The Role ICP Should Play in Prospecting Consistency

Most companies say they have an Ideal Customer Profile.

What they usually have is a description of companies they’d like to sell to.

That distinction matters.

Because when targeting isn’t clearly defined, or enforced, reps fill in the gaps themselves. They go after accounts that look interesting, familiar, or convenient. Prospecting becomes inconsistent by default.

A real ICP isn’t aspirational.

It’s operational.

It exists to guide behavior: who gets prioritized, who gets deprioritized, and where time actually goes.

Here are pitfalls and tips on scrubbing your Ideal Customer Profile:

Avoid Averages (Median > Mean)

Many teams build ICPs using averages:
average deal size, average employee count, average customer profile.

That hides the truth.

Look at the middle of your customer base. That’s why medians are safer.
Using medians surfaces patterns that actually repeat.

If one unusually large customer distorts your definition of “ideal,” your ICP drifts towards a wish list instead of a guide.

Put Outliers in Their Place

This is the other side of the “averages” coin.

Every company has customers they talk about too much:

• the biggest logo
• the loudest advocate
• the one-off success

Outliers are memorable, but they’re rarely repeatable.

Designing targeting around exceptions forces the rest of the organization to accommodate edge cases—custom demos, pricing exceptions, unusual workflows.

Watch out for this or you’ll have huge resource drains and unrepeatable prospecting methods.

Vertical ≠ ICP

Industry labels are convenient, not predictive.

Two companies in the same vertical can buy for completely different reasons, or not buy at all.

Fit usually comes from internal dynamics:

• how teams are structured
• how decisions are made
• what breaks as they scale

I used to love vertical targeting but this one bit me in the ass a few times. And my friend Peter Cleary showed dope slapped me on this many years ago.

Be sure to look hard at the attributes of a vertical before using it. The attributes matter far more.

The “Hell No” List

If your ICP doesn’t include exclusions, it’s incomplete. Marcus calls this the anti-ICP list, I believe.

A clear list of bad-fit attributes:

• protects rep time
• improves morale
• reduces downstream friction

Saying no early is one of the fastest ways to improve prospecting efficiency.

Scoring Beats Guessing

An ICP that isn’t scored leaves prioritization to judgment.

Scoring turns fit into something visible and coachable:

• which accounts come first
• which get deprioritized
• which get ignored

This is hard. It requires study and data. RevOps would be the team to study this but with AI it’s gotten easier for any department to do this.

BUT if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it can still be risky.

To sum it all up:

If prospecting is inconsistent, don’t ask reps to “target better.” This really is something only leadership can and should define.

Ask yourself whether you’ve given your team an ICP that’s clear enough to use and strict enough to matter.