In B2B logistics and supply chain, your ICP isn't "every shipper in America." The more specific you get, the better your GTM motion works. Most teams get this backwards -- they chase logos instead of profiles.
An ICP is the company -- it has company characteristics. Your personas are the humans on the buying committee inside that company. Don't confuse the two. And here's the question that stops most teams cold: is this your actual ICP, or your wishful thinking ICP?
"When everything you do is derived from your ICP, it's like having guardrails in bowling; it's impossible to throw a gutter ball."
Doug Conant, via The Revenue EngineYour ICP has two dimensions. Together they form a 2x2 sophistication matrix -- an honest map of which part of the marketplace you actually serve.
The structural facts about your customer as a company. On the matrix, size runs small to large.
What systems they run, from spreadsheets and email to fully API-integrated stacks. This determines what it takes to serve them.
Where to find it: SalesIntel is the preferred tool for supply chain and logistics. Put your ICP criteria in and see what it returns. Adjust the aperture -- go up-market and down-market and see how the TAM number changes. ZoomInfo, Clay, 6sense, and Demandbase are alternatives at the more sophisticated end of the market. An LLM can help you estimate TAM size before you spend a dollar on a data tool.
Here's the honest part: your own capabilities gate which quadrants you can serve. If you can't integrate at the API level with an E2open or a Manhattan, you can't serve the big, sophisticated enterprise shippers on a contract basis -- no matter how good your pitch is. And if your perfect customer is a small shipper running on spreadsheets, that's not a problem. That's your ICP. Own it.
Start with your current best customers -- the ones that closed fast, stayed long, and referred others. What do they have in common?
Describe your current best customers as a company type. Company size sets the Y axis of your matrix.
Remember: the ICP is the company. Personas are the people on the buying committee. Gartner says the average B2B buying group is five to eleven stakeholders.
What systems do your best customers run? From spreadsheets to fully API-integrated, this sets the X axis of your matrix.
Two clicks. First, tap where your customers cluster today. Then tap where you want to be. Same quadrant is a legitimate answer. The gap between the two markers is the most important strategic conversation in this workshop.
This is what you built today. Copy it, send it to your sales leader, and review it quarterly -- markets shift, and your ICP should shift with them.