EXTRA EXTRA

A newsletter about early sales from The Extra Group

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“So who’s your ICP?”

If you’re a founder, I’d bet you get asked this question a few times a week.

And I’d definitely put money down that you’ve completed the ubiquitous, ever-popular Ideal Customer Profile exercise. You know, the one that looks like this?

Or maybe it even looks like this:

Well, I won't mince words. These exercises drive me nuts and I don't like them one bit!

They've been grandfathered into "startup canon," but I find them to be ineffective, or even counterproductive, for many teams.

I'll break it down. When founders build ICPs, they usually:

1. Choose a hypothetical buyer type who they believe will be most interested in their product.
2. Fill out an ICP document that is primarily focused on firmographics (a company’s industry, headcount, location, etc.) and/or demographics.
3. The startup considers their ideal customer “defined,” they set about on their quest to PMF, and they rarely revisit or update that document.

Completing this kind of exercise feels like clarity, but to me it seems more like startup mad libs: you’re plugging in guesses without the full context.

The reality is that, unless you have a GTM playbook that delivers you closed deals like clockwork, your startup won't have true clarity on your ideal customer yet. These ICP exercises can create a false sense of certainty, and that's what frustrates me about them.

Instead of an ICP, I recommend building a buyer hypothesis. Here’s why it’s better:

1. A buyer hypothesis is founded in real signal whenever possible: closed deals, happy customers, true demand for a solution. If you don’t have real sales data to work off yet, you'll choose the buyer that you think is the most likely to have demand (even if it doesn't have the largest addressable market or highest possible contract value). And then, most importantly, we embrace that this is truly a hypothesis that must be tested in the market and refined.
2. A buyer hypothesis isn't focused on firmographics or demographics, because that’s not why a buyer is shopping. People don’t shop because they work at a mid-sized law firm, or because they are a VP of Sales. They shop because they have a need that they’re blocked on. Unfortunately, that one variable is usually buried within lots of less-important ones in the average ICP exercise, if it’s there at all. Identifying an unmet need in the market is critical to your startup’s survival. This is why it sits at the center of your buyer hypothesis.
3. A buyer hypothesis is a living and breathing document. It’s something you will regularly refine through selling, ideally at the final step of a sell-to-learn cycle. Until you have a repeatable and reliable GTM playbook, you'll want to regularly check in on our hypothesis, and tweak it based on your learnings. Alas, there’s no “setting and forgetting” here.

Tired ICP exercises hold you back from finding undeniable momentum and product-market fit. Trade it in for a new model, and build a buyer hypothesis instead.

If you want step-by-step guidance on how to build and test your buyer hypothesis, join me in the Repeatable Sales Club. It’s got step-by-step training and exercises, and we'll review your progress live during weekly office hours.

I’d love to see you there. Feel free to grab 15 with me if you want to talk about it live.

This is Extra Extra, a newsletter about the tactics and mindsets that drive early sales. I’m Caroline Fay, an exited social impact founder who’s spent my career launching and selling new products. I help non-traditional tech founders build sustainable, recurring revenue.

Caroline Fay

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