Your GTM Is Not Broken. Your ICP Is.

Every founder I talk to who is frustrated with growth says the same thing: "Our pipeline is weak."

They're rarely right about the cause.

Weak pipeline is a symptom. The disease is usually a blurry ICP — an Ideal Customer Profile that sounds specific but isn't.

"Mid-market SaaS companies in Europe" is not an ICP. It's a market segment. The difference matters enormously when you're building a go-to-market.

What a real ICP looks like

A real ICP has three layers:

1. Firmographic — size, sector, geography, growth stage

2. Situational — what is happening inside the company right now that makes them ready to buy

3. Behavioural — how they evaluate, who decides, what they've tried before

Most GTM strategies are built on layer one only. That's why they underperform.

When you add layer two and three, something changes. You stop targeting a list and start recognising a moment. Your messaging gets sharper. Your outbound hits harder. Your close rate goes up — not because you got better at selling, but because you stopped selling to the wrong people.

The test

Ask your sales team: "What has to be true inside a company for them to buy from us within 90 days?"

If the answers vary wildly, or if nobody can answer quickly, your ICP isn't built yet.

Fix the ICP before you fix the funnel. Fix the funnel before you hire more sales.

Sequence matters.