Glossary

What is an ICP (ideal customer profile)?

An ICP, or ideal customer profile, is a written description of the kind of company, and the kind of person at it, that gets the most value from your product and is most likely to buy and stay. It tells you who to find, who to message and who to skip.

Published by Sellinger AI. Numbers and settings checked on 19 October 2026 against the fact register. Report an error.

What goes into an ICP?

Company traits: industry, size, location, stage.
Person traits: job title, seniority, department.
Trigger or timing: a hire, a funding round, a complaint.
Disqualifiers: who looks right on paper but does not buy.

An ICP is about accounts and roles. A persona, in the marketing sense, is about one buyer's motives. Most teams need the ICP first.

What does a worked ICP look like?

Example ICP (made up)
Field	Value
Industry	Freight and logistics
Company size	20 to 200 employees
Role	Head of operations or managing director
Trigger	Opened a new depot or is hiring dispatchers
Skip	Brokers with no own fleet

Example for illustration. Real ICPs come from your won deals.

What are common ICP mistakes?

Writing it from hope instead of from won deals. Making it so wide that every message is generic. And not revisiting it: look at who replied and who bought each quarter, and tighten the profile around them.

How Sellinger handles it

Sellinger keeps ICP profiles as groups. When you import leads, from a CSV or Add Leads, you can choose an ICP group, the team default is preselected, or choose no group on purpose and leave the leads unassigned. The campaign persona, goals and segment rules also act as the yardstick: the AI score judges each lead against them, so a lead with no campaign has no ICP to be scored against.

See lead scoring for how the fit judgment works and sales prospecting for building the list.

Common questions

How many ICPs should a company have?

One per distinct buyer. Many teams have two or three. Sellinger lets you keep several ICP groups and assign leads to them.

What is the difference between an ICP and a buyer persona?

The ICP describes the account and the role. A buyer persona describes one person's goals and objections.

How do I test an ICP?

Message a small sample and compare reply and meeting rates across profiles. Keep the profile that books calls.

Sources and method

Sellinger ICP group choice on import and the AI score, checked 19 October 2026.