Identify the potential buyers who will use, succeed with , and pay for your solution.
In B2B sales, we call this your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
As you start targeting more potential customers — people and companies who will benefit from your solution and are willing to pay for it, you want to focus on those who are most likely to:
- Buy quickly
- Stick around and use it
- Grow their usage over time
When this happens consistently, it’s a strong sign that your solution fits the market you're targeting.
In the early days, it’s normal to sell to almost anyone who shows interest. That’s how you learn. You get feedback on what’s really a priority, what problems your solution solves best, and which use cases drive value.
But once you’ve got a few paying customers who stick, your next step is to go deeper, not wider. When you hire your first sales rep, or even if it’s still you selling, you’ll learn faster and close more deals by focusing your effort on customers who look like your best customers.
That’s what defining your ICP helps you do.
Your ICP Will Evolve
Your first ICP is not your final ICP. As you close more deals and get more usage data, you’ll start to see patterns: who churns, who upgrades, who’s easiest to onboard, who becomes a long-term customer. To keep improving, you need to:
- Clean your customer data
- Analyse who’s delivering the most value
- Make informed decisions about who to focus on or stop chasing
To do this efficiently, you need a Sales CRM and not a spreadsheet.
How to Define Your ICP
Start with the common traits your top 5 to 10 customers share, especially the ones that:
- Have paid you the longest
- Still actively use your product or service
- Keep coming back for more
Break these down into four categories:
Lead Qualification Criteria
These are the filters you can apply without speaking to the customer. You can usually find this data in your CRM or spreadsheet.
We call these Firmographic Criteria in B2B sales. You’ll use the same filters later to build lead lists or target accounts.
Here’s what to look for:
- Industry / Vertical: Pick 1–2 industries to focus on early. That’s enough to build expertise, learn use cases, and get consistent results. If you’re trying to sell to everyone, you’re learning nothing deeply.
- Company Size: Look at number of employees (especially in the department you serve — e.g. sales team size if you’re selling sales tools). Also consider annual revenue if it’s available.
- Location: Geography matters more than people think. Local companies may have fewer objections, faster cycles, or different buying processes. Understand your best customers’ locations and why it matters (e.g. regulation, currency, language, etc.).
- Business Model (B2B vs B2C):
Buyer & User Personas
Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn’t complete until you understand the people behind the company — the ones who use your solution and the ones who decide whether to pay for it.
In B2B sales, these are often two different people:
- The User Persona is the person who will use your product or service in their day-to-day work.
- The Buyer Persona is the person who decides to purchase — they hold the budget or have the final say.
For each persona, you want to be clear on:
- Job title / role: Helps you identify and target the right people in a company
- Are they a buyer, user, or both?: Clarifies how they relate to the sales process
- What are their responsibilities?: Tells you what they care about and what success means to them
- What pain are they feeling?: Anchors your outreach and discovery conversations
- What outcome do they want?: Helps you frame the value of your solution in their language
- What makes them take action now?: Reveals urgency and timelines (e.g. targets, reviews, deadlines)
- What’s their decision power?: Helps you map the deal and avoid wasting time with the wrong person
Sales Qualification Criteria
These are insights you gather during conversations. You likely discovered them when speaking to your best customers.
They help you answer the question:
“Should I spend more time trying to close this deal?”
Codify these into a Sales Qualification Framework — a structured set of questions you ask to decide whether a lead is truly worth pursuing.
There are many frameworks out there, like BANT, MEDDIC, and MEDDPIC.
We recommend SPICED because it covers qualification and discovery — it means:
- Situation: Facts, circumstances, and background details about your prospect
- Pain: The challenges that brought the prospect your way
- Impact: How your solution impacts your prospect’s business
- Critical Event: Deadline your prospect has to achieve that impact
- Decision Process: The process, people, and criteria involved in purchasing your solution
You’ll use this to qualify new leads who match your firmographic criteria and make sure you’re not wasting energy on dead ends.
Sales Opportunity Tiers
Not all opportunities are equal. You want a way to group them based on how closely they match your ICP.
Use Tiers to decide what to prioritise — and what to avoid.
- Tier 1 (High-fit): Matches ICP closely. These are your outbound targets. Spend time and resources here.
- Tier 2 (Mid-fit): Doesn't fully match your ICP but has potential to grow into it. Accept these as inbound-only leads. Don’t chase them, but don’t block them either.
- Tier 3 (Low-fit): Doesn’t match your ICP and likely never will. Disqualify these early so you don’t waste time.
Use Cases
Your top customers didn’t just buy — they had a problem, felt the pain, imagined a better future, and saw your solution as the bridge.
Document that journey:
- What situation were they in?
- What was the pain or problem?
- What were they trying to achieve?
- How did your solution help?
Build Use Case Stories from this — one per customer.
These use cases help you:
- Train new sales reps faster
- Craft better sales pitches and discovery questions
- Qualify new customers more effectively
This is the foundation of your sales playbook. Once your ICP is clearly defined, your sales team will know:
- Who to go after
- Who not to bother with
- What signs to look for
- How to prioritise and pitch