not adventurous either.
Welcome back to the product adoption curve, where your ICP for newfangled AI features is for a SMALL MINORITY of adventurous types and not the skeptical and slow “late majority” you are probably selling to now.
2) AI is new, powerful, and scary–just like cloud and SaaS were at first.
Many new perceptions, beliefs, and myths exist in the minds of your customers, prospects, and users. The FUD fog is real.
Your ICP definition needs to take into account their current view of AI features.
Don’t sell to skeptics who don’t believe what you say about security or won’t change their workflow to reap the significant benefits.
You can work on changing their perceptions and understanding of new AI technology, but your ICP already gets it.
3) Your AI features often can do the tricky and time-consuming work that only ICPs did manually before.
So you stopped selling to those who couldn’t use your powerful but complicated software, or who wouldn’t put in the work to reap the benefits.
AI is making things easier and doing more work. Your new AI-magical product may be a great fit for those who want the software to do everything for them.
4) You gave up on a big slice of your market you couldn’t reach efficiently years ago.
Can you reach them now with your new message and AI-powered tactics?
5) Has your pricing changed, too? This will change who you are trying to reach and their definition of success.
These all require shifts in your ICP that you need to try, test, prove, and communicate to your teams.
It’s an exciting time in the software industry. Again.
We’re back to building on the frontiers of category creation, changing markets, and amazing new products
