The company you want — size, stack, trigger, and who you will not sell.
An ideal customer profile template describes the company, not the person. This ICP template / ideal customer profile worksheet is the firmographic and behavioral filter. Personas come after. If you skip ICP, every persona is a costume.
Who can buy (industry, size, stack, geo), who should buy now (trigger), and who you refuse (disqualifiers). A good ICP is a filter SDRs can apply in five minutes.
Industry, employee band, revenue, geo.
Must-have stack (CRM, billing, data warehouse).
Funding, new CRO, compliance deadline, failed tool.
ACV band you can serve without heroics.
The accounts that always churn or never close.
A security questionnaire automation product stopped chasing 10-person startups after three painful implementations. The ICP became “50–400 employees, SOC2 in progress, Salesforce already live.”
Questline (security questionnaire ops)
| Field | Filled |
|---|---|
| Industry | B2B SaaS selling to enterprise (not consumer apps) |
| Size | 50–400 employees |
| Stack | Salesforce + a security owner (CISO or Head of IT) |
| Trigger | First enterprise deal stalled on a 200-question SIG |
| Disqualify | No CRM, no security owner, ACV under $8K |
Size, industry, stack. The overlap is your first ICP draft.
Disqualifiers come from pain, not from a TAM report.
If SDRs cannot spot the trigger on LinkedIn or in the CRM, it is not operational.
Below it you cannot serve. Above it you cannot close yet.
A new vertical that closes is a candidate, not an automatic add.
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|---|
| Persona fields on the ICP sheet | Companies first. People second. |
| TAM as ICP | ICP is the filter, not the market size slide. |
| No disqualifiers | If everyone fits, no one does. |
ICP is the account. Persona is the role inside it. You need both. Do not merge the worksheets.
One primary. A second only if the motion, ACV, and proof are actually different.
Yes — from CRM and call notes. A human still has to sign the disqualifiers.