Ideal customer profile (ICP)

An ICP describes companies, not people. It says which kinds of organisations get the most value from what you sell, so that sales and marketing spend their time on accounts that can actually become customers. A useful ICP is built from evidence: the customers you won and kept, the deals you lost and why, and what those companies have in common that others do not.

A good ICP is specific enough to exclude. "mid-sized B2B companies" includes almost everyone; "logistics software vendors selling to mid-market carriers, with a new head of sales" tells a researcher what to look for and what to skip. It is also a hypothesis: you test it by contacting a sample of matching accounts and watching who replies and who buys, then you narrow or widen it. The people inside those companies are described separately, as buyer personas.