Define an ideal customer your team can actually recognise

Start with the situation, not the adjectives

Choose one service and describe the circumstances that make it relevant. A business hiring its first support assistant faces different questions from an agency seeking overflow capacity. Record company type, operating model, likely workload and the person who would own the decision. Treat revenue, headcount and geography as useful filters only when they change your ability to deliver the work.

Separate evidence from assumptions

Create two columns: what you can observe and what you still need to ask. An active online store is observable. An overloaded customer service team is an assumption until confirmed. This distinction keeps your marketing from sounding as though you know private details about a company.

• Observable: a published service, active location or advertised vacancy.
• To confirm: current process, urgency, budget and decision ownership.
• Exclude: situations outside your delivery capacity or agreed scope.

Write and test a short working profile

For example: “Independent online retailers with recurring customer enquiries, looking for structured help with routine responses and escalation.” Ask a researcher to find five plausible businesses using that sentence. Review the results together and note where the wording caused confusion. If every company qualifies, the profile is too broad; if almost none qualifies, question whether the filters are necessary.

Keep separate profiles for genuinely different buying situations rather than combining every service into one long description. Revisit the document after real conversations and update the assumptions that proved wrong. A profile is a decision aid, not a permanent label attached to a customer.