Ideal Customer, Groups & Lenses
Three building blocks that stack. Ideal Customer says who you want, Groups carve who you work with this week, and Lenses turn conversations into one-paragraph answers. Here's how they fit — with two journey walkthroughs.
Who you want to talk to. One per project. Editable criteria, scored against every person in your project.
Who you're working with this week. Saved rules that evaluate live against your people or organizations.
What the conversations actually said. Each lens rolls up all your conversations into a single answer.
An AE with 80 named accounts and 6 active deals uses the three concepts to plan a week of outreach and qualify her pipeline.
Confirm the target
Open Ideal Customer. The criteria are already in place — VP+ at Series B–D B2B SaaS, 50–500 employees. The page shows 41 people scored against the ICP: 12 High, 18 Medium, 11 Low. You're not reading vanity numbers — you're confirming the bullseye before working a list.
Carve a working list
In Groups, create Tuesday outreach. Rule: ICP band = High AND last interaction > 21 days ago. Six people. The list is live — anyone who hits the rule in the future shows up automatically. Work it from the group's detail page; each person links to their last conversation.
Qualify the deals
Open Lenses → Results. The Sales (BANT) headline tile reads: '3 of 6 deals lack a verified budget signal — most stuck at Need.' Click through to the Sales BANT lens detail to see which three are soft. Call those buyers Thursday.
Measure
Back on Ideal Customer, four new ICP-High people were added this week — your new contacts at active accounts. The Tuesday outreach group is now empty: everyone got a touch.
The pattern
Ideal Customer filters intent. Groups carve this week's list. Lenses tell you what's actually true about the deals.
A PM running JTBD research before a roadmap commit uses the same three concepts — but the lenses she leans on are different.
Define who matters
Edit Ideal Customer for this research project: Heads of Product, mid-market SaaS, ships AI features. You don't care about deals here — you care about who counts as a valid signal. 22 people in your project match. Good enough to start.
Segment by behavior, not just fit
Create two Groups: 'Shipped AI 6mo+' and 'Considering AI.' Same ICP, different behavioral state. Two cohorts of about ten people each. Now you can compare what each group says.
Pull the patterns
Lenses → Results shows real syntheses. Customer Discovery: 'Heads of Product see model selection as the riskiest decision.' Jobs to Be Done: 'Main job — ship AI features without owning ML ops.' Product Requirements: 'Top gap is explainability for non-technical stakeholders.' Drill into JTBD to see how each of your two groups frames the job differently.
Turn signal into a brief
Combine the Customer Discovery rollup with the Product Requirements rollup and write the roadmap brief. Cite specific evidence from both groups, scoped by the same ICP, surfaced through the same lenses.
The pattern
Ideal Customer guards signal quality. Groups split the population for contrast. Lenses turn dozens of conversations into one paragraph you can act on.
A CSM watching 50 accounts uses the three concepts to surface renewal risk early and find expansion footholds — working at the account (organization) level, not just individuals.
Define what 'healthy' looks like
Open Ideal Customer and tune the criteria to your healthy-renewal profile — usage, role mix, segment. The page now shows which of your live accounts still fit. The 11 Low-band accounts are renewal risk by default.
Carve an at-risk Group
Create an organization-typed Group called 'At-risk renewals.' Rule: industry = Healthcare AND renewal in 90 days AND last touchpoint > 30 days ago. The detail page shows the orgs in one tab and 'people at these orgs' in another — your stakeholder map for the week.
Find the truth on each account
Open Lenses → Results. The Customer Discovery headline says: 'Healthcare buyers are losing exec sponsorship as IT consolidates.' That's your at-risk thesis. Drill in, filter the synthesis by the 'At-risk renewals' Group, and read the two-sentence answer per account.
Spot the expansion footholds
Make a second org Group: 'Expansion-ready' — industry = Healthcare AND user_count > 50 AND NPS_promoter = true. The Jobs to Be Done lens shows what this cohort is hiring you for next; the Product Requirements lens shows which features they've asked for. Brief your AE.
The pattern
Organization-typed Groups let you work the account, not just the person. Lenses tell you why the account behaves the way it does. ICP keeps you honest about which accounts even count.
- Don't make a Group when an ICP filter is enough. ICP-High is a group — it's just always-on.
- Don't read individual conversations when a lens rollup exists. The lens already aggregated them. Read the rollup; drill in only when you need to verify.
- Don't expect lenses to do qualification work. Sales (BANT) is the exception. The other priority lenses are discovery tools.
Build a target list for outreach
Ideal Customer → filter to High → save as Group
Find disconfirming evidence
Make a Group with ICP band ≠ High and run the same lenses
Compare two cohorts
Two Groups with the same lens applied; diff the rollup takeaways
Spot stuck deals
Sales (BANT) headline on Lenses → Results
Validate a roadmap bet
Product Requirements + Jobs to Be Done headlines, scoped by Group