TWOGHOSTS

Companies obsess over crafting the “perfect” Ideal Customer Profile like it’s a sacred text handed down on stone tablets.

It isn’t.

Most ICPs are glorified guesses built on vanity, internal bias, and a few LinkedIn screenshots someone called “research.” And then leadership wonders why campaigns stall, sales cycles stretch into geological timescales, and revenue pipelines look like a drought.

ICPs Fail for Three Predictable Reasons

**1. You Describe the Buyer You Want, Not the Buyer Who Exists**

Everyone loves the fantasy buyer: Big budget, low resistance, high urgency, endless gratitude.

In reality, your buyer is stressed, skeptical, overloaded, and fighting for a budget that finance already cut three times.

If your ICP doesn’t reflect the real world, your campaigns will never land.

2. Your ICP Isn’t Specific Enough to Be Useful

“Mid-market companies looking to grow” is not an ICP. It’s a horoscope.

If your ICP can apply to 500,000 companies, it applies to no one.

3. You Refuse to Update It

Markets shift constantly. If your ICP hasn’t evolved in 18 months, that thing is compost.

Your ICP Should Be a Mirror, Not a Monument

The point of an ICP isn’t to look impressive in a deck. It’s to tell the truth about who buys from you, why, when, and what convinces them.

A great ICP isn’t pretty. It’s accurate. It’s grounded in customer interviews, loss analysis, sales call transcripts, and the messy, unglamorous reality of how deals actually close.

If that makes your leadership team uncomfortable, good. It means you’re finally getting somewhere.