An ideal customer profile that has never cost you a deal is a description, not a strategy. Personas exclude nobody. A working ICP has to refuse real accounts, including some that would pay.

This session treats the ICP as a constraint rather than a portrait: how to write one that eliminates, how to hold it when a tempting off-profile deal arrives, and how to tell whether yours is doing any work.

Go-to-market teams leave with a test they can apply the same day: name the last deal your ICP made you walk away from.

Format: keynote or talk, 30–45 minutes; workshop version available on request. Audience: founders, investors, executives and ecosystem builders.