How to Build a Real ICP (Not a Demographic Guess)
May 19, 2025
Sales is 🦆king hard. Let’s get good.
The Problem: You’re Wasting Time on Companies That Won’t Buy
Most reps treat their ICP like a LinkedIn search:
“SaaS companies, 50–200 employees”
“UK-based”
“Uses Salesforce”
That’s not targeting, that’s box-ticking.
And the result? You chase logos that look right but aren’t feeling the pain. You burn time on accounts that never respond, take ages to move, or disappear after a discovery call.
A real ICP helps you:
Prioritise the right prospects
Spot signals that show a buyer’s active
Avoid loading your pipeline with time-wasters
For Sales Reps: Build an ICP That Helps You Sell Smarter
Forget generic market segments. A real ICP is based on patterns from real deals that closed quickly and cleanly.
1. Review your fast-moving deals (not just the big ones):
Look at 3–5 recent wins. Ask:
Who did you speak to first?
What problem did they bring up?
What triggered the conversation?
What tools or processes were they changing?
2. Capture their language:
Dig into your notes. What exact phrases did they use?
Examples:
“We’re onboarding a bunch of new reps.”
“Our outbound just isn’t converting.”
“I’m firefighting, I can’t coach everyone.”
That’s messaging gold for your emails and cold calls.
3. Identify buying triggers:
What was happening inside the business?
New VP Sales hired?
SDR team expanding?
Pipeline issues flagged by RevOps?
CRM overhaul?
These are your signals to reach out.
4. Document what disqualifies accounts:
Think of companies that ticked all the boxes but still didn’t buy. Why not?
No decision-maker in place
Budget already spent elsewhere
Too early stage to act
Knowing who to ignore is just as important as who to chase.
5. Summarise your ICP in real terms:
This should be 3–4 lines, clear, specific, and actionable.
Example:
“Series A–C SaaS companies with 5–10 reps, a new VP Sales, and growing pains around pipeline consistency or rep ramp time. Often switching from spreadsheets or looking to formalise their process.”
Use it to guide who you prospect, not just how.
This week’s task:
Write up a personal ICP doc including:
3 common traits from fast wins
3 exact phrases buyers used
3 trigger events to watch for
3 disqualifiers you’ll skip going forward
Refer to it before every outbound block this week. You’ll waste less time and win more attention.
For Sales Leaders: Turn ICP Into a Skill, Not a Slide
Most sales teams are handed a generic ICP doc and left to it. But reps don’t learn good targeting from PDFs.
Great sales teams practise ICP like a discipline, updating it, debating it, and using it to make live decisions.
Here’s how to embed it:
1. Make ICP part of deal reviews:
Every new opp in pipeline should prompt two questions:
“Does this match our ICP?”
“What trigger made this worth pursuing?”
Make reps prove it. That discipline will sharpen their eye for future targeting.
2. Maintain a ‘reverse ICP’:
Create a shared list of accounts that regularly waste time. Include why. Update it monthly. Use it in onboarding.
Disqualifying quickly is a skill and a culture.
3. Watch for ICP drift:
If you’re losing deals that should be ICP-perfect, it’s a red flag. Either the ICP is outdated, or your value messaging isn’t landing. Review closed-lost data monthly to stay sharp.
This week’s task:
Ask each rep to prepare:
One closed-won deal that clearly matched the ICP
What signal told them it was in-market
One account they’ve since disqualified, and why
Use the results to refine your team-wide ICP and target smarter next quarter.
This Week’s Sponsor: Prospeo.io
You build out your ICP, you call and email them to get no conversations or responses. It’s the worst.