Workshop Asset — ICP + Strategic Assessment
From first prospect to first deal — the full picture
The ICP isn't a form to fill out. It's a decision framework that answers two questions every founder must get right before they spend a dollar on sales. Everything in ardis flows from here.
The numbers game — in the funnel
Sales is a volume business with quality filters. Of every 100 prospects in your target universe, only 5 will close — and each of those 5 requires dozens of individual stakeholder conversations before the contract is signed. Without a process, this is unmanageable. With one, it's compressible.
The cost of skipping this
Founders who skip the ICP don't skip the process — they just run it on every single prospect from scratch, every time, with no shared language and no way to compare. They spend 6 months on a deal that a scorecard would have flagged as a 35% fit in week one. The ICP doesn't slow you down. It compresses the 100 prospects above the funnel into the 5 that are worth everything you have.
ardis User Guide
The User Guide covers every tool in ardis end-to-end — ICP Template, Prospect Scorecard, Stakeholders, Strategic Assessment, and POC Tracker. Open it from the Help menu inside ardis for step-by-step instructions on each feature.
These tools are not separate — they are stages in the same process. Here is how every piece connects in ardis and why the order matters.
Step 1
Customize your ICP Template
In ardis, go to the ICP Template in the sidebar. Replace every placeholder with your startup's actual requirement — starting with Segment & Market, then working through all 8 sections. This is your ICP definition. Everything downstream depends on it.
ICP Template → ardisStep 2
Transfer to Prospect ICP Scorecard
Click the "⇒ Prospect ICP Scorecard" button in the ICP Template header. This pushes your criteria into the scoring tool so every prospect is evaluated against your actual requirements — not generic examples.
⇒ Transfer button in ardisStep 3
Add prospects to Pipeline
Go to Pipeline → Add Prospect Company. Enter company name, opportunity description, and stage. Every prospect gets its own ICP Scorecard, Stakeholder map, Strategic Assessment, and POC Tracker inside ardis.
Pipeline → ardisStep 4
Score each prospect
Open a prospect from the Pipeline, go to the ICP Scorecard tab. Score 0 / 1 / 2 per criterion. The overall % ICP fit calculates automatically and appears in the Pipeline table for comparison across all prospects.
Prospect ICP Scorecard tabStep 5
Map stakeholders
Inside each prospect, the Stakeholders tab maps every person touching the deal. You need at minimum: 1 Economic Buyer, 1 Technical Buyer, 1 Champion. Fewer than 3 stakeholders = the deal is fragile.
Stakeholders tab in ardisStep 6
Strategic Analysis + POC Tracker
Required for every deal closing in under 100 days. The Strategic Assessment in ardis lives inside each prospect — account details, stakeholders, and pipeline data are already there when you open it. Track every pilot in the POC Tracker with defined success criteria before day one.
Strategic Assessment + POC TrackerThe founder trap to avoid
Most technical founders skip Steps 1 and 2 and jump straight to scoring prospects. That's backwards. The ICP definition is the compiler — if you haven't written it, every score you produce is garbage in, garbage out. Block 90 minutes in this workshop just on Steps 1 and 2. Everything else gets faster once those are locked.
The Prospect ICP Scorecard in ardis evaluates 8 dimensions in this order — starting with market fit before drilling into organizational and deal mechanics. Total: 90 points.
Why this order
Segment & Market comes first because the biggest disqualifier is market fit — not deal mechanics. If the segment is wrong, none of the other sections matter. Primary Use Case comes second to force a specific problem statement before you assess whether the org can buy you. The deal mechanics (Champion, Economic Buyer, Technical Buyer, Integration, Procurement) come last because they are only worth assessing once you know the market and problem are real.
Build this reference profile of your ideal first customer before opening the Prospect ICP Scorecard in ardis. The sections below follow the exact same order as the 8 ICP scoring dimensions — so every answer you write here maps directly to a row in the scorecard. A specific person, at a specific company, with a specific costly problem. Vague answers produce bad ICP scores.
Workshop instruction
Have every founder fill this in before opening the Prospect ICP Scorecard in ardis. Each section maps directly to a scoring dimension in the scorecard — so a blank row here is a discovery gap, not a form problem. Use the empties as your coaching agenda: go find the answer before scoring any real prospect.
Required for every deal expected to close in under 100 days. In ardis, the Strategic Assessment lives inside each prospect alongside the ICP Scorecard, Stakeholders, and POC Tracker. When you add a prospect, the opportunity, stakeholders, and their priorities in ardis, the 🟢 green fields are populated for you automatically — no separate data entry. 🟡 Yellow fields require your strategic judgment. 🔴 Red sections are deal-critical. See the ardis User Guide for a full walkthrough of the Strategic Assessment.
The 5 questions this answers
① Is the problem real and urgent? ② Do we have power coverage? ③ Is technical validation progressing? ④ Is there a clear path to a paid pilot? ⑤ Would I tell investors this is real?
The Pipeline in ardis is your shared prospect list. Click any row to open the full account detail. Three example prospects showing the required specificity in each column.
| Account | Opportunity / use case | Stage | Champion | Econ. buyer | Tech. valid. | Next critical step | Biggest risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Ocean | Quantum-safe encryption POC – Financial Services Division | POC | Y | Y | N | Finalize POC success metrics with CTO | Security review backlog; no dedicated timeline |
| Hygieia Research | Drug discovery simulation – Oncology R&D | Proposal | Y | N | N | Get tech validation done; align on innovation budget | No confirmed economic buyer yet |
| Volaro | Aerospace materials optimization – Advanced Mfg | Proposal | Y | Y | Y | Schedule legal review kickoff | Procurement cycle may push to Q2 |
What each column should surface in a pipeline review