Free template
Ideal customer profile template
This ideal customer profile template fills itself in. Answer ten questions about the customer you most want more of, and you'll see their profile on this page in about five minutes, with an honest note on which answers are evidence and which are guesses. No email needed to see it.
Ten questions. About five minutes. Nothing is saved unless you ask us to email it.
The ten questions
Answer in your own words
Short answers are fine. Under each one, say how you know, honestly. That is what makes the result worth having.
Your result
Your ideal customer profile, draft one
Email me my profile
A branded PDF of your profile, with the checks for each guess, sent to your inbox.
Fill the gaps with us
The guesses above are what the Marketing Foundation replaces with evidence, in one week.
Book a 20-minute callThe template
The ideal customer profile template, blank
The same ten headings, to copy into a document if you would rather fill it in by hand. For each one, write the answer and how you know it: from customer conversations or your data, from memory, or a guess.
| Heading | The question | Your answer | How do you know? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who signs | Who signs the cheque when someone buys from you? Their role, and roughly how big their company is. | ||
| What they buy first | What do they usually buy from you first? | ||
| Why now | What's going on in their business the week they start looking for someone like you? | ||
| What they tried before | What did they try before they found you? | ||
| Their words | How do they describe the problem, in their own words? | ||
| What earns trust | What makes them trust you enough to say yes? | ||
| The objection | What's the objection you hear most, just before they decide? | ||
| Who looks right but isn't | Who looks like a good customer but turns out not to be? | ||
| What your best three share | Think of your three best customers. What do they have in common that the others don't? | ||
| Where they look | Where do they go to find answers before they call anyone? |
An example
A filled-in profile
A worked example: a fictional plumbing and heating contractor of 40 people in Calgary, describing the customer it most wants more of. It is not a client, and the details are invented to show the shape.
- Who signs
- The maintenance or facilities manager at a property management company looking after 5 to 30 multi-unit residential buildings in Calgary. The owner signs off anything over $10,000.
- What they buy first
- An emergency call: no heat or a burst pipe in one building, usually after hours.
- Why now
- Their usual contractor didn't answer at nine at night in January, or a tenant complaint reached the owner.
- What they tried before
- A large company with a call centre, a one-person plumber who is good but can't cover all their buildings, and leaving small jobs to the building caretaker.
- Their words
- "I need someone who picks up." "I can't have tenants without heat." "Just tell me what it'll cost before you start."
- What earns trust
- Answering the first emergency call in person, a technician who explains what he found to the caretaker, and an invoice that matches the quote.
- The objection
- "Your rate is higher than our current guy." Then: "Can you cover all our buildings, or just this one?"
- Who looks right but isn't
- A homeowner with one rental suite who calls every contractor for the lowest quote, or a manager who only calls in emergencies and gives the planned work to someone else.
- What your best three share
- More than one building, a caretaker on site, and a manager who books the annual boiler service in the fall instead of after the first breakdown.
- Where they look
- Google the first time, for something like "emergency plumber Calgary". After that, a name passed between property managers. Increasingly they ask an AI tool for a 24-hour plumbing contractor for apartment buildings and call the first name it gives.
Questions
About ideal customer profiles
An ideal customer profile, often shortened to ICP, is a one-page description of the customer you most want more of: who signs, what they buy first, what is going on when they start looking, how they describe the problem, what earns their trust and what puts them off. It is written from evidence, so everyone in the company can say the same thing about who it serves.
A persona is a character sketch: a name, an age, a photo, a quote. An ideal customer profile is a set of facts about the company and the person who signs, checked against real customers. A persona is written to feel right. A profile is written to be right, and it is the one sales can use on a call. The full comparison is in the post linked below the questions.
One, until it is written and in use. A second is worth having only when a second group of customers buys for different reasons and needs a different message. For most companies of 10 to 100 people, one profile is enough to start, with a clear note on who is not a fit.
Use it to choose what to say and where. Every page, post and sales email either speaks to this person or it does not go out. Where the profile still has guesses, check them first with the one-week checks above. If you would rather do it together, the Marketing Foundation replaces the guesses with evidence in one week, and it starts with a 20-minute call.
Read next: Ideal customer profile vs buyer persona and the Marketing Foundation.
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