A real ICP is not a headcount band and an industry. It is a person, their day, and the problem in their life.
Most teams call a firmographic filter an ICP: company size, a vertical, a tech tag. That is a list, not an ICP. The real one is who the buyer is, how their day works, the environment they operate in, and the problem you actually remove, and you derive it from evidence, not a workshop guess.
The picture, before the words.
THE MOVE Sell now. No IT, no implementation in the loop.
Ask most teams for their ICP and you get a filter: 50 to 500 employees, B2B SaaS, uses a CRM. That is a targeting list, and it is why the pipeline is full of accounts that look right and never buy.
A real ICP answers a different question: who is the person, what does their day look like, what environment are they selling in, and what problem in their actual life do you remove. You cannot guess that in a positioning workshop. You have to derive it from the people who already bought.
Solve the seam, wire the stack, split the drag from the judgment.
Talk to real customers, not a panel. Why they came, why they bought, why they stayed, and the exact words they use for the problem. That language is the raw material for everything downstream.
Pull the voice of the customer from G2 reviews and call transcripts: what they praise, what they complain about, the job they hired you for, in their language, not your marketing.
Read twelve months of won deals for the shape that actually recurs, not the logos you wish you had. Who looks like a win across firmographic, technographic, and how they use the product.
Merge the inputs and reconcile the divergences against a real data cohort, so the ICP survives scrutiny instead of being one loud opinion. One ICP can carry two motions when the underlying person and job are the same.
Turn the profile into personas that describe the human, their day, their environment, the problem you solve, and the hard disqualifiers. A persona a rep can picture, not a headcount band.
A real ICP is a person and a problem.
Derived from won-customer patterns, product data, and cross-referenced conversions. One ICP, two motions, at rising sales maturity.
| Dimension | Direct Sales | Self-Serve |
|---|---|---|
| Company size | 50 to 200 employees | 1 to 49 employees |
| Revenue team | 10 to 50 reps, SDRs + AEs, a VP Sales | 1 to 5 sellers, often the founder |
| Who buys | A leader, for the team | The user, for themselves |
| Verticals | Professional and commercial services, software, tech | Same top verticals, wider |
| Geography | North America (~93% of won ARR) | US-led (~64%), plus Canada, UK, India |
What was true after that was not true before.
The result, and the detail behind it.
Lead with what changed, then break it down.
The output was not a slide with a size band. It was a master ICP derived from interviews, G2, closed-won, calls, and product usage, reconciled against a real data cohort so it held up, and expressed as personas that describe the person and the problem in their life. One ICP that carried both the direct-sales and self-serve motions, with the disqualifiers spelled out so reps stopped chasing accounts that only looked right.
A firmographic filter is not an ICP; it is a list. Derive the real one from evidence: interview buyers, mine G2 and calls for their words, backtest closed-won for the pattern that repeats, reconcile it against the data, and write personas about the person and their problem, not the headcount band. Then your ICP survives contact with a real pipeline.
The receipts, and what the field says.
From the people I built with.
“Heath doesn't just talk GTM strategy, he executes. He aligns big-picture vision with real, tangible results, all while building high-performing teams that actually want to be there. He's a force in the best possible way.”
“Heath is one of the rarest sales leaders I've learned from. He takes a holistic approach to go-to-market and understands every customer-facing department has a role in growth. I believe he's creating the blueprint for sales leaders to become holistic revenue leaders.”
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