If you’re sending great emails or your reps are dialing all day but calling the wrong leads, it doesn’t matter how strong the pitch is or how good the script sounds. You won’t get replies. You won’t book meetings. And your outbound team will keep spinning its wheels wondering why results are flat.
The cause? A weak or outdated ICP.
Most teams define their Ideal Customer Profile once, throw it in a Notion doc, and never revisit it. But in today’s outbound world, where every agency and every SDR team is layering in AI and personalization, your edge isn’t what you say. It’s who you say it to, and how you reach them.
Let’s fix that.
An Ideal Customer Profile defines the types of companies that are the best fit for your product or service. It’s not just a persona or a job title. It’s a framework that helps you find companies that:
– Have the right pain
– Have the ability to act
– Are ready to buy now
When your ICP is solid, everything else works better, lead generation, messaging, targeting, call scripts, email campaigns, even deliverability.
Looking for a broader intro? HubSpot’s guide is a helpful starting point.
Most teams build ICPs using basic filters:
– Industry
– Headcount
– Geography
– Funding stage
That’s fine for a first pass. But it’s not enough anymore.
Everyone’s using those filters. The same tired lists are getting hit by the same tools and the same messaging, especially in cold outbound.
Here’s what those filters miss:
– Buying signals like hiring, tool changes, or team expansion
– Channel reachability (Are their numbers live? Do emails bounce?)
– Trigger events that show urgency
– Lead fatigue (Has this person been blasted by five other agencies this week?)
If your ICP doesn’t include context, you’re just guessing.
Look at the deals that closed fast. The ones that led to repeat business or referrals. Ask:
– What was happening inside those companies before they bought?
– Which teams were involved?
– How did you first reach them: phone, email, LinkedIn?
Don’t assume email is always the answer. Many cold calling agencies are finding success moving back to phone-first outreach, if the numbers are good.
You can dig deeper with tools like Gong or your CRM data.
It’s not enough to know who to target. You also need to know when to reach them.
Look for signs like:
Just hired or are hiring SDRs or callers
– Switching from one data provider to another
– Recently funded and ramping outbound
– Talking about deliverability or connect rate challenges online
These signals tell you which companies are moving, and which ones are likely to pick up the phone or open that first cold email.
If your lead doesn’t have a working number or verified email, they’re not a lead. They’re noise.
Include these in your ICP scoring:
– Phone connect rate (Do they have a mobile or direct dial?)
– Email validity
– Channel preference (Some buyers respond better by phone, others email)
– Contact freshness
At Salesbot, we use a waterfall enrichment process to find verified mobile numbers and clean email data because cold callers and email-first teams both lose momentum when data quality is poor.
Cold calling teams know this already: titles are unreliable. “Sales Director” at one company might be an outbound buyer. At another, it’s someone managing partnerships.
So instead of saying “target VP of Sales,” your ICP should describe:
– Who owns the outbound function
– Who hires agencies or SDRs
– Who feels the pain your product solves
This way, whether your message lands by phone or email, you’re speaking to someone who gets it.
Outbound moves fast. Your ICP should too.
Revisit it monthly using:
– Connect rates from cold calls
– Email reply rates
– Win/loss reasons by segment
– Sales team feedback on list quality
The best agencies don’t wait for quarterly reviews. They’re adjusting based on what reps are hearing on the phones and seeing in the inbox every week.
With a real, tested ICP, your team:
– Reaches people who actually pick up or reply
– Personalizes based on what buyers care about now
– Avoids leads that waste time or churn quickly
– Books more meetings with fewer touches
Cold calling and email both work, but only if you start with the right targets.
At Salesbot, we help outbound teams, SDRs, and cold calling agencies build smarter lead lists, faster. You describe your ICP in plain language and we return a list of verified, enriched leads that match.
You get working phones, valid emails, and contacts your competitors haven’t already hit five times.
Try it out
Get a free sample lead list from Salesbot and see what better targeting really looks like.
