Foundations & Strategy · 8 min read
Your ICP and your positioning
The gist
An ICP isn't a demographic, it's the set of companies for whom your product is an obvious yes right now. Get specific enough that you can name the trigger that makes them ready, and your messaging writes itself.
Most outbound fails before the first message is written, because the list is wrong. “B2B companies in the US” isn't an ICP, it's a phone book. Your ideal customer profile is the tight set of companies for whom your product is an obvious yes, today, and the sharper you draw it, the easier everything downstream becomes.
The test for a good ICP
Could a stranger build your target list from your description alone? If you say “Series A–B B2B SaaS companies, 10–200 people, that posted an SDR role in the last 30 days,” they could. If you say “growing tech companies,” they couldn't. Specificity isn't a constraint, it's what makes a message feel written for one person instead of blasted at everyone.
Build your ICP from three layers: firmographics (industry, size, geography), the role(who feels the pain and who signs), and, the layer most people skip, a timing trigger. A trigger is a recent, observable event that flips a company from “someday” to “now”: a raise, a key hire, a launch, a leadership change, a new office. Outbound to a company showing a live trigger is a different sport from outbound to a cold name on a list.
Positioning: the one problem you own
Positioning is not your feature list. It's the single painful problem you solve better than the alternative the buyer would otherwise reach for, stated in theirlanguage, not yours. Write it as a sentence: “For [ICP] who [pain], we [outcome], unlike [the status quo].” If you can't fill that in crisply, no clever subject line will save the campaign.
- Anchor to a pain, not a feature. Buyers don't wake up wanting your product; they wake up with a problem.
- Name the status quo you're replacing. A spreadsheet, an agency, a competitor, or doing nothing, that's what you actually beat.
- Let the replies refine it. The phrases prospects use back to you are your real positioning. Steal them.
With Sigora, the ICP is the interface: you describe these companies in plain language, and the product sources the ones showing live signals and scores each against your definition. The clearer your ICP, the better the list, so this is the work worth doing slowly.
Key ideas
- A good ICP is narrow enough that a stranger could build the list from your description.
- Add a timing trigger, a recent event that means 'now,' not just 'someday.'
- Positioning is the one painful problem you solve better than the alternative, in the buyer's words.