Definition
An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a description of the kind of company that gets the most value from what you sell, and that you can win and keep profitably. It covers firm facts like industry and size, and the situation the company is in. It describes companies, while a buyer persona describes people.
Why it matters when you sell B2B
The ICP decides who you never contact, which matters as much as who you do. A clear one stops a team spending months on companies that like the demo and never buy, or buy and leave.
A useful ICP is built from your best customers, not from the market you wish you had. Look at who bought fastest, paid the most, stayed longest and needed the least help. What do they have in common? An ideal customer profile template turns the answers into fields you can filter on.
It is the first filter for account based marketing, and it is usually written in firmographics plus one or two facts about the company's situation. The people inside those companies are your buyer persona.
A worked example
Say you sell scheduling software to dental groups. Here is a first ICP.
An ICP in five rowsExample
- 01Industry. Dental groups that run several practices.Fit
- 02Size. 5 to 50 practices.Fit
- 03Region. The UK and Ireland.Fit
- 04Situation. Growing by buying practices, so each new site joins on different software.The reason
- 05Not a fit. Single practices, and groups whose owner already mandates one system.Exclude
Row 4 does the real work. Plenty of dental groups fit on size and region. The ones buying practices have the problem again every few months. Row 5 saves just as much time.
Our approach to research starts from companies that actually bought, which is how rows like 4 and 5 are found.
Common mistakes
- 1Writing it from the market, not your customers. An ICP built from who you hope will buy is a wish list. Start from who did buy, and stayed.
- 2Making it too broad. "B2B companies with 10 to 5,000 staff" is not a profile. If almost everyone fits, nothing has been decided.
- 3Using firmographics only. Size and industry describe a company. The situation it is in is usually what makes it buy.
- 4Leaving out the exclusions. Write down who is not a fit, and why. It saves more time than the inclusions.
- 5Never revisiting it. Your best customers change as the product changes. Review the ICP after every batch of new wins.
Build a first ICP from your customer list
- List every customer you won in the last year.
- Mark the best ten by value, speed to close and how long they stayed.
- Write down what they share: firm facts and the situation they were in.
- Write down who to exclude, and why.
- Test it on 20 new companies. Would your team agree on which ones fit?