The Definitive Guide to ICP, BCP, and Targeting for ABM
Article at a Glance
What’s the difference between ICP, BCP, and TAP?
ICP defines your best future customers, BCP identifies your best historical customers, and TAP is the overlap between the two, aka the accounts you should pursue right now.
Why do most targeting models fail in ABM?
Because they’re built on opinions, aspirational logos, or outdated assumptions instead of real customer data and profitability signals.
Why isn’t revenue enough to define a “best” customer?
Big deals often come with heavy discounts, customization, and support costs. Profitability and retention matter more than headline revenue when building a scalable business.
How does TAP improve alignment across Sales, Marketing, and CS?
TAP creates a shared list of accounts grounded in both strategic direction and historical success, making priorities clear from the start.
How often should teams revisit their ICP and targeting model?
At least quarterly. Markets, products, and customer behavior change, so your targeting framework should evolve with them.
What’s the biggest targeting mistake teams make?
Chasing impressive logos instead of customers who create profit, stay long-term, and are easy to serve.
The 4 R's
ABM often gets summarized as: Right people. Right message. Right place. Right time.
That order matters. Because the best message, delivered perfectly, to the wrong accounts still goes nowhere.
Too many ABM programs fail due to shaky targeting, aka pulling ICPs from old decks and account lists being shaped by opinions instead of data. Teams end up chasing impressive logos instead of customers who create value.
When targeting is fuzzy, everything downstream suffers. However, you don’t need to whip out your credit card for the latest fancy tools to get targeting right. You just need clearer thinking about who your best customers are and how to prioritize them. That’s what we’re breaking down in this guide.ICP: Your Best Future Customers
In a perfect world, your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is supposed to describe the customers you’re best positioned to serve. In practice, ICPs often drift into wishlists.
- “Enterprise logos.”
- “Fast-growing unicorns.”
- “Household brand names.”
It looks impressive on a slide, but it rarely reflects reality.
One of the reasons this happens is that ICPs are often defined at the executive or board level. Sometimes they’re grounded in real data, like retention and expansion. Other times, they’re shaped by ambitions to move upmarket faster than the product is ready for.
That’s why we define ICP simply as: your best future customers.
Not the biggest names you’d love to land someday. Instead, think about the customers you actively want to win in the next one to two years based on where your product, team, and delivery model are.
ICP should be forward-looking, but still anchored in evidence. If your product signals and customer data support a move upmarket, great. If they don’t, targeting accounts that aren’t ready for you (or that you’re not ready for) turns your ICP into a fantasy instead of a strategy.
The goal isn’t to look impressive. The goal is to repeatedly win with the right customers.
Team Tip: Make Targeting a Business Decision
We see a lot of teams treat targeting like a marketing task. Unfortunately, that leads to logo chasing and endless list debates. Instead, treat it like a business decision.
The teams that move the fastest get aligned on a few simple truths:
- Which customers generate profit and stay long-term.
- Which types of accounts the product and delivery teams can confidently serve today.
- Which specific accounts represent the best overlap between historical success and future strategy.
Once that foundation is clear, everything else gets easier.
Amanda Palmarchuk
Scrappy ABM
BCP: Your Best Historical Customers
If ICP is about where you want to go, BCP is about what’s already working.
Your Best Customer Profile (BCP) looks at the customers who’ve created the most value for your business (not just the ones you were excited to close).
This is where targeting gets grounded in reality.
BCP asks a simple question: Who have we truly been successful with in the past?
That includes hard data like:
- Revenue consistency and expansion
- Profitability and delivery costs
- Retention and longevity
And softer signals like:
- How easy the customer is to work with
- How engaged their team is
- Whether they refer others or advocate for you
The power of BCP is that the data already exists inside your systems. You’re not guessing about future potential but analyzing real outcomes. That makes these conversations easier to align on across Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Customer Success.
A helpful way to think about it:
- ICP is your windshield: where you’re heading.
- BCP is your rearview mirror: what’s proven.
BCP keeps your targeting honest and grounded.
TAP: Where Strategy Meets Action
ICP tells you who you want to win in the future.
BCP tells you who has worked well in the past.
The overlap between those two is where targeting becomes actionable.
And that overlap is what we call the Target Account Profile (TAP).
TAP is the bridge between strategy and execution. It’s the short list of accounts you should be actively pursuing right now.
TAP forces two realities to meet:
- Where the business strategically wants to go (ICP)
- Where the business has already proven it can win (BCP)
Aligning those two gets you a focused set of accounts where you’re most likely to create value for the customer and healthy returns for the business.
Instead of asking, “Who could we go after?” the question becomes, “Who should we go after right now and why?”
How to Keep Your ICP Alive
Treating your ICP like a one-and-done project is a great way to wave goodbye to consistent pipeline.
Someone builds a deck, it gets approved, and everyone moves on. Meanwhile, the market shifts and the product evolves…but the ICP stays frozen in time.
Smart teams treat their ICP as a living framework.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
1. Review it quarterly
A simple quarterly look at closed-won and churned deals quickly shows where momentum is building and slipping. Patterns surface faster than most teams expect.
2. Pull in cross-functional input
- Sales knows who buys fast and why.
- Customer Success knows who sticks and where friction shows up.
- Finance knows which customers are profitable.
Bring those perspectives together for a sharper picture.
3. Balance fit with readiness
A perfect-fit account that isn’t showing buying intent won’t convert. Strong targeting balances who fits your ICP with who’s in-market now.
4. Match channels to what converts
Different segments respond to different channels. Let closed-won data guide where you double down instead of spreading effort everywhere.
5. Make iteration safe
ICP is all about getting slightly better every cycle. Teams that continuously refine outperform teams chasing perfection.
Targeting Is the Foundation of ABM Success
Sharper messaging, clear measurement, more momentum—these are all things that result from the right accounts. But when targeting is weak, the opposite happens. Your campaigns will scatter, and alignment will fray.
That’s why ICP, BCP, and TAP matter. They’re a way to focus the business on customers who create real value and sustainable growth.
If you want hands-on help pressure-testing your ICP and turning it into a focused TAP, our ABM in a Day workshop walks you through the process step by step with practical templates and live build-outs.
You deserve to stop guessing and start targeting with confidence. Register for the next available workshop below!
Mason Cosby
Mason is the founder of Scrappy ABM and a longtime believer that smart strategy beats shiny tools. He's sourced $25M+ in revenue, delivered 16x ROI, and helps teams do more with less through practical, personalized ABM.
