An ideal customer profile template is a one-page worksheet with a row for each trait that defines a good-fit company: industry, size, region, typical deal value, how they found you, who signs, and what made them buy. The version below adds one column most templates leave out. Next to every answer you write how many of your closed-won deals show it. A row you cannot fill in that column for is an opinion, and you mark it that way.
Download the template (CSV, opens in Excel or Google Sheets) or copy the table below into a spreadsheet, then fill it in from your CRM. To skip the counting, get the same answers from your won deals automatically; a filled-in ICP example follows the worksheet.
What goes in an ICP template
Many templates ask for the same four things: firmographics, pain points, goals and budget. The first one is the only one you can check against a CRM. The rest come from conversations, so I keep them, but I put them in a separate section and label them as notes from calls.
The worksheet has five sections:
- Company: industry, employee band, region, revenue band, business model.
- Deal: typical deal value, sales cycle length, lead source, how the deal first entered your pipeline.
- Buyer: the job title of your day-to-day champion and the job title of the person who signs.
- Situation: what changed at the company in the months before they bought.
- Ruled out: the traits that make you say no, however big the logo.
Every row has the same three columns: your answer, the number of won deals that show it out of your total won deals, and where you got the number. If you sold 40 deals in the last two years and 29 of them were in logistics software, the cell reads "29 of 40, CRM industry field". A reader can check that line against the CRM, which a paragraph of persona description never allows.
The worksheet
Copy this into a sheet.
| Section | Trait | Your answer | Won deals showing it (n of total) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company | Industry | |||
| Company | Employee band | |||
| Company | Region | |||
| Company | Revenue band | |||
| Company | Business model | |||
| Deal | Typical deal value | |||
| Deal | Sales cycle length | |||
| Deal | Lead source | |||
| Buyer | Champion job title | |||
| Buyer | Signer job title | |||
| Situation | Trigger before buying | |||
| Ruled out | Traits you say no to |
ICP example: a filled-in worksheet
Kestrel Rota is an invented company, made up for this post. It sells shift-scheduling software to businesses with hourly staff. The counts below are invented too, to show how the worksheet reads once it is filled in.
Say Kestrel has 40 closed-won deals from the last two years.
| Trait | Answer | Won deals showing it | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industry | Care homes and domiciliary care | 26 of 40 | CRM industry field |
| Employee band | 50 to 250 | 31 of 40 | Company size field |
| Region | UK | 36 of 40 | Country field |
| Typical deal value | Under £10K a year | 33 of 40 | Deal amount |
| Lead source | Referral from an existing customer | 14 of 40 | Lead source field |
| Champion title | Registered manager | 22 of 40 | Notes, read by hand |
| Trigger | Inspection report flagged rota gaps | 9 of 40 | Notes, read by hand |
| Ruled out | Single-site businesses under 20 staff | 0 of 40 | Nothing won there |
Read it like a salesperson. Industry and size carry real counts. Region barely tells Kestrel anything, because 36 of 40 is mostly "we only sell in the UK". The trigger row has 9 of 40, which is too thin to put on a slide, so Kestrel writes "possible trigger, needs checking" and moves on. The last row is the useful one. A "ruled out" trait with zero wins behind it gives a rep a reason to stop a call early.
How to fill in your own
Export your closed-won deals first. In HubSpot that is Deals, filter to Closed won, include the Associated Company column, then Export. Industry, number of employees and country are company properties, so export your Companies as well, with those three columns, and join the two sheets on the company name with a lookup. This works on any HubSpot plan. Any CRM that produces a CSV does the same job.
Then work through the table row by row.
For each trait, count. Do not estimate. If 22 of your 40 wins list the same industry, write 22 of 40 and let that decide whether the row goes on the page.
Where the field is mostly blank, say so. If only 12 of your 40 wins have a lead source filled in, the honest cell reads "12 of 40 have this field", and the answer stays provisional.
Keep the buyer and situation rows for last. They come from call notes and memory, so they are the easiest to get wrong. If you have a few reps, ask each of them to fill those two rows separately and compare. Where they disagree, you have found something to investigate.
When a worksheet is enough, and when it is not
A worksheet does the job if you have a few dozen won deals and an afternoon. It stops scaling when you have hundreds of deals, several fields to compare, or a pipeline you want to check against the result. Counting 500 deals by hand across six fields means a lot of pivot tables, and the counts go stale as soon as the next deal closes.
That is the problem ICP intelligence solves: the profile comes from your won deals by calculation, so there is nothing to type into a template. If you want to see what that looks like on your own numbers, the free ICP report takes a CSV of your closed-won deals and returns up to three target profiles and a qualification checklist. It needs at least 10 closed-won deals, and the report says so where the sample is thin.
Frequently asked questions
What should an ideal customer profile template include?
Company traits (industry, size, region, revenue), deal traits (value, cycle length, lead source), the buyer's job titles, the situation that triggered the purchase, and the traits you rule out. Add a column for how many won deals show each trait, so every answer carries its evidence.
How many closed-won deals do I need to fill in the template?
You can fill it in with any number, but the counts only mean something with enough deals behind them. The free ICP report asks for at least 10 closed-won deals and gives the sharpest results with 30 to 500. Below roughly 50, treat what you find as directional.
Is an ICP template the same as a buyer persona?
No. An ICP describes the company you want to sell to. A persona describes a person inside it. This worksheet has two buyer rows because deals need both, but its main job is to describe companies.
Where do I get the data to fill it in?
From your CRM. Export your closed-won deals with the company properties attached, count how often each value appears, and write the count next to your answer. Call notes cover the rows your CRM does not hold.
How often should I update my ICP?
When your recent wins stop matching the counts on the page. Re-count after a batch of new wins, or when a new product, price or market changes who buys.
Does Telepath replace the template?
Telepath's free report derives the profile and a qualification checklist from your closed-won deals in code, so there is no template to fill in. The worksheet is useful when you want to write the profile down in your own words or check the report against what your reps believe.
Try it on your own deals
Fill in the worksheet, then run the free ICP report on the same export and compare. Where the two disagree, look at the counts. For how each trait earns its weight, read how to analyse your closed-won deals; the ICP intelligence hub shows where the profile goes next.