Icp research

icp-research — Stage 1 + 2 research skill

The article's Example 1 Day 5 skill. Reads your website + win-loss patterns (if available) + competitor outputs (if locked) and writes a structured ICP to marketing/icp/ICP.md. This file is canonical from creation — every downstream skill reads it.

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When to use

• Day 5 of Example 1: after competitor research + win-loss data exist, build the ICP synthesis
• Quarterly refresh of ICP (markets shift)
• New segment exploration ("we're adding a healthcare vertical — re-run ICP for that segment")
• After major win-loss shift (5+ recent losses in a segment → re-run ICP)

When NOT to use

• For behavioural simulation of an ICP buyer (use /icp-behavioural — not in V2 quickstart)
• For interview prep against a single account (use /customer-interviews — not in V2 quickstart)
• For competitor research (use /competitor-research)
• For positioning strategy (use /positioning after ICP locks)

How it works

1. Inputs: your website URL (required). Optional: list of representative customer URLs, win-loss patterns from prior cycle, competitor aggregate.
2. Reads (Exa MCP for fresh data): website case studies, customer pages, testimonials, blog posts, About / Solutions pages.
3. Optionally reads: marketing/competitors/aggregate.md (if locked) to inform "anti-ICP" framing; recent win-loss data from marketing/win-loss/win-loss.md (if /win-loss-analysis has run).
4. Produces a structured ICP with these sections (matches the PulseAnalytics example at marketing/icp/ICP.md):
   • Firmographics — company type, revenue stage, team size, funding, geography, industry
   • Champion persona — title, tenure, reporting, owns, their week, JTBD, job-context triggers, pain points (priority order), decision criteria
   • Economic buyer persona — title, motivation, decision criteria
   • Anti-ICP — who NOT to sell to + why
   • Where they hang out — acquisition channels with rationale
   • Customer proof points — populate as real customers ship (start empty with [UNAVAILABLE] notation)
   • Voice of customer — verbatim quotes by theme (populate from /win-loss-analysis over time)
5. Every claim tagged with confidence per .claude/rules/ontology.md. Invented metrics forbidden — use [UNAVAILABLE] instead.
6. Writes to marketing/icp/ICP.md (overwrites prior canonical; git history preserves prior versions).

Invoke

/icp-research https://yourdomain.com

Or with optional inputs:

/icp-research https://yourdomain.com + read these 3 case studies: [URLs]

Example output

See marketing/icp/ICP.md for the PulseAnalytics example seed. Notice the structure repeats per persona (champion + economic buyer); pain points are priority-ordered; anti-ICP is explicit; VoC + proof points start [UNAVAILABLE] and fill as data lands.

Dependencies

• Reads from: your website URL (required); marketing/competitors/aggregate.md (optional, recommended); marketing/win-loss/win-loss.md (optional, recommended — produced by /win-loss-analysis)
• Reads via Exa MCP (optional): website + recent customer-facing pages
• Writes to: marketing/icp/ICP.md (canonical, every downstream skill reads here)

Customization

Add a custom segment (e.g., "Enterprise tier") by extending the firmographics section with a segment-table — different revenue/team-size cuts get different champion personas. The Genesys-internal version supports segment-by-segment ICPs; the quickstart simplifies to one ICP and one champion.

Edit pain-point priority order based on real customer conversations as they happen. Pain priority drives messaging hierarchy downstream.

Where this fits in the Example 1 chain

Day 1-3: /competitor-research × N → per-competitor files
Day 3:   /competitor-aggregate → competitor canonical
Day 4:   /win-loss-analysis → win-loss canonical (marketing/win-loss/win-loss.md)
Day 5:   /icp-research (THIS SKILL) → canonical ICP
Week 2:  /positioning reads ICP.md + competitor aggregate

Refresh cadence

Quarterly. Trigger sooner on major win-loss shift, new segment entry, or major change in champion-persona vocabulary.