GTM ICP Definition

Run an ICP definition or refinement workshop. Use when a team needs to define who their best customers are, align sales and marketing on targeting, identify negative ICP criteria, or build a segment-and-persona framework from scratch. Triggers: "help me define our ICP," "who are our best customers," "refine our ICP," "sales and marketing disagree on who to target," "our pipeline quality is low."

Facilitate a structured ICP workshop. Output is a versioned ICP document teams can act on across sales, marketing, and growth.

Steps

1. Best customer analysis — ask for 3–5 best customers. Extract: what they share (industry, size, stack, GTM model), what made them buy (trigger, champion, pain), what outcome they got, why they stay.

2. Loss/churn analysis — ask about lost deals and churned accounts. Identify recurring patterns → defines Negative ICP.

3. Segment the market — group into 2–5 segments by: vertical, business model, size band, data/tech maturity, GTM motion fit (PLG vs sales-led).

4. Map the buying committee — per segment: Economic Buyer (approves budget), Technical Champion (evaluates), End User (daily use), Blocker (can kill deal).

5. Define FIRE criteria — translate each segment into measurable scoring signals. What firmographic attributes = high Fit? What behavioral signals = high Intent? Use the gtm-qualification-scoring skill for the full FIRE rubric.

6. Write the ICP document — use the template below.

Output (inline version)

text

ICP v[X] · [Company] · [Date]

Segment [#]: [Name]
Who: [1–2 sentences]
Firmographics: industry · size · geography · business model
Stack signals: [tools or tech patterns indicating fit]
Trigger events: [what makes them enter the market]
Buying committee: Economic Buyer / Champion / End User / Blocker
Why they buy: [pain + outcome]
ACV range / sales cycle: [estimate]

Negative ICP:
- [Characteristic] → [why it's a bad fit]

FIRE scoring criteria for this segment:
- Fit: [high-signal markers]
- Intent: [specific triggers]
- Recency: [timeframe threshold]
- Engagement: [interaction types that count]

Flag any segment not grounded in real customers as [Hypothesis — validate with first 10 customers]. Version the document and recommend revisiting every 6 months.