What is an ICP?
In short
An ICP, or ideal customer profile, is a written description of the type of company most likely to buy from you and stay.
On this page
The definition
An ICP describes a company, not a person. Size, sector, geography, structure and situation. A buyer persona describes the individual inside it, and the two get confused constantly.
The ICP decides who you contact. The persona decides what you say.
What belongs in one
Firmographics that you can actually filter a list by: employee count, revenue band, country, industry. Then the situational criteria that separate a good fit from a merely eligible one, such as whether they run their own fleet, hold a particular certification or have recently entered a new market.
If a criterion cannot be found in data or inferred from a public signal, it cannot be used to build a list and belongs in the persona instead.
The mistake that makes most ICPs useless
Writing it from ambition rather than evidence. Teams describe the customer they want rather than the one that has actually closed, renewed and referred.
The fix is unglamorous: list your best twenty customers, find what they share, and write that down. If your best customers have nothing in common, that is itself the finding.
How to test it cheaply
Build a list of two hundred companies that match, send to them, and read the replies. Uniform irrelevance means the profile is wrong. Polite brush-offs from the right kind of company mean the profile is right and the message is not.
That distinction is worth more than any amount of internal debate.
Frequently asked
What is an ICP?
What is the difference between an ICP and a buyer persona?
How do I know my ICP is right?
Want the accounts behind these numbers?
Book a short strategy call. We will show you which employers in your region and role family are hiring right now, and what we would write to them.
Book a strategy call