How to describe your ideal customer in plain English
Filters can only ask about fields you already store. A description can ask what a company actually does. How to write one that returns the right people.
Filters can only ask questions about fields you already store. "Industry equals Retail" is answerable. "Sells premium food products into independent grocery stores" is not, and yet that second sentence is what your ideal customer actually is.
Wise closes that gap. Open Wise from the sidebar, or press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac), and describe the customer you want. It shows how many contacts match and how they break down, takes your corrections, and creates nothing until you approve. LeadWise then evaluates each company against your description and recalculates membership the way it does for a dynamic segment.
You can also start from Segments: choose Create segment, then Ask Wise.
What a good description contains
Four things, in roughly this order. Leave one out and the segment gets vague in exactly that dimension.
- What the company does. Not the industry label, the actual business. "Runs a chain of specialty coffee shops" beats "Food and Beverage".
- Who they sell to. A company selling to consumers and one selling to distributors are different buyers even inside the same industry.
- Their rough size or stage. "Independent, ten to fifty staff" rules out both the corner shop and the multinational.
- A disqualifier. The single highest-value sentence you can add. "Not marketplaces or resellers" removes more noise than three positive clauses.
Examples
A weak description, and the version that works.
| Weak | Why it fails | Better |
|---|---|---|
| B2B SaaS companies | Describes a business model, not a customer. Matches half the internet. | SaaS companies selling project management or scheduling tools to construction and trade businesses, 20 to 200 staff. Not general-purpose productivity tools. |
| Food brands | No buyer, no size, no disqualifier. | Independent premium food and snack brands that sell through retail grocery rather than only direct to consumer, with distribution in at least one national chain. Not private-label manufacturers. |
| Companies that need better outreach | Describes a need you have inferred, not an observable fact about the company. | Companies with an outbound sales team of three or more reps, selling a considered B2B product with a sales cycle longer than a month. |
Review the first run
The first time a description resolves, open the segment and read twenty companies. You are not checking whether every one is perfect, you are looking for a pattern in the wrong ones.
- Wrong ones share a trait your description never ruled out. Add a disqualifier.
- The list is tiny. Your description stacked so many conditions that almost nothing survives. Drop the least important one.
- The list is enormous and generic. You described a category rather than a customer. Add the buyer and the size.
Two rounds of this usually gets a description you can leave alone for months.
Do
- Describe the business, not the industry label.
- Name who the company sells to, every time.
- Add at least one explicit disqualifier.
- Read twenty results before you send anything to the list.
Don't
- Do not write a single adjective like "enterprise" and expect it to carry the whole judgement.
- Do not describe the problem you solve. The segment can see what a company is, not what it needs.
- Do not keep adding clauses when a list is too broad. One good disqualifier beats four more requirements.
- Do not launch a sequence against a brand new AI segment without reading it first.
How is this different from a dynamic segment?
A dynamic segment matches fields you already store. An AI segment evaluates what a company actually does, which is information no dropdown on your contact record holds.
Can I combine a description with normal filters?
Yes. Bounced and opted-out addresses are left out automatically, and you can ask Wise to narrow the list by any field on top of your description, such as country, company size or seniority.
Does the description keep applying to new contacts?
Yes. New contacts are evaluated against the same description, so the segment keeps finding people after you stop thinking about it.