Stop Chasing Customers And Find the Ones Who Actually Buy

The Founder’s Guide to Finding Your Ideal Customer

You’re not losing customers because your product sucks.

You’re losing them because you’re fishing in the wrong pond.

When I started Joyful, identifying our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) wasn’t guesswork. It was built on first‑hand experience.

I had founder‑market fit: I was an early‑stage founder, was a buyer in SMB and mid‑market contexts, and I knew the problems people were desperate to solve.

But even with that advantage, finding your ICP is still a process. It doesn’t happen by accident; it happens by design.

It starts with asking the right questions:

• What problems do we actually solve?
• Which market segments feel these problems most acutely?
• Which buyer personas are most impacted?
• What is the current impact of these problems?
• What’s the cost of inaction for a customer?

Once you can answer those with clarity, you can start grouping prospects into meaningful ICP buckets instead of vague demographics or surface-level traits.

How We Segment at Joyful

For us, as a CRM + SEP platform, we organize our ICP at the account level by market segment. We’re industry agnostic for now, but we naturally lean into SaaS and creative services because the pain points there align tightly with what we solve.

Our primary segments:

1. Freelancers & Creative Solo Pros
   Solopreneurs running projects, juggling clients, and desperate for organization without complexity.
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2. SMBs — Early Stage Startups & Small/Mid‑Size Services Firms
   Teams looking to scale repeatable sales and client operations without enterprise overhead.
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3. Lower Mid‑Market Companies
   Organizations with process discipline but still stuck in tools that don’t scale, data hygiene issues, and running into pricing that scales against them.

Then You Look Inside Each Segment

A true ICP isn’t just a bucket — it’s a decision map.

Within each segment, we identify:

• Buying groups — which roles influence vs. decide?
• Buyer personas — what motivates them? What keeps them up at night?
• Buying process triggers — how do they discover, evaluate, and choose solutions?

This isn’t just theory. This is how you go from broad audiences to targeted outreach, higher conversion, and shorter sales cycles.

Your ICP Isn’t Static — It’s Strategic

Here’s the hard truth most founders miss:

Your ideal customer isn’t the biggest market — it’s the most winnable one.

Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Invest your energy where:

• buyers recognize the problem instantly
• your solution resonates without explanation
• the cost of inaction is real and urgent

That’s where you win.

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