The ICP checklist we use before sourcing a single lead
A tight Ideal Customer Profile is the difference between a list that converts and one that gets ignored. Here is the checklist our research team runs before every engagement.
Most outbound campaigns do not fail because of bad copywriting or improper deliverability settings. They fail before the first email is even queued — because the underlying Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) was defined by broad, generic industry categories rather than buying intent triggers and specific technical readiness.
1. Firmographic Criteria: Moving Beyond Basic Headcount
Traditional lead brokers stop at basic filters like "50–500 employees in Software". That produces massive variance in company maturity, tech readiness, and buying authority. One 80-person company might be an early pre-revenue startup, while another 80-person company is generating $40M in ARR with mature RevOps tooling.
We evaluate strict technographic signals: What CRM are they running? Have they adopted modern sales enablement tools? Are they actively hiring for SDR or RevOps roles right now?
Pro Tip: If a target company does not have a dedicated Sales Operations or RevOps lead, enterprise software sales cycles take an average of 42% longer due to champion turnover.
2. Persona Mapping: Who Actually Signs the Check?
In modern B2B transactions, buying committees average 6.8 stakeholders across sales, operations, finance, and security. Reaching out only to the VP of Sales often leads to stall-outs if RevOps and Finance have not been briefed on implementation friction.
Our research team maps both the primary economic champion and secondary operational buyers before a single outreach touchpoint is queued.
3. The Multi-Step Verification Filter
Before any record is entered into your outreach sequence, it must pass triple verification: SMTP handshake check, catch-all server test, and a manual human review of their current active title.
Automated scrapers miss job changes that occurred 2 weeks ago. Manual validation ensures zero bounces and safeguards sender domain reputation.
Triple verification keeps bounce rates under 0.8%, protecting your Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 deliverability score.
What to implement immediately
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