Within this ICP Development Guide, you will find prompting questions, example answers, and why each scoring criteria matters for each of our Firmographic Fit, Technographic Fit, and Intent scoring criteria. 

This guide will conclude with an example step-by-step guide in translating your organization's answers of these prompts into an HG Insights Scoring Profile.

 

FIT

Prioritizing based on FIT leverages a combination of firmographic and technographic elements to ensure that your GTM teams are focused on accounts that not only fit your currently addressable segments but are also actively showing Technographic Need for your types of solutions and offerings.

Firmographic FIT

Use firmographic data to score and prioritize accounts that align with the market segments where your go-to-market strategies are most effective.

1. Geography

Questions:

• Are there specific regions or countries you prioritize for sales efforts?
• Are there emerging markets you're considering for expansion?
• Do regulatory environments in certain regions affect your prioritization?

Example: "We target organizations headquartered  in the USA and Canada but prioritize those in the USA due to shorter sales cycles."

Why It Matters: Focusing on certain geographies can improve sales efficiency by directing resources to regions with higher conversion rates.

2. Industry

Questions:

• Which industries yield the highest success rates for your sales efforts?
• Are there industries where your product is less effective?
• Do you have industry-specific case studies that can aid sales?

Example: "We serve all verticals but are most successful in Manufacturing and are expanding into Healthcare and Professional Services."

Why It Matters: Prioritizing industries with higher success rates allows for focused marketing and sales strategies, improving conversion likelihood.

3. Company Size

Questions:

• What company sizes align best with your product offerings (based on employee count or revenue)?
• Do you have different product tiers for different company sizes?
• Is there a minimum or maximum company size you typically avoid

Example: "We target companies with 200+ employees or $50M+ in revenue, with great success in enterprises with $500M+ in revenue."

Why It Matters: Prioritizing by company size helps tailor sales messaging and resources to match the needs of different segments.

4. IT Spend

Questions:

• What is the minimum IT budget a company should have to be a viable prospect for your offerings?
• Are there specific IT spending categories most relevant to your product?
• How does a company's IT investment strategy impact its fit?

Example: "Our ERP solution starts at a minimum of $100K."

Why It Matters: Prioritizing companies based on IT spend helps assess opportunity size and identify high-spending organizations that fit your sales model.

Technographic FIT

Scoring based on a company's technographic data to identify those with a discovered need for your type of solution. We recommend a selection of Competitors and Complementary solutions to ensure an emphasis on the selection of impactful products.

1. Product Presence

• Competitive Products

Questions:

• Who are your top competitors you aim to displace?
• Do you have higher win rates against specific competitors?
• Are there any legacy systems your product replaces?

Example: “Our key competitors for our ERP products are Microsoft Dynamics 365, Sage, Odoo, and SAP. We find the fast and most lucrative displacement with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and SAP, but have a slightly harder time targeting Sage and Odoo.”

• Complementary Solutions

Questions:

• What complementary solutions enhance your product?
• Are there integration partners that facilitate smoother sales and implementation?
• Do you co-sell with partners that can aid your sales process?
• Do customers using certain technologies have a higher adoption rate of your product?
• Are there products that give you insights into characteristics of interest? (ie managing petabytes of data, insights by proxy)

Example: “Our product integrates with Salesforce and HubSpot so we would want to target organizations using either of those products, we also have a Co-sell motion with Oracle for their suite of products under Oracle CX (Customer Experience) Cloud.”

Why It Matters: Prioritizing based on product presence helps identify accounts already using products that interact with or compete against your offerings, indicating the need for your type of solutions and offerings.

2. Vendor Penetration

Questions: 

• Which vendors' products are most commonly consolidated with your solution?
• Does a higher number of products from a vendor indicate greater readiness for change and need for your solution offering?

Example: “Our product particularly helps consolidate the usage of SAP SE products, so targeting companies with a large usage of Various SAP products would be ideal”

Why It Matters: Companies using numerous products from a particular vendor may be prime candidates for consolidation, presenting an opportunity for your solution.

3. Products in a Category

Questions:

• Are you aiming to consolidate multiple products within a specific category?
• Does a higher number of products in a category indicate a better fit for your offering?

Example: “Our product offering helps consolidate various ERP solutions, so targeting organizations with a complex and heavy ERP tech stack makes ideal targets for our sales team.”

Why It Matters: Companies with multiple products in a category may seek consolidation for efficiency and cost savings or may show a higher maturity level in your desired category, making them ideal targets.

4. Product Install Age

Questions:

• Is there an optimal product usage duration that indicates readiness for your solution?
• Do you deprioritize companies with recently installed competitor products?
• How does the typical lifecycle of competitor products affect your sales timing?
• Are there contractual timelines (e.g., license renewals) to consider?

Example: "We prioritize companies that have used our competitors' products for over 2 years and deprioritize those with installations less than 1 year old."

Why It Matters: The length of time a product has been in use can signal readiness for change or upgrade, helping prioritize outreach efforts.

5. Product Intensity

Questions: 

• Do you prioritize companies based on how extensively they use certain technologies?

Example: "We target companies with frequent detections of cloud services, indicating heavy reliance and potential for our optimization tools."

Why It Matters: Higher intensity indicates a strong need for specific technologies, making these companies more attractive prospects.

6. Cloud Maturity

Questions: 

• Do you prioritize companies with a more cloud-centric/progressive tech stack? Or do you prioritize “cloud laggard” organizations that run mostly on-prem solutions?

Example: "We specifically target organizations with a cloud-heavy tech stack where the vast majority of their solutions are cloud deployable "

Why It Matters: Targeting organizations off the proportion of cloud deployable products within their tech stack ensures your teams are targeting organizations with the maturity and need to Implement your solutions.

 

Intent

By using intent scores, sales and marketing teams can concentrate on the accounts currently seeking a solution to their challenges.This approach allows for precise company targeting, empowering sellers and marketers to identify the optimal moment to engage with tailored messaging that resonates effectively. These intent topics should directly relate to your sales plays, product offerings, competitors, business challenges, or related use cases your solution solves.

1. Signal Strength

When leveraging Intent it is key to utilize all of the topics available to you via your subscription, ensuring you capture the full breadth of the signals available to you, which helps in prioritizing the accounts actively researching Intent around your offerings.

Below In the Example Step-By-Step Guide, we will overview best practices in using our Intent Signal Strength to build your Intent Score.

 

Example Step-by-Step Guide

This next section will showcase an example series of answered questions from the prompts above and then showcase how to best step by step create a scoring model within the HG Insights Platform.

Example collection of answered prompts by Scoring Criteria:

1. Industry: "We serve all verticals but are most successful in all of Manufacturing and are expanding into Healthcare and Professional Services."

2. Company Size: “We can target organizations of all sizes but we have a well built Enterprise sales motions which yields our highest conversion rates, we define Enterprise as organizations with 1,000+ employees”

3. Competitive Product Presence: “Our key competitors for our ERP products are Microsoft Dynamics 365, Sage, Odoo, and SAP ERP. We find the fast and most lucrative displacement with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and SAP, but have a slightly harder time targeting Sage and Odoo.”

4. Complementary Product Presence: “Our product integrates with Salesforce CRM and HubSpot so we would want to target organizations using either of those products, we also have a Co-sell motion with Oracle for their suite of products under Oracle CX (Customer Experience) Cloud.”

5. Product Install Age: “ERP products generally have longer implementations and subscriptions than other products, our sellers find their sales motions have more traction with organizations leveraging our competitors for 4 or more years.”

The information below will guide you through how to translate these answers into their corresponding scoring criteria.

1. Select ADD+ next to your scoring profile selection and select Custom Account Scoring

2. NAME your scoring  profile and add your initial scoring criteria, in this case, we’ll be starting with Industry

Industry:

 "We serve all verticals but are most successful in all of Manufacturing and are expanding into Healthcare and Professional Technical Services."

1. Select the Industry scoring criteria and add the top-tier industries you target.
2. To now build in your next tier of vertices select the + ADD which will add another section to add the next tier of vertices.

3. Now that you have your additional window, select your second-tier Industries and ensure you enter a point that adequately tiers them below your top prioritized industries, in this case adding 50 points vs the 100 given to your top Industries:

4. Select SAVE and our first criteria will be created

Company Size:

 “We can target organizations of all sizes but we well built out Enterprise sales motions that yield our highest conversion rates, we define Enterprise as organizations with 1,000+ employees

1. Select + ADD A SCORE and let's select the Employees criteria to ensure we are prioritizing organization in our enterprise space of 1,000+ employees.
2. Enter 1,000 into the minimum employee range, give this score 100 points, and select SAVE.

Competitive Product Presence: 

“Our key competitors for our ERP products are Microsoft Dynamics 365, Sage, Odoo, and SAP ERP. We find the fast and most lucrative displacement with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and SAP, but have a slightly harder time targeting Sage and Odoo.”

1. Let's Select + ADD A SCORE once again and now add a PRODUCT PRESENCE scoring criteria
2. Let's name this “Competitive Product Presence”
3. Once again we are given 2 tiers of competitive products
   1. First Tier: Microsoft Dynamics 365 and SAP ERP
   2. Second Tier: Sage, Odoo

4. Build out two tiers just like we did with industries as seen above (as many tiers as you’d like can be created),  and select SAVE.

Complementary Product Presence:

“Our product integrates with Salesforce CRM and HubSpot so we would want to target organizations using either of those products, we also have a Co-sell motion with Oracle for their suite of products under Oracle CX (Customer Experience) Cloud Suite.” 

1. Let's Select + ADD A SCORE once again and now add a PRODUCT PRESENCE scoring criteria
2. Let’s name this “Complementary Product Presence”
3. Now let us add the complementary products that were uncovered by the answered prompt:

4. Select SAVE and let's move on to our last example of scoring criteria

 Product Install Age:

 “ERP products generally have longer implementations and subscriptions than other products, our sellers find their sales motions have more traction with organizations leveraging our competitors for 4 or more years.”

1. Let's Select + ADD A SCORE once again and now add a PRODUCT INSTALL AGE scoring criteria
2. Change Name to Competitive Product Install Age
3. Enter our competitive products that we would like to give additional points to when it is surfaced they have been leveraged at an account for an extended time
4. Enter time period desired, in this case adding 4 Years as the minimum year range
5. Enter 100 points within the points section

 

Weightings

Now that the profile has been completed all the weights will by default be set at the highest score we added within our criteria, which in this case would be 100. The best Practice is to adjust these so all weights applied sum up to 100. This puts the criteria in an easily translatable and adaptable form. Below are our weightings for this example scoring model, which can easily be updated with internal stakeholder feedback:

Once applied, your list of entities will now be stack ranked by their scores and if you click on the green circle next to an entity it will explain which Criteria of our scoring model surfaced within the account:

If you’d like a deeper dive into how scores and weights are calculated please reference (Insert Link to Scoring breakdown)

 

Intent Example:

As stated in the Intent section, it's key to utilize every topic available to you to get the most out of your intent scoring profile. For this example, we will be an organization that is looking to focus on their AI offering and have selected the below 10 AI-centric intent topics:

1. Deep Learning
2. Facebook ai similarity search (faiss)
3. Artificial intelligence
4. Chatgpt
5. Text Analytics
6. OpenAi
7. Generative Ai
8. Computer Vision
9. Recommender System
10. Chatbots

In order to add an Intent score we add a score identically to how we added our Fit score to our profile.

1. Select + ADD A SCORE and let's select the  scoring criteria

2. Here we will be prompted to add a name for our scoring criteria, our Topic of interest, MIN INTENSITY (Signal Strength), and how many points we’d like visualized.

3. Select Save 

4. Repeat this process separately for each of your intent topics

5. Once we’ve added all 10 Intent topics adjust your weights to SUM to 100. The end result should look like this:

6. Select APPLY

7. This will now generate a side-by-side Fit Score and Intent Score. You can review your Intent score just like the Fit score by selecting the green circle under “Intent” for each company within our platform UI as you see above.