Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a fictional profile containing a hypothetical description of the type of company that would realize the most value from your product or solution. When you are targeting highly personalized accounts and limiting your sales to those particular sales accounts, it’s important to be highly selective with those accounts. A well-defined ICP allows you to identify key accounts and develop messaging to attract them and convert them into buyers. Creating an Ideal Customer Profile is a huge component of the Account-Based Selling model. The ICP defines your most valuable customers and prospects who are also most likely to buy.

In order to create your ICP, you must look at a combination of factors surrounding your best customers. First, make a list of your most successful customers. Then, find out characteristics and firmographic data (like number of employees, revenue, market share, historic growth, etc.) they have in common. Analyze all the factors to make a common profile. Do they come from companies of a certain size? Are they all within the same industry? Do they use other key technologies that integrate with your product or service?

Some firmographic factors which define an ICP are:

• Average size of the company.
• Average company revenue.
• Demographics and the geographical location of the company.