Ideal Customer Profile Template for B2B

Mason / Guides

An ideal customer profile, or ICP, describes the kind of company that gets the most value from what you sell and is most likely to buy. It is the brief behind every list you build. This guide gives you a template you can copy, shows a filled-in example, and explains how to build one from your best customers and test it before you rely on it.

What an ICP is, and what it is not

An ICP describes companies. It says which kind of company buys, keeps buying and is worth your time. For a short definition, see ideal customer profile in our glossary.

This guide

Ideal customer profile

The kind of company that buys and stays. Written once, tested, and updated a few times a year.

People

Buyer persona

The people inside those companies: what they own, what they care about, how they buy.

A list

Target account list

The named companies that match the ICP right now. It changes every month; the ICP should not.

You need both an ICP and personas. The ICP tells you which companies to look at; a buyer persona tells you who to talk to once you are there.

The ICP template, field by field

Firmographics. Industry, size, region and stage: the basic facts that put a company in or out. Keep each one a range you can filter on.
Situation. What is going on in their business that makes your offer matter, such as selling through more channels than their systems can handle.
Technology. The tools they run that make you a fit, and the tools that rule you out.
The trigger. The dated events that make a company ready now, and where you can see each one.
Who buys. The person who approves the money, the person who pushes for it inside, and the people who use it.
Disqualifiers. The reasons to leave a company off the list, however well it fits on paper.

Most templates stop at firmographics. The trigger and the disqualifiers are the two fields that save the most time, because they tell you when to reach out and when not to bother.

Copy the template

Copy it into a document and fill it in for your own business.

ICP template

IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE
Based on: [the 5 to 10 best customers this is drawn from]

1. Firmographics
   Industry:
   Size (staff or revenue):
   Region:
   Stage or ownership:

2. Situation
   What is going on in their business that makes our offer matter:

3. Technology
   Tools they run that make us a fit:
   Tools that rule us out:

4. The trigger
   Dated events that make them ready now:
   Where each event can be seen:

5. Who buys
   Economic buyer (approves the money):
   Champion (pushes for it inside):
   Users (live with it every day):

6. Disqualifiers
   Reasons to leave a company off the list, however well it fits:

Last checked against won and lost deals on: [date]

An example, filled in

An invented example, for a company that sells inventory software to wholesale distributors. For more filled-in profiles by company type, see these ideal customer profile examples.

Field	What they wrote
Firmographics	Wholesale distributors of food or building supplies, 50 to 500 staff, US and UK, owner-run or private equity backed
Situation	Stock held in more than one warehouse, and orders coming in from both reps and an online portal
Technology	Fit: an accounting system with no real stock module. Out: already on a full warehouse management system
The trigger	A second warehouse opening, a new online ordering portal, or a new head of operations, each seen in job posts or local news
Who buys	The finance director approves; the head of operations champions; warehouse leads use it
Disqualifiers	Part of a group that runs one system for every site; sells only by phone; fewer than 2 warehouse staff

Fill it in from your best customers

These are the short steps for this template. For the full method, see how to create an ideal customer profile. To fill it from interviews rather than guesses, use these customer research questions.

Pick your best customers. Not the biggest logos: the 5 to 10 who bought quickly, stayed, and were good to work with.
Pull the facts on each. Size, industry, region, the tools they ran, and who signed.
Find what they share. Write each field as the range that covers most of them, not all of them.
Ask what was happening before they bought. Look at the year before each purchase: a new site, a new system, a new leader, a deadline. That is where the trigger comes from.
Write the disqualifiers. Look at deals you lost or customers who left, and write down what they had in common. A competitor analysis shows who you lose to and why.
Write it on one page. If it does not fit on one page, it is a strategy document, not an ICP.

How to test it

An ICP is a claim, so check it before you build lists on it, ideally with a win loss analysis. Take your last 20 won deals and your last 20 lost ones, and see how many of each the ICP would have picked. A good ICP picks most of the wins and few of the losses.

Then test the trigger, using the year-before test for buying signals. An event that happened just as often in a normal year as in the year a customer bought describes the kind of company that buys, not when. Keep it in the firmographics or situation, and look for a sharper trigger.

Review it every quarter, and whenever your product or pricing changes. Your ICP is also the first test when you qualify leads.

Common ICP mistakes

Describing everyone. "B2B companies with 10 to 10,000 staff" rules nobody out.

Copying your biggest logos. The best customer is the one that bought easily and stayed, not the one on your homepage.

Mixing companies and people. Job titles belong in personas; the ICP describes the company.

No disqualifiers. Without them, every list includes companies that could never buy.

Never testing it. An ICP nobody checked against won and lost deals is a guess with a template around it.

The ICP checklist

Before you build a list on it

It is drawn from your 5 to 10 best customers, named in the "Based on" line.
Every firmographic field is a range you can filter on.
It names at least one dated trigger and where to see it.
It names who approves, who champions and who uses.
It has disqualifiers, taken from lost deals.
It picks most of your recent wins and few of your losses.
It has a "last checked" date from this quarter.

What we have seenIn one market we mapped, 18 of the 179 companies we found made the product in house, so they could never buy it, however well they fit on paper. That is what the disqualifiers field is for.

Where to go next

Once the ICP is written, it becomes a list. See how to work a short list in account based marketing examples, and how the whole outbound system fits together in outbound lead generation, explained.

New to the research side? Start with what sales prospecting is.

Ideal customer profile template, with a filled-in example