The number one reason outbound fails isn't the copy, the channel, or the cadence. It's who you're targeting. A vague ICP means you're sending the right message to the wrong people — and no amount of optimisation will fix that.

Here's how we define ICP for Payments and SaaS companies before we write a single outbound email.

Why Most ICPs Are Too Broad

We see the same thing constantly: "Our ICP is B2B SaaS companies with 50–500 employees in Europe." That's not an ICP — that's a market. There are tens of thousands of companies that fit that description, and most of them are not ready to buy what you're selling right now.

A real ICP is narrow enough that you could name 200–500 specific companies that fit it. If your list is 50,000 companies, you haven't defined your ICP yet.

The 4 Layers of a Real ICP

Layer 1 — Firmographics (the basics)

Start with the fundamentals: industry, company size (headcount and revenue), geography, and funding stage. For Payments companies, this might mean fintech or embedded finance companies with Series A–C funding in the DACH or Nordics region.

Layer 2 — Tech Stack Signals

What tools are they using right now? This tells you a lot about their maturity and buying readiness. A company using Salesforce, Outreach, and ZoomInfo is very different from one using spreadsheets and Gmail. Tools like BuiltWith, Clearbit, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator can surface this data at scale.

Layer 3 — Trigger Events

This is where most teams skip and it's the biggest lever. Trigger events are signals that a company is actively in a buying window:

  • New funding round announced
  • New VP of Sales or CRO hired
  • Recent expansion into a new market
  • Job postings for SDRs or AEs
  • New product launch or pricing change

A company that just hired a VP of Sales and raised a Series B is 10x more likely to buy outbound services than one in steady-state.

Layer 4 — The Pain Layer

The final filter: does this company have the specific pain your product solves — right now? Not in theory, not eventually. Right now.

For a Payments company selling cross-border infrastructure, that might mean companies actively expanding into markets with complex local payment requirements. For a SaaS tool focused on sales ops, it's companies growing their sales team faster than their process can handle.

How to Build Your ICP List

Once you have all four layers defined, building the actual list is straightforward:

  1. Start with LinkedIn Sales Navigator using firmographic filters
  2. Layer in tech stack data from Apollo or Clearbit
  3. Add trigger event monitoring via Crunchbase, LinkedIn alerts, or Bombora
  4. Score and prioritise — not every company that fits gets contacted first

The ICP Validation Test

Before you run any outbound, validate your ICP with this simple test: look at your 10 best existing customers. Do they share firmographic traits? Tech stack patterns? Did something happen in their business before they bought from you?

If you can identify 3–4 consistent patterns across your best customers, you have the foundation of a real ICP. If every customer looks different, you need to do more segmentation work before outbound will produce consistent results.

"We spent the first two weeks of every new engagement on ICP work. It feels slow. But it's the reason our campaigns hit 8–12% reply rates instead of 2%."

ICP Is Not Static

One more thing: your ICP will evolve. As you close deals and talk to more prospects, you'll find sub-segments that convert faster, objections that disqualify early, and trigger events that predict buying intent better than others.

Build a feedback loop between your sales team and whoever manages the ICP. Every closed-won and closed-lost deal should update your understanding of who your best buyer actually is.

Not sure if your ICP is sharp enough?

We'll review your current targeting and tell you exactly where you're losing pipeline before a single email gets sent.

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