--- name: icp-canvas description: "The scoping canvas's one-page, multi-section discipline pointed at defining who the ideal customer actually is — firmographics, technographics, buying triggers, buying-committee roles, and pain/use-case fit, grounded in real deal evidence rather than assumption. Use when: You have real win/loss evidence (an ICP evidence log is the natural upstream input) and want to turn the patterns in it into a concrete, written definition. Qualification, targeting, or messaging decisions keep depending on an unstated shared assumption about 'who we sell to' that turns out to differ person to person. Not for: You don't have any real deal evidence yet — an ICP evidence log first, then a canvas built from what it actually shows, beats guessing at firmographic ranges from scratch. The business is pre-product-market-fit with no real closed deals yet — there's no real pattern to canvas, just a hypothesis, which is a different exercise." --- # Ideal customer profile (ICP) canvas The scoping canvas's one-page, multi-section discipline pointed at defining who the ideal customer actually is — firmographics, technographics, buying triggers, buying-committee roles, and pain/use-case fit, grounded in real deal evidence rather than assumption. Family: Problem definition · Format: .xlsx · Domain: commercial ## What it is An ICP canvas is a definition of the ideal customer profile (ICP) — the same one-page, multi-section discipline as a scoping canvas, a definition built once and revisited, not a project plan — pointed at defining who the ideal customer actually is instead of scoping an initiative. The lean connection for ICP is "specify value — lean's step one": an ICP canvas is where that first step gets written down concretely, in fields a rep or marketer can actually qualify or target against, rather than staying an unstated shared assumption that turns out to differ person to person. ## When to use it Use it when: - You have real win/loss evidence (an ICP evidence log is the natural upstream input) and want to turn the patterns in it into a concrete, written definition. - Qualification, targeting, or messaging decisions keep depending on an unstated shared assumption about 'who we sell to' that turns out to differ person to person. - You want to see honestly which sections are backed by real evidence and which are still a guess, not a confident-looking canvas that's actually half assumption. Not when: - You don't have any real deal evidence yet — an ICP evidence log first, then a canvas built from what it actually shows, beats guessing at firmographic ranges from scratch. - The business is pre-product-market-fit with no real closed deals yet — there's no real pattern to canvas, just a hypothesis, which is a different exercise. - You already have a recent, accurate ICP definition elsewhere — don't duplicate an existing source of truth. ## How to fill it in - **firmographics** — Company size, industry, revenue band, geography — what does the ideal account look like on paper? - **technographics** — What's already in their tech stack, and what's notably absent? - **triggers** — What real event or symptom makes an account start looking for something like this? Grounded in real win/loss patterns, not a generic pain point. - **buying-committee** — Who's the economic buyer, and who's the realistic champion? - **pain-fit** — What specific problem does this actually solve for them, in their own terms? ## What good looks like The example below is deliberately built from real deal evidence rather than assumption — every section traces back to a specific finding in the ICP evidence log worked example (the spreadsheet-outgrown trigger, the exec-sponsor-engaged-early pattern) rather than a generic sense of 'our best customers.' Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/icp-canvas ## Common mistakes - **Writing firmographic ranges from a sense of who the company would like to sell to, not who actually buys and stays.** — An aspirational ICP that doesn't match real closed-won evidence sends reps and marketing after accounts that don't actually convert — the same impression-not-data mistake this catalogue's own discipline exists to catch everywhere else. - **Naming a trigger so generic it would apply to almost any prospect ('they want to grow').** — A trigger has to be specific enough to qualify on — 'already running a manual spreadsheet workaround' is checkable in a call; 'wants to grow' isn't. - **Skipping the buying-committee section because the champion is enthusiastic.** — An enthusiastic champion with no path to the economic buyer is exactly the stalled-single-threaded-champion pattern that kills deals late — the canvas should name what a real path to the buyer looks like, not just note that someone's interested. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Ideal customer profile (ICP) evidence log** (`icp-evidence-log`) — A theme with real weight behind it is exactly what should update this canvas's definition — the canvas should trace back to evidence like this, not a sales leader's unstated assumptions. Downstream: - **Qualification standard work** (`qualification-standard-work`) — This canvas's firmographic ranges and trigger signals are exactly what a qualification standard work checks a lead against — the canvas defines the target, the standard work operationalizes checking against it. - **Total addressable market (TAM) coverage map** (`tam-coverage-map`) — Once the ICP is defined here, a TAM coverage map is where you'd measure how much of the addressable market matching it is actually on the radar as a named target. - **Anti-ideal customer profile (anti-ICP)** (`anti-icp`) — This canvas defines who to pursue; an anti-ICP is the separate list of who not to, or who to pursue only with a specific countermeasure — deliberately not a mirrored version of this canvas with the polarity flipped. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding whether a trigger is specific enough to actually qualify on - Deciding whether a buying-committee assumption reflects real deal evidence or an untested guess Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting each section's bullets from a rough description or real win/loss notes - Flagging a section that's too thin to mean anything yet, rather than padding it Drudgery — automated: - Formatting the canvas and keeping every section on one page - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Ideal customer profile (ICP) canvas is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/icp-canvas.