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Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Guide and Worksheet

HubSpot Free Beginner

A fill-in worksheet that pushes you past anyone who could pay into specific, written traits: company size, budget, urgency of problem, and buying process. Useful as a working document to bring to your next team meeting when you need to force a decision on who you are actually building for.

  • Write down your ideal customer's specific traits, do not leave it as a mental impression only you carry
  • Revisit and tighten your ICP as your product and market understanding evolves
  • A written ICP becomes the filter you use to say no to customers who are the wrong fit
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It answers 5 questions

  1. Should I focus on one customer segment or serve everyone who'll pay?
  2. Should my ideal customer be the person who pays or the person who uses the product?
  3. Is it a red flag if my ideal customer is someone exactly like me?
  4. How do I use the customers I already have to sharpen my ideal customer profile instead of guessing?
  5. How do I keep my whole team aligned on who our ideal customer is once we start hiring?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra
  3. The best book on positioning against competitors by understanding the alternatives customers actually consider. Directly turns... aprildunford.com Book · ~200 pages Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It April Dunford
  4. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  5. Market size is meaningless until you know exactly who you're for, and Lenny turns that into a concrete, repeatable ICP exercise... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP) Lenny Rachitsky
  6. The author of Crossing the Chasm explaining beachhead selection in plain, modern language, the fastest way to absorb the... Lenny's Podcast / Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market Lenny Rachitsky & Geoffrey Moore
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