# An ideal customer profile from your best customers > Build an ICP from won and lost deals: industry, size, why they need the product, deal size, speed and cost to serve, plus the disqualifiers that save you time. - Course: [B2B Marketing and Sales: Win Your First Company Customers](https://productovi.com/courses/b2b-marketing-and-sales.md) - Module: Whom to sell to - Lesson 5/32, ~27 min - Source: https://productovi.com/courses/b2b-marketing-and-sales/ideal-customer-profile ## A list of everyone **Alex Tutor:** You're still Klasna for Teams' first marketing-and-sales hire, and the last module showed how a company buys through a committee. Now a question that comes before any meeting: which companies are worth your time? **Marta:** Leo wants a list of five hundred companies with over fifty staff. Any office could use English, right? **Sofia:** Sounds fair. More companies on the list, more deals at the end. **Alex Tutor:** A list of everyone is a list of no one. An **ideal customer profile (ICP)** describes the companies where you win, where they stay, and where the work pays. You build it from your best customers, not from market size. **Marta:** Since 2024 we've talked to forty companies and won twelve. Six are still with us. **Alex Tutor:** Start there. Which of the six would you clone? Not the biggest: the ones who bought fast, use their lessons, stayed, and cost little to serve. > **Exercise:** Where should Klasna for Teams start its ideal customer profile? ## Six criteria from won deals **Sofia:** So what goes into the profile? Industry and size? **Alex Tutor:** Those two, and four more. For Klasna for Teams: industry; size and how many people need English; why they need it; deal size; how fast they bought; and what it costs us to serve them. **Marta:** «Why» matters most to me. Our IT clients need English for calls with foreign customers: it's part of the job. The retail chains bought it as a perk. **Alex Tutor:** And a perk is the first thing cut when a budget tightens. A job need survives a bad quarter. All three retail clients bought a perk, and none of them is still with us. **Sofia:** Why cost to serve, though? A lesson costs us the same everywhere. **Marta:** Delivery does: tutor 430 UAH, video and AI 31. Serving doesn't. Some clients eat coordinator hours: rescheduling shift workers, reports per store, tutors paid for no-shows. > **Exercise:** Match each ICP criterion with the question it answers from Teams' deal history. **Alex Tutor:** Take Marta's favourite criterion first: the "why". Check this claim. > **Exercise:** **True or false:** for Klasna for Teams, a company buying English as a staff perk is as good a fit as one that needs it for the job, as long as the contract is big. **Alex Tutor:** And your question about cost to serve: what's the answer? > **Exercise:** A lesson costs Klasna the same 461 UAH (tutor 430, video and AI 31) for every client. Why does cost to serve still belong in the profile? ## Whom not to chase **Alex Tutor:** A profile also says whom you won't chase. **Disqualifiers** are conditions that make a deal a bad bet however big it looks. Each one has to come from lost or unprofitable deals, not from a guess. **Marta:** Our losses rhyme. English wanted only as a perk. Nobody owning the budget, so the deal faded. A big discount demanded before any scope. **Sofia:** We lost all four logistics deals too. So logistics goes on the list? But Veloria is logistics. **Alex Tutor:** Four losses say «we haven't cracked it yet», not «never». Look at why: shift schedules twice, no budget owner, and last spring procurement renewed the incumbent. Those reasons are the disqualifiers, not the industry. **Marta:** So Veloria is a bet, outside the profile. A paid pilot, a known approval path, a schedule built around shifts. > **Exercise:** Which of these are sound disqualifiers for Klasna for Teams, based on its lost and unprofitable deals? Select all that apply. ## Data, not opinion **Marta:** Leo is sure big retail is our future. Thousands of staff, one contract. **Alex Tutor:** Then check it like any claim, against the rows. Three retail clients, three perks, none still with us. A profile built on who sounds impressive repeats old mistakes. **Alex Tutor:** So how should the profile treat Leo's retail idea? > **Exercise:** Leo is sure big retail is Teams' future: thousands of staff, one contract. What is the right response for the profile? **Sofia:** And if the data is thin? Twelve wins isn't much. **Alex Tutor:** Then say so. Mark a line «confidence: low» when it rests on two or three deals, and review the profile every quarter. It's a hypothesis you keep testing, not a monument. > **Exercise:** Put the steps for building Teams' first ideal customer profile in order. ## A profile sales can use on Monday **Marta:** What do I get from this? I need something we can use on Monday, not a strategy deck. **Alex Tutor:** One page: the profile in five or six lines, the disqualifiers, the bets outside the profile, and a confidence mark on each line. **Sofia:** A first line, then: «IT services firms, 60 to 300 people, where 15 to 60 of them talk to foreign clients in English.» **Alex Tutor:** Good: specific, and checkable before the first call. Avoid lines like «innovative companies that value learning». Every company says that about itself. > **Exercise:** Which line is the most useful in an ideal customer profile? **Marta:** And when a big chain calls us anyway, outside the profile? Do we say no? **Alex Tutor:** Check it against the disqualifiers first. A real work need and a budget owner: worth a careful look. A perk and a discount request: say no politely. **Sofia:** Saying no to a big name feels wrong. **Alex Tutor:** A month spent on a client who won't stay is a month not spent on one who will. The profile protects that time. **Alex Tutor:** Let's make that a rule for the next big name that calls. > **Exercise:** A large retail chain, outside the profile, calls Teams asking for English lessons. What do you do first? > **Exercise:** Teams' deal history: IT services clients, whose staff use English in calls with foreign customers, stayed; design studios of 15–60 people stayed too (only 3 wins); all three retail chains bought English as a staff perk and left; lost deals included no budget owner and a deep discount demanded before any scope. Draft the start of Teams' ideal customer profile: two profile lines and one disqualifier. Make each line specific enough to check before a first call. > **Key ideas** > > - An ideal customer profile (ICP) describes where you win, where clients stay and where the work pays. Build it from your own deals, not from the size of the market. > - Use criteria you can check: industry, size and English staff, why they need it, deal size, speed of buying, cost to serve. > - «Why they need it» separates a job need from a perk; a perk is cut first. > - Disqualifiers come from the reasons behind lost or unprofitable deals, not from an industry label. > - Put opinions next to the data; mark lines resting on a few deals as low confidence and review the profile every quarter. > - Bets outside the profile are fine when they are named as bets, with what would move them in. **Alex Tutor:** Next lesson we turn these criteria into a score, and you'll see why the biggest client isn't always the best one. - Previous lesson: [Case: map Veloria's buying committee](https://productovi.com/courses/b2b-marketing-and-sales/map-the-committee-case.md) - Next lesson: [Scoring segments and accounts: profit, not revenue](https://productovi.com/courses/b2b-marketing-and-sales/scoring-segments-and-accounts.md) --- Productovi Learning. 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