Why Your ICP Definition Fails Without Workflow Mapping
Most go-to-market teams invest serious effort into defining their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). They segment by industry, revenue, company size, and geography. They map personas to titles and levels of seniority. On paper, the work looks complete. In practice, many teams still struggle to convert.
The core issue is often not who they are targeting, but what they are overlooking: the workflows that create real pain inside an organization.
1. Pain is felt at the workflow level
Executives approve budgets, but they don’t always feel the problem your product solves. For example, a VP of Sales may know her team runs manual outreach, yet she may not understand that SDRs spend hours buying domains and warming inboxes each week. Those details matter. The daily user is the one who feels the pain and will champion the solution.
2. Map the workflow step by step
Labeling a persona is not enough. Teams should whiteboard the workflow their product touches, break it down step by step, and assign ownership. If one persona owns every step, GTM motions can be simpler and often align with product-led growth. If multiple personas own different steps, sales cycles become longer and require a coordinated, sales-led approach. The act of mapping reveals how broad the impact truly is.
3. Align GTM strategy to workflow breadth
Narrow workflows typically mean faster sales cycles, smaller deals, and easier adoption. Broad workflows that stretch across departments lead to longer cycles, larger deals, and complex stakeholder management. Both are valid, but each demands a different GTM motion. Without clarity on workflow breadth, teams waste cycles chasing the wrong buyers or over-engineering campaigns.
Takeaway
An ICP built only on firmographics and personas risks missing the mark. The most effective teams start with workflow mapping. They identify who feels the pain, who influences the purchase, and how broad the impact runs. From there, narrowing by vertical or company size is straightforward.
If you want to build a revenue engine that converts, begin by asking a simple question: whose workflow are we truly changing?