How do I define my ideal customer profile?
An ideal customer profile is the most useful page in a startup's marketing. Most are too broad to help anyone decide anything.
- How do we pick our ICP?
- Should our ICP include job titles?
- Can we have more than one ICP?
Define your ideal customer profile (ICP) from your best existing customers: the ones who bought fastest, use the product most, pay the most and churn least. Write down what they have in common, such as industry, size, team, trigger event and the problem they hired you for. Keep it narrow enough that sales could disqualify a lead with it. One clear ICP beats three vague ones.
A practical process
- List your 10 to 20 best customers by revenue, speed to close and retention.
- Note what they share: industry, size, team that buys, tools they used before, the trigger that made them look.
- Interview five of them about why they bought and what almost stopped them.
- Write a one-page ICP and test it against the last 20 deals: would it have picked the winners?
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Company | B2B software, 50 to 500 employees, North America |
| Team that buys | Finance operations, led by a controller |
| Trigger | Moving off spreadsheets after a failed audit or new funding |
| Problem in their words | Month-end close takes two weeks |
| Disqualifiers | No finance team, under 20 staff, on-premise only |
Buyers vs users
Write who buys, who uses and who approves. Gartner's 2025 research describes B2B buying groups of 5 to 16 people across up to four functions, so a single job title is rarely the whole picture.
- An ICP that fits every company in your market.
- Built from a whiteboard, not customer data.
- No disqualifiers.
- Different ICPs in sales and marketing.
- Never updated after the first draft.
- Built from your best customers.
- Includes a trigger event and the problem in their words.
- Clear disqualifiers sales can use.
- Tested against the last 20 deals.
- Reviewed every two quarters.
What founders and researchers say
We read the threads, surveys and reports so you don't have to. Each card is our summary, linked to the source.
Buying groups range from 5 to 16 people across up to four functions. An ICP needs to name the team and the approvers, not just one title.
Read the release →Founders who narrowed their ICP often describe it as the moment marketing started working. The common fear, losing other customers, rarely played out.
Browse the threads →Superhuman raised its product-market fit score by focusing on the users who would be very disappointed without it. The same logic picks your ICP.
Read the article →Community summaries describe recurring themes across many threads. They are not quotes from individual posts.
Read next
Go deeper in the ShoutEx guides, or check the original sources.
Bring your numbers. We'll tell you what we would do, even if it isn't us.
Book a call →Follow-up questions
Can we have more than one ICP?
Yes, once you have proven one. Early on, pick one and win it before adding the next.
Should the ICP include job titles?
Include the team and roles that buy and approve. Titles alone miss the buying group.
How is an ICP different from a persona?
An ICP describes the company that fits. A persona describes a person inside it.