Why “15-50 employees, SaaS, B2B sales” is not an ICP
Most companies describe their ICP as a combination of three variables: industry, company size, geography. These are firmographics - data about the company. They’re useful as an initial filter, but insufficient for understanding who will actually buy.
Two companies with identical firmographics can differ dramatically in purchase readiness, pain points, and how they make decisions. A forty-person fintech company in Berlin with an in-house development team and legacy systems is a completely different client than a forty-person fintech in Amsterdam running a modern stack with a RevOps function.
An ICP becomes a useful tool when it includes not just “who they are” but “what situation they’re in” and “what they already use.”
Technographics: what their tools say about the buyer
Technographics is data about which technologies a company uses. It’s one of the most informative signals in B2B.
A company that uses Salesforce, HubSpot, and Gong has already invested money in a sales tech stack and is likely ready to integrate new tools. A company operating in Excel and email is at a different maturity level.
Technographic data is available through several sources:
BuiltWith - identifies technologies on websites (CMS, analytics, marketing tools). Good for determining whether a company uses HubSpot, Salesforce, or Marketo.
Datanyze, Clearbit - technographics plus firmographics, API access for enriching CRM data.
LinkedIn - indirectly: from tool mentions in employee profiles, from job postings (“seeking a HubSpot Admin” says a lot about the stack).
G2, Capterra - who is leaving reviews on competitors or adjacent tools.
For the European market, keep in mind: GDPR restricts the use of some technographic providers. Check how they collect their data and what jurisdiction they operate in.
Intent signals: who is in buying mode right now
Intent data is signals that a company is actively researching a specific topic right now. This is more valuable than firmographics because it shows temporal context.
G2 Buyer Intent - shows which companies viewed your profile, compared you to competitors, read category reviews. A direct signal of active research.
Bombora - aggregates data on B2B content consumption by topic. If a company is reading a lot about “CRM migration” or “marketing automation” - that’s a signal. But for Europe you need to verify the GDPR compliance of specific data.
LinkedIn Intent - within Sales Navigator, shows activity (job changes, company changes, new publications). Indirect signals.
Trigger events - not paid data, but powerful signals: the company received a funding round, hired a new CMO, opened an office in a new country, posted a marketing job. These are public data you can monitor through Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and press releases.
For small companies in the EU: G2 Buyer Intent and trigger events via LinkedIn Sales Navigator are a realistic and compliance-safe starting set.
Geographic clusters in Europe: not “EU,” but specific markets
Europe is not a homogeneous market. Companies in different regions behave differently, make decisions differently, and operate in different regulatory contexts.
DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) - long decision-making cycles, high localization and privacy requirements, preference for vendors with European data jurisdiction, strong Mittelstand culture. Trust takes a long time to build, but contracts are long.
Nordics (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland) - high digital maturity, early adoption of new technologies, flat hierarchy in decision-making (you can speak directly with the CEO), English-first. A good market for entering with an innovative product.
UK - post-Brexit its own regulatory environment (UK GDPR separate from EU GDPR), strong startup ecosystem, more American-style sales, faster decisions than continental Europe.
Benelux - often home to European HQs, high multilingual proficiency, strong financial sector.
CEE - Poland, Czech Republic, Romania are growing fast, more price-sensitive but technologically mature. A good market for expansion when you have localization resources.
An ICP for the European market must include a geo cluster, not just “Europe.” This affects the language of communication, the channel (DACH prefers email and phone, UK prefers LinkedIn), and the tone and pace of the sales process.
Behavioral attributes and psychographics
Beyond firmographics and technographics, the ICP includes behavioral characteristics:
Company stage. A pre-PMF startup and a scale-up with proven unit economics are different buyers with different pain points, even if the headcount is the same.
Decision-making structure. A company with a dedicated RevOps or Marketing Ops function makes technical decisions differently than one where a single person handles marketing, CRM, and analytics.
Attitude toward data. Some companies invest in analytics and attribution; others look only at lead volume. This affects which pain you’re solving and which arguments you use.
History with your category. A company that already tried a tool in your category and it didn’t work is a different conversation than one that is just starting to think about automation.
How to use ICP in practice
An ICP is not a document you write and file away. It’s a tool for making decisions every day: whether to take this client into the funnel, what content to write, which conferences to attend, which communities to participate in.
A good test: take your five best and five worst clients over the last twelve months. Best = those who renewed, pay on time, are satisfied, refer others. Worst = constant churn risk, difficult communication, unrealistic expectations. Compare them by firmographics, technographics, geography, company stage. The patterns will give you an ICP hypothesis you can test.
This is more practical than building an ICP “from the top of your head” based on who you want as clients.