Qualify the target before the operational doctrine runs.

The Targeting Foundation runs before the three-by-three. Three steps: ICP definition (Market × Persona × Channel), GTM strategy (motion, channel, messaging, sales artifacts, qualification criteria), and stakeholder identification (User, Buyer, Sponsor, Enabler with named incentives and constraints). Operational protocols — thesis generation, scoring, coaching, disqualification — fire against a qualified target. Skip the foundation and the operational doctrine runs against a prospect the seller hasn’t qualified, producing output the seller can’t use.

ICP — Market × Persona × Channel

The Ideal Customer Profile is a triangle. Marketnames the buyers who can actually buy the product at its current form, price, and value proposition — not “everyone with the problem,” but the addressable subset with budget authority and decision velocity that match the seller’s economics. Persona names the specific role inside the market that owns the decision — not the buying committee, the role whose authority closes the deal. Channel names the reachable path from seller to persona at scale and economics that keep the doctrine viable.

All three axes required. A weak answer on any one corrupts everything downstream. A thesis aimed at the wrong market is a beautiful artifact aimed at the wrong account. A value provocation framed for the wrong persona lands as noise. Outreach via the wrong channel never arrives.

GTM — derived from ICP, not chosen separately

GTM strategy comes out of two inputs: the qualified ICP and the product or service being sold. Change either input and the GTM must be re-derived.

Five components specify a GTM: the motion (outbound new-logo, inbound qualification, expansion, renewal, winback), the channel (where the persona is reached at scale), the messaging anchor (the single argument the GTM is organized around), the sales artifacts (theses, value provocations, business cases — the deliverables the motion ships), and the qualification criteria (the bar an opportunity has to clear to count).

Sellers who try to “expand the ICP to fit the GTM we already have” are working backwards. Re-qualify the ICP if the GTM no longer serves it.

Stakeholders — User, Buyer, Sponsor, Enabler

Inside the qualified persona, four functions show up in every complex enterprise deal. The same person can play more than one. Different titles can play the same function across different deals.

• User — uses the product day-to-day. Success criterion: does the User’s daily work get measurably better?
• Buyer — holds signing authority. Success criterion: do the deal economics fit the Buyer’s budget structure?
• Sponsor — advocates for the purchase internally. Success criterion: does the Sponsor have the political capital and motivation to push through internal resistance?
• Enabler — unlocks the path (procurement, legal, IT, security, compliance). Success criterion: does the deal clear the Enabler’s checks without elongating the cycle?

For each function, name the incentive and the constraints across four dimensions: monetary (budget caps, capex/opex preference, cash flow rules), time (decision cadence, fiscal-year timing), risk (career risk, vendor concentration), feasibility (technical compatibility, integration debt). Hyper-personalization lands when the seller names the buyer’s specific incentive and the buyer’s specific constraint. Generic value propositions miss both.

Why Targeting was implicit, and now is explicit

The 3×3 always assumed a qualified target. A seller running the 3×3 against an undefined market, an unidentified persona, or an unreachable channel produces theses for the wrong accounts, profiles for the wrong stakeholders, and scores for opportunities that never should have entered the pipeline. The doctrine worked when field instinct satisfied the assumption silently. It failed silently when the assumption was wrong.

The Targeting Foundation makes the prerequisite explicit. Every operational protocol — thesis generation, value provocation, scoring, coaching, disqualification, thesis revision, convergence orchestration — verifies the target before it fires. The agent does not run operational work against an undefined target. Full stop.

How Targeting threads through the doctrine

ICP qualification feeds GTM strategy. GTM specifies which sales artifacts the motion ships. Stakeholder identification feeds the dual-frame value proposition — Cost of Inaction sourced in named peers, Value of Action anchored in the buyer’s own commitments. Movement diagnosis runs against the qualified target. Scoring composites Movement, Forward Deployment Readiness, and Velocity, then respects the Movement Floor: pre-Familiarity accounts cap regardless of how the other dimensions score.

The two tiers reinforce each other. Targeting answers who. The 3×3 runs how. Together they form the full operating doctrine.