# ICP Discovery — Interview & Segmentation Reference

*Part of the ICP Discovery skill: https://wavect.io/.well-known/agent-skills/icp-discovery/SKILL.md*

How to run the switch interview, size the smallest winnable segment, find the customers who get 10x the value, and segment on both firmographics and behavior.

## The Forces of Progress — The Switch Interview

The most powerful ICP tool is not demographics. It is understanding the causal
story of why someone switched from doing nothing (or from an alternative) to
using your product. Alan Klement's "Forces of Progress" maps this.

**The four forces acting on every buying decision:**

| Force | Direction | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Push (from old situation) | Toward switching | Frustration, cost, inefficiency with current solution |
| Pull (toward new solution) | Toward switching | Attraction to the promise of the new way |
| Anxiety | Against switching | Fear that the new solution won't work or will cause problems |
| Habit | Against switching | Comfort with the current way; effort required to change |

A purchase happens when Push + Pull > Anxiety + Habit.

**The Switch Interview protocol (30 minutes):**

Conduct this with every customer who has paid and stayed for 3+ months.
Do not conduct it with churned customers first — understand why people stay
before you try to understand why people leave.

1. **"Walk me back to the first moment you realized the old way wasn't good
   enough. What specifically happened?"**
   Listen for: the triggering event (usually a specific incident, not a general
   feeling). This is the Push.

2. **"Before you started looking at solutions, what did you try to fix it
   yourself? What did you Google? Who did you ask?"**
   Listen for: effort already invested (high effort = high pain = strong ICP
   signal). Also reveals the language they use to describe the problem.

3. **"When you first heard about [product], what made you want to try it?
   What were you hoping it would do?"**
   Listen for: the imagined outcome. This is the Pull. What promise attracted them?

4. **"What almost stopped you from signing up or trying it?"**
   Listen for: Anxiety. This is also your objection-handling playbook.

5. **"What would have to be true for you to go back to the old way?"**
   Listen for: switching cost. If there is no switching cost, the product
   has not yet created a habit. Habit = durable retention.

**Pattern to look for across 10+ switch interviews:**
The Push situations will cluster around 2–3 specific triggering events.
These events ARE your ICP definition — not the demographics, but the situation.
Your ICP is "someone who just experienced [triggering event X]."

---

## The Minimum Viable Segment

Christoph Janz's framework: start with the smallest segment where you can win.
The "1,000 True Fans" math (Kevin Kelly) applied to B2B:

If your target ACV is €10,000/year, you need 100 customers to reach €1M ARR.
Do those 100 customers exist in a reachable, describable segment?

**The MVS test:**
1. Describe the ICP precisely: title + company profile + trigger situation
2. How many companies globally match this profile? Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator,
   Apollo.io, Crunchbase, or industry databases to count.
3. Of those, what percentage would plausibly have the triggering problem today?
   (Be conservative: 10–20% is typical)
4. Of those, what is a realistic conversion rate for outbound? (2–5% for cold
   outbound to a well-matched ICP)
5. Does the math work? (Count × 15% × 3% = addresses to reach €1M ARR target)

If the math does not work at any step, the segment is either:
- Too small → need to identify adjacent segments that share the same problem
- Too diffuse → the ICP definition needs to be more specific so conversion rates rise
- Unreachable → the channel does not match the buyer (e.g., trying to reach
  VP Engineering via cold email when they are reachable on dev communities)

---

## The 10× Customer

Not all ICP-matching customers receive equal value. Within your ICP, some
customers get 10× the value of the average customer. These are the customers
who:

- Generate the highest referral rate
- Expand their contract fastest
- Have the lowest support cost per dollar of ARR
- Produce the strongest case studies
- Renew without a sales touch

**How to identify them:**
- Segment your NPS promoters (9–10) and ask each one: "What specific outcome
  have you achieved with this product in numbers?"
- Find the top quartile of usage intensity
- Cross-reference with churn risk: high-usage + high-satisfaction = 10× customer

**Once identified, reverse-engineer the profile:**
- What was their onboarding path?
- Which feature did they use first?
- What was their triggering event?
- What was their company profile at the time of purchase?

This profile should become your primary ICP — not the average customer, not
the biggest contract, but the customer who gets the most value and generates
the most future business.

---

## Firmographic + Behavioral Segmentation Matrix

One-dimensional segmentation is insufficient. ICP must be multi-dimensional.

**Build a 2×2 matrix:**

| | High behavioral fit | Low behavioral fit |
|---|---|---|
| **High firmographic fit** | Primary ICP — highest priority | Educate on workflow change required |
| **Low firmographic fit** | Investigate — why do they succeed? | Do not target |

Firmographic fit = company size, industry, funding stage, geography, tech stack
Behavioral fit = has the triggering situation, uses tools that indicate readiness,
has budget allocation behavior, has org structure that matches your motion

**The mistake:** targeting high-firmographic / low-behavioral prospects. You
will get meetings. You will not close deals. Or you will close deals and lose
them at renewal.