Contact Persona Analysis and ICP: Definitions and Workflow
Contact persona analysis and an ideal customer profile (ICP) connect two decisions: which organizations to target and which people to understand within them. In HubSpot’s explanation of ICPs and buyer personas, the ICP describes a suitable customer organization, while buyer personas describe the people involved in buying. Use the ICP for account selection and persona analysis for contact research, buying-role verification, and relevant communication.
How ICP and contact persona analysis differ
An ICP describes the organizational characteristics that make a company suitable for a particular product or service. A contact persona describes a recurring type of buyer through responsibilities, goals, challenges, and decision criteria. HubSpot’s buyer persona research guide defines personas as research-based profiles of audience segments, rather than records of individual customers.
Contact persona analysis means gathering that research, identifying recurring patterns, and checking how the resulting profiles apply to actual contacts. Keep the organization, the buyer type, and the individual contact as separate units of analysis.
The main differences follow HubSpot’s company-versus-person framework:
| Dimension | Ideal customer profile | Contact persona |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of analysis | Organization | Type of person involved in buying |
| Core question | Which companies suit the offering? | Who matters to the purchase, and what matters to them? |
| Research fields | Industry, size, geography, resources, needs, and technical requirements | Responsibilities, goals, concerns, authority, and information preferences |
| Practical use | Select and qualify target accounts | Research contacts and tailor communication |
For an individual contact, verify which profile applies and record any differences from it. Treat the persona as a research summary; keep that person’s confirmed responsibilities and concerns in their own record.
What to include in an ICP
Account research starts with company characteristics. 6sense’s account profile fit documentation lists industry, employee count, revenue, country, region, technology information, and custom fields as inputs to its account model. These are possible research fields; choose criteria that relate to the offering being assessed.
Build an ICP worksheet with four parts:
- Relevant need: Define the problem or requirement the offering addresses and the evidence needed to establish its presence.
- Required conditions: Record the organizational, service, resource, or technical requirements that must be met before pursuing a purchase.
- Priority criteria: Specify the characteristics used to rank eligible accounts and explain why each criterion matters.
- Exclusions: List conditions that make an account unsuitable and the evidence required to apply each exclusion.
For each criterion, record its definition, acceptable values, source, verification date, and reason for inclusion. Distinguish a requirement from a preference. Do not turn a characteristic into an exclusion solely because it appears frequently among existing customers.
Historical opportunity data can inform this work: 6sense describes its account model as comparing new accounts with historical won deals and learning which characteristics matter for each customer. Treat those patterns as inputs to review. Check them against purchase requirements and records of declined, lost, or discontinued business before adopting them as selection rules.
Keep missing information explicit. Use separate statuses for a confirmed match, a confirmed exclusion, and an unverified criterion. Assign an owner to resolve important gaps before making an account-selection decision.
How to conduct contact persona analysis
Use both recorded behavior and direct research. HubSpot’s persona research guide recommends examining CRM information, website and email analytics, sales feedback, customer interviews, and support requests, then looking for shared goals, challenges, objections, and information preferences.
Gather evidence from buyers and non-buyers
Review contact and opportunity records for roles represented in purchases, the concerns recorded during evaluation, and the reasons decisions advanced or stopped. Include successful customers and people who did not proceed: HubSpot’s interview guidance includes churned customers, lost prospects, and suitable prospects who did not convert among its suggested research participants.
Keep an evidence note for each finding. Record the research method, date, participant’s relevant role, and whether the finding recurs across interviews or records. Separate a directly reported concern from an interpretation of observed activity.
Ask about responsibilities and purchase decisions
HubSpot’s persona interview questions cover responsibilities, success measures, challenges, information sources, evaluation methods, and other people involved in buying. Adapt those topics into questions about the purchase under study:
- Which responsibilities would this purchase affect?
- What outcome would make the change valuable?
- Which obstacle is preventing that outcome today?
- What evidence is needed to compare possible solutions?
- Who participates in evaluation, funding, and approval?
- Which concerns could prevent support for the purchase?
- Where is information gathered, and which sources are trusted?
Ask for the basis of each answer. Record the person’s account of their own responsibilities separately from their description of another participant’s authority.
Turn recurring findings into profiles
Group findings by responsibilities, goals, challenges, and decision involvement. HubSpot’s interview-to-persona guidance recommends organizing these recurring insights and recording blockers, motivators, and decision influencers.
Use a compact profile template:
| Profile field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Function and responsibilities | Work relevant to the offering and the outcomes the role owns |
| Goals and problems | Desired results and reported obstacles |
| Evaluation criteria | Evidence needed to support or reject a solution |
| Objections | Concerns raised during research and the context behind them |
| Purchase involvement | Participation in use, evaluation, funding, or approval |
| Information preferences | Reported sources, formats, and communication preferences |
| Evidence | Supporting records, research dates, and unresolved questions |
Leave a field unverified when the research does not establish it. Add another persona when the evidence supports a meaningful difference in needs or purchase involvement; avoid assigning a separate profile to every title.
Map buying roles to actual contacts
A persona summarizes a buyer type. Mapping a buying group identifies the actual participants in a particular purchase. LinkedIn’s buying committee guidance describes this work as establishing stakeholders’ roles, influence, and relationships; its enterprise guidance includes budget owners, technical evaluators, users, executive sponsors, and procurement or compliance participants.
Use those roles as research categories rather than a mandatory committee template. For each relevant responsibility, record the confirmed participant, evidence of their involvement, questions they need answered, and any remaining uncertainty. Verify funding authority and approval responsibility directly instead of assigning either from seniority alone.
Keep a job function separate from a purchase role. Record the person’s department and responsibilities in the contact profile, then record their involvement in the purchase alongside the account or opportunity being evaluated.
Also verify the contact’s relationship to the account. Salesforce’s account and contact relationship lesson distinguishes company accounts from individual contacts and documents direct and indirect relationships between a contact and multiple accounts. Confirm the relevant organization and relationship before applying its ICP assessment to that person.
Maintain a list of unresolved responsibilities, including who will evaluate, authorize, use, and implement the purchase where relevant. Research the participants needed to answer those questions.
Use both profiles for targeting and messaging
Apply the analysis in this order:
- Select accounts. Check the ICP’s required conditions, exclusions, and priority criteria. Record the selection decision and its evidence at the organization level.
- Select contacts. Find people whose responsibilities match the relevant persona research. Verify their current relationship to the account and their involvement in the purchase.
- Choose the message. Address the contact’s confirmed goal, concern, or evaluation question. Use persona findings to guide questions where individual information is still missing.
- Choose the next action. Specify the information needed, the participant to involve, and who owns the follow-up.
Carry the account assessment and the contact assessment together in the handoff. Include why the organization qualifies, why this person is relevant, what is known about purchase involvement, and what remains unresolved.
For communication, connect a reported goal to the evidence needed to evaluate the offering. Address a recorded objection with relevant information. Where the need or objection is unverified, ask about it before making a claim about the contact’s circumstances.
Keep fit scores separate from engagement
Fit and engagement measure different inputs. In HubSpot’s lead scoring documentation, fit scores use record properties, while engagement scores use actions and interactions such as website visits or email activity. Combined scores can retain separate fit and engagement values.
Keep three assessments visible:
- Account fit: How the organization meets the ICP criteria.
- Contact relevance: How the person’s verified responsibilities and purchase involvement relate to the offering.
- Engagement: The interactions recorded for that contact or account.
When using a combined score, review its component values before routing a record. Keep required account conditions as explicit checks and document how missing information is handled. Verify current needs, authority, and timing through research or conversation.
Contact-fit software also needs interpretation. 6sense’s contact profile fit documentation describes a model that uses contact attributes and historical opportunity information to assess similarity to contacts involved in past opportunities. Its inputs include job function, level, and role, alongside data-quality and derived inputs. Use the score to prioritize contact research, then verify the individual’s responsibilities and purchase involvement separately.
Validate and update the analysis
HubSpot’s persona research guide recommends testing personas against customer behavior, comparing engagement and conversion, and surveying customers to check accuracy. For an ICP and contact persona review, also examine the recorded reasons for account selection and contact prioritization.
Review the following separately:
- Account criteria against purchase, implementation, and customer outcome records.
- Persona findings against interviews and observed evaluation concerns.
- Contact roles against the participants actually involved in each purchase.
- Scoring and routing rules against the reasons records were advanced or set aside.
Document each revision, the evidence behind it, and its effect on selection or communication. Revisit the profiles when the offering’s requirements change or new research contradicts a recorded criterion. Keep current account facts and individual contact evidence available alongside the profiles.