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In today’s email:
The 5-Step ICP System That Doubled Our Contract Value
Quick Win:
Growth Partner Insight:
The 5-Step ICP System That Doubled Our Contract Value
When I joined the UK’s fastest-growing waste collection business, we had no ICPs.
I spent 8 months building pipeline the hard way. Cold calling in many sectors. Competing on price because we hadn’t positioned our value.
Why? Marketing to everyone means you’re relevant to no one.
Then I ran a 20-minute exercise: export client revenue, sort by highest, pull the Top 20.
What I found:
80% of revenue came from 5 client types
Construction, FM, Waste Brokers, Property Services and PBSA
Annual Revenue fell into three buckets <£3m, £3-£30m and £30m+
The bigger the client, the more they valued compliance and ESG reporting over price
What I’d been doing:
Chasing volume. Burning hours on low-value prospects. Competing on price.
We stopped. Built 5 ICPs. Average client size went from £3- £10m to £25m+ in 6 months.
The insight: You can’t build an ICP on assumptions. You build it from your best clients.
Most people build ICPs backwards.
They start with assumptions: “We should target construction firms with £10m+ revenue.” Then chase those firms and wonder why no one converts.
The right way is more straightforward. Look at who’s already paying you. Then find more of them.
Here’s the 5-step system I built after analysing 140+ clients at LITTA. No one else uses this sequence.
The 5-Step ICP System
Step 1: Client Research (Top 20 Analysis)
Start with your client portfolio.
Use the 80/20 principle: your Top 20 clients generate 80% of your revenue. Pull them.
Track these characteristics:
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) — total contract value per year
Average Order Value (AOV) — typical transaction size
Average Monthly Bookings — order frequency
Gross Profit Margin — what you keep after costs
Lifetime Value (LTV) — what a client is worth over the whole relationship
Pick 2-3 most relevant to your model.
I used: ARR, AOV, and Average Monthly Bookings.
You can’t build an ICP on assumptions. Real client data reveals patterns that guessing never will.
Step 2: Category Analysis
Dig deeper into your Top 20.
Review common characteristics:
Headcount — How many employees?
Market Sectors — Construction? Housing associations? Property services?
Annual Revenue — What’s their turnover?
Location — Geographic clustering?
Key Decision-Makers — Who signs the contract?
Order Frequency & Volume — How often do they buy? What’s typical spend?
Patterns emerge here.
I noticed our best clients were:
Fit-out contractors with multiple £3m+ projects annually,
Waste brokers specialising in construction; and
FM companies managing sites nationwide.
That insight shaped every sales conversation after.
These commonalities are your ICP. Every pattern becomes a targeting filter.
Step 3: Client Feedback (14-Question Survey)
Your clients know why they chose you. Ask them.
I ran a feedback survey with 14 questions covering:
Company details (headcount, industry, location)
Annual spend on cleaning/waste/FM services
Key decision-makers in the buying process
Onboarding requirements
Why do they work with us vs. competitors
What we do differently
Delivery: 4-email campaign over 15 days. Personalised. Direct ask.
Response rate: 22% (high for B2B when you show you care about the answer).
Our best clients valued reliability, service speed, and data transparency over price. We stopped competing on cost and started competing on data and compliance.
Step 4: Market Research
Validate externally.
I used these sources to learn about our ICP’s world:
Industry reports — Trade bodies (British Cleaning Council, APSE, IWFM)
Customer discussions — LinkedIn groups, forums, Q&A sites
LinkedIn & job sites — Review job descriptions for your ICP personas. What are their responsibilities? Pain points? KPIs?
Competitor research — Who are the incumbents? What do they offer? Where are the gaps?
Your competitors aren’t just other vendors. They’re the status quo — the messy processes your prospects already use.
For waste collections, our competitors were:
Incumbent contractors with legacy contracts
Internal estate teams are doing ad-hoc collections
Property managers using multiple suppliers (zero consolidation)
Understanding this helped us position our value: consolidation + data + compliance.
Step 5: Information Audit
Synthesise everything.
Compile your research into an actionable ICP document:
ICP Characteristics:
Market/Industry/Sector
Annual revenue range
Employee count
Location (geography, multi-site vs. single-site)
Decision-maker roles (buyer, influencer, blocker)
Budget range (annual spend on cleaning/FM/waste)
Contract value expectations
Sales cycle length
Challenges you solve
Strategic goals you support
Example Construction ICP:
Sector: Fit-Out and Refurbishment (Nationwide, city-centre based projects with limited space)
Annual waste spend: £150k–£1m
Decision-makers: Head of Procurement, Pre-Construction Director, Project Director
Pain points: Duty of Care compliance, recycling % KPIs, ESG reporting, and Tight project timelines
Sales cycle: 1–3 months
Contract value: £100k–£300k annually
This becomes your targeting filter, your messaging guide, and your qualification criteria.
How This Doubles Your Contract Value
Before ICP precision:
Chasing every lead. Winning £10-25k opportunities. 30% margin. 6-12 week sales cycle. Competing on price.
After ICP precision:
Targeting fit-out and refurbishment companies with nationwide projects valued at £3m+. Becoming the exclusive supplier for £200K annual waste spend. 42% margin. 2-4 month sales cycle. Competing on value (compliance, data, ESG).
The math:
10 x £20k deals = £200k revenue
3 x £200k deals = £600k revenue
Same effort. 200% more revenue. Better margins.
Why it works:
You stop being a commodity supplier. Become a specialist solving high-value problems for a specific client type.
Your messaging sharpens. Your pipeline cleans up. You close bigger deals.
What to Do Next
If you’re sub-£1m AR:
Start with Step 1 and Step 2. You may not have 20 clients yet. Use your Top 5-10. Identify patterns.
If you’re between £1-10m AR:
Run the whole 5-step process. Deploy the client feedback survey. Build 2-3 ICPs for different verticals (construction, housing associations, property services).
If you’re £10m+ AR:
Audit your existing ICPs. Are they driving bigger deals? Or are you still winning commodity contracts? Refine based on Steps 4-5.
Here’s the test:
Pull up your client list right now. Sort by revenue. Look at your Top 5.
Can you describe their common characteristics in 30 seconds?
If not, you don’t have an ICP. You have a wish list.
Your ICP isn’t a filter to exclude clients. It’s a targeting system for bigger deals.
If your average contract value hasn’t increased in 90 days, your ICP isn’t specific enough.
This is a Free/Core Issue. Download the 1-page summary here (5-step framework reference guide) → [INSERT]
The Growth Lab Pro subscribers can download the ICP Toolkit - Top 20 template, client survey, and fit-out/refurbishment ICP example. You also get bonus issues, monthly deep dives, and phase recap vaults with templates and scripts you won’t find anywhere else.*
Quick Win: The 20-Minute Top 20 Analysis
You don’t need a perfect ICP to land bigger deals. You need 20 minutes and a spreadsheet.
Here’s how to identify your best clients
Open your accounting system. Export your client list with revenue data for the last 12 months.
Sort by revenue (highest to lowest).
Pull your Top 20 — the 20% generating 80% of revenue.
Now answer these for each:
Client Profile Checklist
☐ What sector? (Construction / Housing / Property Services / FM)
☐ Annual contract/client value?
☐ How many sites/locations?
☐ Who’s the decision-maker (or makers)? (title + name)
☐ Order frequency? (weekly/monthly / quarterly)
☐ Payment terms? (7 / 30 / 60 days)
☐ Gross profit margin?
What you’re looking for
Patterns.
If 12 of your Top 20 are housing associations with 2,000+ homes and Heads of Estates as champions — that’s your ICP.
If 8 of your Top 20 pay within 14 days and have multi-site requirements — that’s your operational sweet spot.
If your highest-margin clients are construction fit-out referrals — that’s your acquisition channel.
You’ll know:
Which client types generate the most revenue
Which are easiest to serve operationally
Where to focus your next 10 sales conversations
20 minutes. One spreadsheet.
If you’re spending 5 hours a week on low-value prospects, that’s £75k in lost opportunity cost annually (at £300/hour). This analysis fixes that.
Next step
Take your Top 5 from this list. Email them this week:
“Hi [Name] — you’ve been with us for [X months/years] and we’re learning a lot from accounts like yours. I’d value 10 minutes to hear what’s working (and what isn’t) from your side. Thursday 2pm or Friday 10am?”
That’s your ICP research starting today.
Growth Partner Insight: The £60K Revenue Leakage
Your biggest revenue leak isn’t lost tenders.
It’s the £60k sitting in your existing contracts that you’re not billing.
A UK FM company went from £19k profit to £1.1M in 4 years. Revenue grew 30% in year one. Profit went 10x.
The unlock: They audited every contract to identify what was in scope (fixed fee) vs. out of scope (chargeable).
What they found:
Cleaning consumables. PPE restocks. Quarterly deep cleans. Waste disposal. Ad-hoc call-outs. Equipment hire.
All chargeable. None being billed.
Different clients had different commercial terms. Some included consumables in the fixed price. Others didn’t. The operators weren’t tracking it.
Result: £60k in monthly revenue they were entitled to but weren’t capturing.
The insight:
Your biggest revenue opportunity isn’t winning new contracts. It’s billing what you’re contractually entitled to.
Before you chase new tenders, audit the contracts you already have.
Action:
Pull your top 10 contracts. Build a three-column table:
Chargeable Item — consumables, PPE, deep cleans, call-outs, equipment
Contract Terms — what does the SLA say is chargeable?
Last 3 Months Billing — what did you actually bill?
Find the gaps. Bill them this month.
That’s all for this week. Don’t forget to download this week’s 1 page summary here.
~ Matt
PS. Three ways to take the next step:
#1: Grab a Free Starter Kit 📥
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#2: Access the Resource Hub 📚
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#3: Ready to win bigger contracts? 📅
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