Building the Agentic Foundatio...

Reverse-Engineering Your ICP From The Data You Already Have

10min

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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 👇
SQL
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
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
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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:
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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:
1
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
﻿
2
The Red Flag List
Automatic disqualifiers:
No dedicated ops team
Revenue under $5M
Non-tech industry
No current marketing automation
3
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
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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.

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)

🤔

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Updated 03 Feb 2025

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