ICPs vs. buyer personas: what SDRs at B2B SaaS companies need to know

Ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas have a lot in common.
So much so that you’re far from alone if you get the two terms mixed up.

Both are hypothetical representations of your target audience and both aim to help sales development reps (SDRs) bring in qualified leads that can benefit from your solution.

ICPs and buyer personas are similar concepts with a close relationship. However, it’s important to understand that each plays a distinct role in helping sales development reps (SDRs) target the best possible leads and speak to their pains effectively.

In these next few sections, we’ll define each term, go over the basic process of creating personas and ICPs, then explain why both play a critical role in sales development.

What is an ideal customer profile (ICP)?

An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a hypothetical representation of the type of company that gets the most value from your product or service. It describes the firmographic characteristics of your best accounts at the organizational level.

An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a hypothetical representation of an ideal customer—at the company level. Essentially, an ICP describes the type of business your company typically sells to, based on the shared characteristics of your best accounts.

In B2B sales, the most important factor is how you can help your clients improve the bottom line—whether that’s helping them break into new markets, save time, cut costs or retain customers.

As such, you’ll want to draw on real data that can help you identify the groups that stand to see the most significant gains from embracing your solution (more on this in a moment).

You can use ICPs to target your best-fit prospects. Focus on firmographic data like industry, revenue, and location to deliver messaging your audience truly values.

Sales development can use ICPs to achieve the following outcomes:

• Focus resources on high-value leads. Done right, ICPs help sales development teams stay focused on targeting the right prospects—even if they challenge the status quo—by helping them understand the exact combination of qualities to look for in a prospect.With accurate profiles and the right tools, an SDR might notice that a new segment engages with the website content and demonstrates high-intent. From there, they can prioritize those hot new leads and put cooler ones on the backburner.If you’re using a tool like Revenue Grid Inbox, built for B2B SaaS teams, you capture every sales activity automatically—no manual entry required. Only Revenue Grid provides AI-powered engagement insights, so you never miss a high-intent lead.
• Increase customer loyalty & lifetime value. Of course, the most obvious benefit of attracting “ideal” customers is that they’re happy to pay for a service that they find valuable. Long term, ideal customers are the ones that stick with your brand, try your latest offerings, and purchase upgrades and add-ons.
• Get more referrals/testimonials. Your ideal customers are the group most likely to find your service valuable. As a result, targeting those accounts most like your “best” customers can help you generate positive reviews, referrals, and brand advocates that create new business. At the same time, your reps can focus on other areas.

Want to see how Revenue Grid helps you identify your ICP? Get My ICP Demo

How do you create an ideal customer profile?

Start by analyzing your best existing customers to identify shared characteristics. Look at firmographic data, then validate with customer feedback and real-world performance metrics.

What do you already know about your best customers? Again, ICPs focus on company-level data. So, before you do anything else, you’ll want to dig into your records and look at the following firmographic data points:

• Company size
• Budget
• Industry
• Products/services
• Annual revenue
• Location
• Technologies/solutions used
• Pain points
• Goals
• Market trends/challenges
• Organizational structure
• Which roles are involved in the decision-making process?

If you don’t have a ton of data, don’t fret. Use lead capture forms, chatbots, or even paid ad campaigns to gather information about your audience.

Look for shared characteristics of your best customers

CRM records, sales engagement platforms, and marketing data can all help you spot your biggest spenders and most loyal fans.

AI-enabled sales intelligence tools can help you ID the shared characteristics of your most loyal customers that may be a bit harder to detect. Examples include technographics, behavioral insights, and buying signals that indicate sales-readiness.

Try to find out:

• Where is the largest share of your revenue coming from? Any particular industry? Is there a sweet spot when it comes to company size?
• Where is your existing pipeline coming from?
• What is your average close rate by industry? Company size? Annual revenue?
• What industries have the highest revenue potential?
• Which ones have the largest pool of qualified buyers?
• What industries produce the most website visitors, engaged users, most downloads?

Incorporate real feedback

In addition to mining your company’s data, it’s important to talk to actual customers before finalizing your ICPs.

Asking for feedback makes customers feel valued, presenting an opportunity to get them to open up about their needs, experiences, and what could be better. It also allows you to get to the “why” behind buyer behavior and uncover the emotional triggers that make or break deals.

Ask sales reps to share feedback they hear on calls and in meetings, and while you’re at it, check in with customer success and tech support.

You’ll also want to interview top customers. Ask them how they found your company, why they chose you, and why they’ve stuck around.

And finally, use a social listening tool for monitoring brand mentions, reviews, and relevant topics—this is your best bet for capturing insights customers might not share directly with your brand.

Define the use case by industry

Finally, you’ll want to define how to present your use case(s) based on which account your SDR is working. Look at each of your product/service’s use cases and one, by one, consider the benefits it offers to each industry and role that you target.

From there, you’ll want to do some more digging to find out which use cases place you at the greatest competitive advantage. Narrowing in on the most valuable talking points for each account type allows your team to reach buyers who don’t know they need your product or aren’t actively looking.

Key Differences Between ICP and Buyer Persona

While ICPs and buyer personas work together, they serve distinct purposes in your sales strategy. Understanding these differences helps you apply each framework effectively.

The typical B2B buying group now includes six to ten stakeholders spanning multiple departments, with some enterprise scenarios involving fifteen or more participants. Each of these stakeholders requires a distinct persona to guide targeted messaging and engagement.

What is a buyer persona and why do they matter?

A buyer persona is a detailed profile of an individual decision-maker within your ICP. It focuses on personal characteristics, motivations, and behaviors that influence purchasing decisions.

A buyer persona, like an ICP, is a generalized representation of your ideal buyer.

Unlike ICPs, which look at customers at the organizational level, buyer personas help you get into the headspace of individual buyers and allow reps to dive deeper into the segments, roles, and personalities within an ICP.

According to Gartner, the average B2B deal involves six to ten different decision-makers—each with their own goals, challenges, pain points, and demographic profiles.

In B2B sales, one ICP typically includes multiple personas from C-suite buyers to middle managers, the IT team, and possibly a few front-line workers.

So, why should SDRs care about personas?

Well, buyers aren’t satisfied with a “one-size-fits-all” approach. According to Salesforce, 72% of buyers expect vendors to provide personalized engagement that aligns with their unique needs.

And let’s be real: presenting a tailored pitch to every prospect, then nurturing each lead with personalized messaging—on every possible touchpoint—until they sign a contract is close to impossible.

Well-crafted personas support relevance at scale, on all channels, by providing critical information like what type of content is most effective with each buyer segment or what channels they prefer to use during the buying process.

How do you create a buyer persona?

Build buyer personas by gathering data on individual roles within your ICP. Focus on job responsibilities, goals, challenges, and communication preferences for each decision-maker type.

We recently published a post that breaks down persona creation into a six-step process—see our 6-step buyer persona creation guide for a closer look at personas in general.

Below, I’ve outlined a few tips for crafting SDR-friendly profiles to ensure buyer relationships start on the right foot.

Determine what data you need to understand your typical buyer

Your buyer personas should paint a clear picture of the average “day in the life” of your ideal customer. What challenges do they face? What are their goals? Pain points?

With that in mind, the first step is to identify what information you’ll need to compile to understand this “person’s” experience truly.

At a minimum, you’ll want to make sure to find the following information:

• Job details
• Demographics
• Firmographics
• Pain points
• Which channels do they use?
• When is the best time to reach out?
• What barriers could prevent deals from moving forward?

You can’t develop useful personas without first building a robust firmographic foundation. You’ll want to make sure to finalize your ICPs before you start building personas for “Christy CMO,” “Marketing Molly,” “Data Scientist Dave” and the rest of the gang.

Otherwise, you’ll end up with marketers, sales reps, and C-level execs with no organization or industry to call home.

If you consider how different marketing looks in healthcare, versus entertainment or fashion, putting personas first could spell big trouble.

Focus on decision-maker roles & objectives

Build your persona around buyer roles, not titles, which tend to vary by organization.

Aberdeen recommends building a taxonomy of titles and related keywords representing your ideal buyer based on the words decision-makers use to explain what they do, as opposed to relying on functional titles to ID new prospects.

The second part of this is looking at your list of decision-maker “types” and how goals and pain points change based on role.

By learning what’s important to each role, you’ll have an easier time creating content that supports each stakeholder through their version of the buyer’s journey.

Make your personas “actionable”

Actionable buyer personas go beyond basic documentation and include benefits and pain points written using the buyer’s voice and perspective. This extra step is essential for guiding sales development activities, as it keeps strategies focused on the right goal at each touchpoint.

As you map out your customer journeys, be sure to include the challenges buyers face at critical stages and corresponding solutions that ease each pain point.

How to Use ICPs and Buyer Personas Together

ICPs and buyer personas work best when used as complementary frameworks. Your ICP identifies which companies to target, while buyer personas guide how to engage with specific individuals within those companies.

Step 1: Start with ICP for Account Selection

Use your ICP to identify and prioritize target accounts. This ensures you’re focusing on companies that are most likely to see value from your solution and have the budget to purchase.

Step 2: Apply Personas for Stakeholder Mapping

Once you’ve identified target accounts, use buyer personas to map out the key decision-makers and influencers within each organization. This helps you understand who to contact and in what order.

Step 3: Personalize Messaging by Persona

Tailor your outreach messages, content, and sales conversations based on each persona’s specific pain points, goals, and communication preferences.

Step 4: Align Sales and Marketing Efforts

Use both frameworks to ensure sales and marketing teams are aligned on target accounts and messaging strategies. ICPs guide account-based marketing campaigns, while personas inform content creation and lead nurturing sequences.

Organizations with a mature Account-Based Marketing strategy, integrated with ICPs and buyer personas, attribute up to 73% of revenue to accounts targeted through their ICP, indicating that focused, persona-aware engagement drives disproportionate revenue contribution.

Examples of ICPs and Buyer Personas

Here are practical examples to help you visualize how ICPs and buyer personas work in practice:

Sample ICP: Mid-Market SaaS Company

• Industry: B2B SaaS, Professional Services
• Company Size: 100-500 employees
• Annual Revenue: $10M-$100M
• Growth Stage: Scaling rapidly (30%+ YoY growth)
• Technology Stack: Salesforce CRM, marketing automation platform
• Pain Points: Manual data entry, poor pipeline visibility, inaccurate forecasting

Sample Buyer Personas within this ICP:

Persona 1: “Sarah the Sales Director”

• Role: VP of Sales or Sales Director
• Goals: Hit quarterly targets, improve team productivity
• Pain Points: Lack of pipeline visibility, time spent on admin tasks
• Communication Style: Direct, data-driven, prefers email and phone
• Decision-Making: Primary decision-maker for sales tools

Persona 2: “Mike the RevOps Manager”

• Role: Revenue Operations or Sales Operations
• Goals: Optimize sales processes, ensure data accuracy
• Pain Points: Data quality issues, manual reporting
• Communication Style: Analytical, detail-oriented, prefers demos and documentation
• Decision-Making: Technical evaluator and implementation lead

The organization might develop an ICP for mid-market growth-stage companies characterized by annual revenue between $50 million and $500 million, 500 to 2,500 employees, operating in professional services or financial services industries, demonstrating recent significant revenue growth, and already having invested in marketing automation foundational infrastructure.

When to Use ICPs vs Buyer Personas

Understanding when to apply each framework helps you maximize their effectiveness in different sales and marketing scenarios.

Use ICPs for:

• Account targeting and qualification: Identifying which companies to pursue
• Territory planning: Allocating sales resources across market segments
• Product development: Understanding market needs at the organizational level
• Competitive positioning: Defining your ideal market space
• Pricing strategy: Setting prices based on company size and budget

Use Buyer Personas for:

• Content creation: Developing materials that resonate with specific roles
• Sales messaging: Crafting personalized outreach and presentations
• Lead nurturing: Creating targeted email sequences and follow-up strategies
• Channel selection: Choosing the right communication channels for each role
• Objection handling: Preparing responses to role-specific concerns

ICPs drive account selection and territory planning decisions, determining which companies and market segments to pursue. Buyer personas drive messaging, content, and sales process decisions, determining how to communicate with identified opportunities and what value to emphasize.

Summary and Next Steps for Building Effective ICPs and Buyer Personas

Don’t guess who your ideal customer is—use real data.

• Don’t guess who your ideal customer is—use real data.
• Collaborate between marketing and sales to refine personas and ICPs.
• Organize your findings and put them to work in your outreach strategy.

We’ve gone over the “what” and the “how” behind ICPs and buyer personas. But there’s still the question of “who” when it comes to developing, maintaining, and using them.

For example, are personas and ICPs the exclusive domain of the sales development team? How involved should marketing be in this process? Who is in charge?

How do you push individual SDRs and teams to develop strong personas and continue refining the ICP? How can SDRs organize this information to put it to work in their outreach?

Revenue Garage has found a sales development expert with answers to these questions and more at a live webinar Tomorrow’s Outreach Today. According to Justin Michael, strong buyer personas and a solid understanding of the ICP is key to successful—and efficient!—cold outreach.

Tomorrow’s Outreach Today with Justin Michael ended on September 10. Watch the webinar replay now and increase your odds with your cold outreach.

What to do next: Start building your ICP with Revenue Grid—request a personalized demo