What an ICP is
An ICP, short for ideal customer profile, is the objective description of the type of company most likely to buy, succeed with your offer and remain a customer. It describes a company, not a person: size, segment, operating model, technology maturity, timing and complexity.
The ICP is different from the persona, which describes who you look for inside the company. Mix the two up and you find the job title that decides at a company with no profile to buy.
The ICP applied to the portfolio
Each company scored against the ICP your organization defines
An ICP example in B2B sales
Lumen Sistemas, a fictional company that sells production planning software, looked at the customers that stayed and grew with it. It found a pattern: manufacturers with more than one plant, a varied product line, a management system already in place and a planning team separate from production.
Its ICP became five criteria: manufacturing, two or more plants, revenue above a band set by the team, a management system in use, and job openings or roles tied to planning. Each criterion can be checked in public sources before the first contact.
How to build and use the ICP in sales
With a written ICP, the team narrows the company list, decides where to start and stops spending meetings on companies that will never buy. The same company can fit the ICP and still not be a priority right now: buying signals tell you when.
- Start with your best customers, not the whole market. Look at who bought, used and renewed.
- Write verifiable criteria. A criterion nobody can check from the outside is an opinion.
- Separate criteria that rule a company out from criteria that add weight. A segment outside your focus rules a company out; an expansion moment adds weight.
- Include how the company buys. When selling to large companies, a long cycle, a buying committee and a formal bid change the cost of each deal.
- Review the ICP every sales cycle, with what the team learned from losses and wins.
Related terms
The fit score measures how closely each company matches the ICP. Buying signals and the sales trigger tell you whether the timing is right. The champion is the person who moves the deal forward on the inside. The full list is in the glossary, and the difference between a lead and a prospect is on this page.
How the ICP shows up in GoSeek
In GoSeek, each organization defines its own ICP. Based on it, every company in the portfolio gets a fit score from 0 to 100, so the team knows where to start. The dossier shows the company from the angles that usually go into an ICP, in the Numbers, Segment, Complexity, Momentum and Stack sections.
What comes out about the company
The dossier shows the company through the ICP angles, with the score next to them
What people ask about ICP
What does ICP mean in sales?
ICP stands for ideal customer profile. It is the description of the type of company most likely to buy and remain a customer.
What is the difference between an ICP and a persona?
The ICP describes the company. The persona describes the person inside it, with a job title, a problem and a priority. B2B sales needs both.
How many criteria should an ICP have?
A few, and verifiable. Four to eight criteria are usually enough to narrow the market without making the profile impossible to apply.
How do you build a B2B ICP from scratch?
List the customers that bought, used and renewed, and look for what they have in common. Write that pattern down as criteria you can check in public sources.
Founder of GoSeek. Specialist in market intelligence and consultative B2B sales for the enterprise market.
Keep reading
Fit score
A fit score shows how closely a company matches your ICP. See an example, how to use it to prioritize your portfolio of companies and common mistakes.
Buying signals
Buying signals are public facts suggesting a company may be close to a decision. See examples, how to use them in your outreach and the mistakes to avoid.
AI lead generation
AI lead generation: where the data comes from, how to tell a good lead from a bad one, how to measure quality and use AI to generate leads in six steps.