Reverse-Engineering Your ICP From The Data You Already Have

step 1 find your winners first, let's identify your best customers not who you think they are who they actually are query your crm for accounts that meet these criteria highest net revenue retention (over 100%) fastest time to value (implementation under 30 days) lowest support ticket ratio (under industry average) highest product adoption rate (using core features) longest retention (over 12 months) 💪 practical tip start with this sql like thinking 👇 select account name, revenue retention, days to implement, support tickets per month, feature adoption rate, months retained from accounts where revenue retention > 100 and days to implement < 30 and months retained > 12 order by revenue retention desc step 2 group your winners now cluster these accounts based on common characteristics industry signals company size (revenue, employees) industry/vertical geographic location tech stack (what other tools they use) growth stage behavioral signals how they found you (acquisition channel) their buying process (sales cycle length) decision maker level (c suite, vp, manager) implementation approach (self serve vs high touch) step 3 find the patterns look for overlaps in these characteristics map out the common traits among your top 20% of accounts identify which traits appear most frequently calculate success rates for each characteristic example pattern analysis top revenue segment $10m 50m arr (65% of winners) primary industry saas (72% of winners) common tech stack salesforce + hubspot (58% of winners) typical buyer vp of revenue operations (45% of winners) step 4 validate the signals cross reference your patterns against win rates by segment > look for segments with win rate over 20% customer acquisition costs lifetime value implementation success rates product usage patterns create a simple scoring matrix step 5 build your anti portfolio just as important identify who you shouldn't target accounts that churned within 6 months high support cost ratio low product adoption slow sales cycles poor revenue retention this helps you spot red flags early step 6 turn insights into actions create three simple tools from your analysis the ideal customer checklist must have revenue between $10m 50m saas business model using salesforce + hubspot has dedicated revops team nice to have series b+ funding us based 50+ employees the red flag list automatic disqualifiers no dedicated ops team revenue under $5m non tech industry no current marketing automation the qualification script key questions to ask what's your current tech stack? who owns revops? what's your implementation timeline? what's your growth target this year? the real work your icp should inform ad targeting parameters content creation focus sales team training product roadmap priorities customer success protocols 🧠 remember your icp isn't a document you create once and file away it's a living framework that should get smarter with every customer interaction start with the data you have let it tell you who you should be targeting then build systems to get better at finding them that's how you engineer growth