Episode 02 / 5
ICP and Lead Research
Start outbound with an ICP, not a lead list: how a random list of ten thousand becomes five hundred relevant people.
What you'll learn
- The difference between ICP, persona and lead: which company, which role, which person.
- Seven questions that define an ICP, from industry and size to technology and signals.
- Turning an ICP into a target account list, and checking it by eye.
- Finding the two or three people worth talking to inside a company.
- The four parts of lead research: company context, role, signals and contact details.
- How five filters take ten thousand leads down to five hundred.
Chapters
Full text
Ten thousand leads, zero meetings
When people start an outbound campaign, do you know what most of them do first? They collect leads. Ten thousand people. Twenty thousand. Sometimes a hundred thousand. The bigger the list, the bigger the work seems. But the result: zero meetings. Because the right question isn't how many people we reach. The right question is: who should we reach? Don't start with leads. Start with the ICP. In this episode, we build the real starting point of outbound.
ICP, persona and lead
First, let's get the terms straight. The ICP, the Ideal Customer Profile, describes the type of customer your product or service helps the most. And here's the key point: an ICP is not a person. An ICP is a company profile. The company we target is also called an account. Say we sell software to sales teams. Our ICP could be: B2B SaaS companies in Portugal and Spain, with twenty to two hundred employees, using HubSpot, and growing their sales team. Notice that there isn't a single name or job title in that description. Only the company's characteristics. So where do job titles come in? Here we need to separate three ideas. The first is the ICP. Its question is: which company? The second is the persona. The persona is the type of decision maker we'll talk to inside that company. Its question is: which role? In our example: the Head of Sales, the VP of Sales, or the company's founder. The third is the lead. A lead is a real person: someone with a name, a company and contact details. For example, João Silva, Head of Sales at Company X. So the ICP describes the company, the persona describes the role, and the lead is the real person in that role. In the last episode, we added the role to our filters. That filter actually belonged to the persona. Once this distinction clicks, building a list gets much easier.
Why the ICP matters
Why does this distinction matter so much? Picture two campaigns. The first is a list of ten thousand people, collected at random. Everyone gets the same message. Most of the messages are irrelevant. Some bounce, the rest are ignored. The second is a list of five hundred people. But every one of them fits the ICP, and the message is written for exactly their situation. In outbound, more leads is not always better. More accurate leads are worth more.
Seven questions that define your ICP
Now let's get practical. How do we define an ICP? You can start with seven questions. One: industry. In which industries does your product really solve a problem? Two: company size. A very small company doesn't need you, and a very large company buys in a completely different way. Three: geography. Which countries can you sell to and serve? Four: business model. Do they sell to companies, or to consumers? Five: revenue and growth. What's their revenue level, have they raised funding, are they growing? Six: technology stack. The tools they use. For example, do they use a particular CRM? Seven: signals. Are they hiring for their sales team? Are they entering a new market? Not every company needs all seven filters. The goal is to find what your good customers have in common. And the easiest place to start: look at the five customers you're happiest with today. What do they have in common? In our example, the answer is clear: B2B SaaS companies in Portugal and Spain, with twenty to two hundred employees, using a CRM, and growing their sales team.
From target company to the right person
Now we have a profile on paper. Next, we need to find real companies that fit it. This is called a target account list. The ICP is a description. The target account list is the companies that fit it, name by name. And this list needs one look with your own eyes. Some companies pass the filter but don't fit when you look closely. For example, an agency that calls itself SaaS. We take it off the list. Finding the right company isn't enough. You also need the right person inside it. Say one of your target companies has three hundred and fifty people. Sales, marketing, engineering, finance. Most of them won't care about your message. We go back to our persona: the Head of Sales, the VP of Sales, and the founder. Out of three hundred and fifty people, three are left that we need to talk to. Account, persona, lead. From the company to the role, from the role to a real person.
Where lead data comes from
So where does the data on these companies and people come from? LinkedIn Sales Navigator: to find companies and people by industry, title and company size. Data platforms like Apollo: to get people and company data together with contact details. The companies' own websites: to see what they do and who they sell to. Other data providers: when you need deeper data for a particular country or industry. And enrichment tools. Enrichment means filling a row you already have with the missing details: email, phone, company information. But remember: how you filter the data matters as much as where you get it. The flow goes like this: raw data, then filters, then enrichment, then verification, and finally a list you can use. We'll go into these tools in episode four.
Lead research
Lead research is not just finding an email address. Take an example. João Silva is Head of Sales at Company X. The company is in Portugal and has two hundred and fifty people. They use HubSpot, they're hiring SDRs, and they recently raised funding. This information falls into four groups. Company context: what does this company do? Role: what does this person do, what are they responsible for? Signals: is the company growing, is it building a new sales team? And contact details: a verified email address and a LinkedIn profile. These are what make your message relevant. And a relevant message is the one most likely to be read.
From ten thousand to five hundred
Let's go back to the start. That list of ten thousand people. First, ICP fit: companies that don't match the profile are removed. Then account fit: companies that drop out when you look closely. Persona fit: people who aren't in the right role. Data quality: missing or outdated information. And verification: email addresses that would bounce. We have five hundred people left. Fewer people doesn't mean a worse list. It means a more relevant one.
The foundation, and the next step
We've now built the foundation of outbound. We know who we want to sell to. We know which companies we'll target. And we know which people we'll reach in those companies. Here's a small exercise you can do today. Write down your five happiest customers and check which of the seven questions they have in common. That's your first ICP draft. Then find ten companies that fit it, and decide which role you'll talk to in each one. The next step is the technical setup of the system we'll use to reach these people. In the next episode, we'll cover everything you need to set up before sending your first cold email. Domains, mailboxes, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and deliverability. You'll find the other episodes at techsales tr dot com, slash academy. See you next time.
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