I scored 6 ICPs before sending a single cold message. Here's the framework and what happened.

I've built multiple products over the past few years. Every time, I picked my target customer on gut feeling. "Developers." "Small businesses." "SaaS founders." Whatever sounded reasonable.

Every time, I wasted months messaging people who didn't care.

So for my latest product (a distribution framework for indie hackers), I decided to get systematic about it. Before sending a single outreach message, I built a scoring system and evaluated 6 different customer segments.

Here's how it works.

4 categories, 14 criteria, weighted scoring

Each potential ICP gets scored out of 115 points across:

Pain (max 32 pts) — Does the problem actually hurt? Pain intensity gets 3x weight because nothing else matters if they don't care enough to pay. I also score how often they're asking about the problem and whether it's the same recurring questions.

Fit (max 27 pts) — Can my product actually solve their problem? If yes, how well? Content richness (do they have enough material for my framework to work with) gets 3x weight here.

Business (max 35 pts) — Can they buy? Budget fit, decision speed, market size, and how easy they are to find and reach. A perfect customer you can't find is useless. Accessibility gets 2x weight.

Value (max 21 pts) — Is it worth it for me? Lead value, support cost, competitive gap. Some segments cost more to serve than they'll ever pay.

What the scores looked like

I evaluated 6 segments:

Indie hackers building AI SaaS: 94/115 (82%)
Technical founders pre-launch: 87/115 (76%)
Struggling SaaS founders post-launch: 81/115 (70%)
Developer tool creators: 76/115 (66%)
No-code/low-code founders: 68/115 (59%)
Product managers turning founders: 64/115 (56%)
The top ICP won on every category. High pain (they're bootstrapped and desperate for customers), great fit (they already understand AI tools), easy to reach (active on Twitter, IH, Reddit), and fast decision makers (solo founders who buy in hours, not weeks).

The bottom ICP had lower pain, was harder to find, and had way more competition from courses and consultants targeting the same group.

What happened when I started outreach

I sent 21 cold messages to the top ICP. Got a 35% reply rate and 2 sales at $39.

Small numbers, but the conversion rate validated the scoring. These people had the exact pain I was targeting, and they responded.

Without the scoring, I probably would have started with "all SaaS founders" because it sounds bigger. And I'd be sitting at a 2% reply rate wondering what went wrong.

The takeaway

Spend an hour scoring before you spend a month messaging. The framework isn't complicated — 4 categories, honest scoring on each criterion, weighted by importance. You don't need perfect scores. You need relative comparison between segments.

The 30-point gap between my top and bottom ICP is the difference between traction and silence.

How do you pick who to target? Do you score ICPs systematically, or do you go with gut feeling? Curious what's worked for others.