Revenue Builders · 9 Apr 2026 · From the week of 6 April
Aligning Pipeline to Ideal Customer Profile with Dan Sperring
These are notes on the conversation, checked against its transcript. The episode itself has the full discussion.
In brief
Dan Sperring, founder and CEO of AlignICP, joins hosts John McMahon and John Kaplan to argue that an ICP should be a dynamic operating system built on use case, lifetime value and market health rather than a static firmographic profile. The conversation covers how to find use-case signal in CRM and install-base data, using firmographics as proxies, testing segments against win rates, and why out-of-ICP pipeline creates downstream problems. They also discuss the separation of sales and customer success, product-led growth telemetry, and automated SDR tools. The most important argument is that teams should define their ICP by where happy, expanding customers are, then align marketing, sales and customer success around it.
For founders
- Define the ICP by where happy, expanding customers are, then build message-market fit around that segment.
- Test each ICP segment against lifetime value, ease of winning and segment health together rather than one at a time.
- Capture use case in the CRM from SDR qualification through to close, won or lost, since Dan says it gives the strongest signal.
- Watch segment health by tracking average employee counts month over month rather than assuming a segment stays healthy.
- Consider whether customer success should exist as a separate function, which Dan argues causes more problems than it solves.
For revenue leaders
- Dan says around 70% of open pipeline can sit outside the ICP, which creates downstream problems for marketing, sales and customer success.
- Narrow the use cases you pursue to three or four so sales, marketing and product can focus on the same buyer, as John McMahon describes from BladeLogic.
- Require reps to book high-quality meetings tied to an ICP use case and do their homework before the meeting.
- Start ICP analysis from referenceable customers, typically 10 to 20 out of 2,000 in Dan's experience, and work with finance on revenue retention metrics.
- Pair AEs with clients so deal packaging does not set customers up to fail before they get started.
What was said 25, most useful first
Strong bookings growth can hide a closed-won base that is mostly outside your ICP. Listen
Dan says he spent seven years at Urban Airship, joining at around $5 million and helping scale it to about $70 million. Separately, during the COVID period, churn that moved with vaccine releases and new variants gave him a clear signal. He realised that in quarters with roughly 400% year-over-year growth, which were celebrated, about 90% of the customers closed were outside the ICP.
“we had 400% year-over-year growth, we were high-fiving the celebrating, not realizing that like 90% of the customers that were closed one were outside of ICP.”
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Define the ICP by where the happiest, expanding customers are, then optimise message-market fit to win them. Listen
Dan separates product-market fit, where customers are happy and expand, from message-market fit, where the company wins new logos. He argues most teams define their ICP by where they win, when it should be defined by where happy customers will drive future growth, and then training sellers and improving marketing to raise win rates in that segment.
“I'd argue that really what we should be doing is defining our ICPs by where we have the happiest customers that will contribute to the future growth of our business.”
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Use case is missing from around 90% of B2B SaaS CRMs, and it is where the strongest ICP signal shows up. Listen
Dan says the use case construct is missing from like 90% of CRMs, and that use case is where the strongest signal for quantifying product-market fit typically appears. He argues ICP work should start from use case, with firmographics treated as proxies for it.
“that construct of use cases and B2B SaaS are used missing from like 90% of CRMs.”
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Capture use case at two points: during SDR qualification and when the AE closes the opportunity, won or lost. Listen
Dan says some clients have SDRs capture use case during qualification, around the MQL or sales-accepted lead stage, and AEs capture it again at close, won or lost. He says use case is where they typically see the strongest signal.
“Their SDRs capture use case during the qualification process... And then they also capture it when the AE is closing the opportunity, close one, close lost.”
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Adding use case to an ICP model surfaced two of 15 use cases driving almost all revenue at an $80 million security SaaS company. Listen
Dan says a client, an $80 million SaaS company in the security industry, supports 15 use cases. Its own ICP model had weak signal until use case was added, after which two use cases drove almost all revenue: one focused on acquisition, and one a maturity model where a customer buys product A first and product B later.
“for them of the 15, there was two that was driving almost all their revenue.”
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A segment belongs in the ICP only if it is high-LTV, relatively easy to win, and sizable and healthy. Listen
Dan says an ICP segment needs three things in common: high lifetime value with happy customers who drive inbound, relative ease of winning compared with other segments, and a sizable segment that is healthy. He says the third test is the one go-to-market leaders most often miss.
“It needs to be high-LTV, happy customers that drive inbound.”
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The highest-LTV segments are often the hardest to win, which makes focusing on them risky for sales leaders. Listen
Dan says that when teams look at message-market fit metrics, the segments with the highest lifetime value are often the hardest to acquire. As an illustration, he imagines telling a sales leader to focus on segments with 25% smaller deals, 50% lower win rates and 25% more velocity, and calls that the recipe to get a sales leader fired. He says some clients chase easy wins even when their data points elsewhere.
“That's the recipe to get a sales leader fired.”
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An HR-tech client's pipeline dried up after SVB collapsed because 80% of its business came from B2B SaaS customers. Listen
Dan says the client sold to B2B SaaS companies, and its manufacturing segment stayed strong. When VC dollars dried up after Silicon Valley Bank imploded, the B2B SaaS segment became unhealthy and deals stopped closing. Dan says teams should measure whether the markets they sell into are getting better or worse.
“But 80% of their business was coming from B2B SaaS. And that was just an unhealthy market because the dollars from the VCs were drying up.”
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About 70% of open pipeline at the companies he sees sits outside the ICP. Listen
Dan says he sees something like 70% of open pipelines outside the ICP, which he links to sellers under pressure to hit their number. He says marketing often lacks the tools to create high-quality pipeline. He wants marketing to produce high-quality ICP pipeline and sellers to focus on accounts that can generate three or four times LTV.
“given the fact that we see something like 70% of open pipelines outside of ICP”
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Dan does not believe customer success should exist as a separate function, arguing it causes more problems than it solves. Listen
Dan says he spent ten years in customer success and in every fiber of his being does not believe it should exist as a function. He argues that as consumption-based models grow, value realisation has to happen every day, with no three-month window to implement and get it right.
“I don't believe CS should exist as a function. I think it's causing more problems than it is solving.”
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Narrowing from 13 use cases to three or four let sales, marketing and product focus on the same buyers. Listen
John McMahon describes joining BladeLogic, where executives listed 13 use cases on a board. He says he could not build a sales force, marketing or product to sell world-class to 13 use cases, so the team narrowed to three or four, and he would still listen to outside requests but would not point the sales team at them.
“And I said, because I can't build a sales force that can sell world-class to 13 use cases.”
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Churn in a subscription business cannot be outsold because revenue arrives monthly. Listen
Dan explains that a large expansion or early-year churn hits ARR every month afterward, so a $120,000 deal shows as about $10,000 a month of revenue. He says that timing means revenue growth within a 12-month plan is compromised, and that there is no way to sell out of churn.
“there's really no way to sell out of churn.”
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Firmographics such as industry and revenue band are often proxies for use case, though not always. Listen
Dan says firmographic data from sources such as ZoomInfo or Clay usually comes as industry, sub-industry and revenue band. He treats these as proxies for the underlying use case: verticals often buy for the same reason, and revenue band indicates which layers of a value chain matter for a market.
“the firmographics are proxy for use cases. And so when I say proxy, meaning that it's often true, but not always.”
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Track average employee counts by segment month over month to see whether a segment is contracting. Listen
Dan says one variable his team grabs is the number of employees. Accounts are grouped into segments and the average is tracked month over month, which he says helps teams get ahead of whether a segment is healthy or contracting.
“So month over month we see within As we group these accounts into segments, then we can look at what the average is.”
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Test ICP hypotheses by gathering web and job-description attributes with Clay and comparing win rates by segment. Listen
Dan says propensity-to-buy attributes such as technical team size can be gathered from websites and job descriptions, citing Clay's over 150 data sources. His method is to form a hypothesis about the variables, run them against win rates by segment and look for variation. He also includes sales cycle length as part of velocity.
“once you have a hypothesis on what those variables are, then you simply run them up against win rates. by segment”
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Start ICP analysis from the install base by asking CS which customers are referenceable, typically 10 to 20 out of 2,000. Listen
Dan says that in organisation after organisation with a base of about 2,000 customers, around 10 to 20 are referenceable and get used for analyst and investor calls. He starts by asking what those accounts have in common, then works with finance on net revenue retention for customer groups and checks win rates by segment.
“I've seen in organization after organization of a customer base of 2,000, there's typically 10 to 20 that are referenceable.”
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Dan's preferred AE comp plan would make LTV the north star rather than bookings. Listen
Dan describes LTV as factoring in retention, expansion and gross margin, and says finance teams can calculate it or his software can. He says he was told, though he calls it folklore, that Segment used LTV by segment in its comp plans. His dream is for LTV to be the north star of an AE comp plan, so sellers focus on accounts that stay and grow.
“So like that would be my dream is LTV becomes the North Star and a comp plan for an AE.”
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Dan hopes go-to-market becomes a unified function spanning marketing, sales and customer success with one owner of the journey. Listen
Dan says that chopping the customer journey into separate pieces adds complexity and incentive conflicts that do not create better companies or client outcomes. He hopes AI will help unify go-to-market, with one person responsible for the journey and for making clients successful, and describes this as a hope rather than a forecast.
“my hope is it goes full circle and it goes back to a situation where go to market, it's a unified function and it's one that spans marketing sales and customer success.”
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Deals sold without the right services and product combination can set customers up to fail before they start. Listen
Dan says a systemic issue is that pricing and packaging let AEs create deals without the right services and product mix, so clients buy and are set up to fail. He says many new business AEs never work side by side with clients, and that doing so would help them anticipate problems before the client does.
“we allow our sellers to, our AEs to create deals which without the right services and the right combination of products, our clients buy and they're ultimately set up to fail before they even get out the gate.”
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Without a product-led motion, product usage and commercial data become bifurcated, which Dan says hurts revenue leaders. Listen
Dan says a product-led motion gives telemetry that links feature use by cohort to renewal, churn or expansion outcomes. In a sales-led business the product usage and revenue data sit apart, and he says that bifurcation kills revenue leaders.
“the product usage and the commercial, you know, the growth, the revenue, they're completely bifurcated.”
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Segment got stuck moving from product-led growth into enterprise because enterprise buyers were a different persona. Listen
John Kaplan says Segment had insights from its PLG motion, but in enterprise the buyer was a different persona and the company got stymied, which is why Force Management was called. He says the fix was to bring personas into the product-led stage earlier. Dan adds that, in his experience, selling to new personas is almost a complete new-logo motion.
“But the reason why we were called is they got stymied from PLG into Enterprise.”
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Dumping raw CRM data into an LLM will probably not produce a good ICP. Listen
Dan says that in most situations taking raw CRM data and feeding it into an LLM will probably not give very good results. He argues teams should partner with finance to identify the KPIs driving the business, typically revenue metrics such as net revenue retention rather than bookings.
“I'd argue in most situations, just taking raw CRM data and throwing it into an LLM is probably not going to give you very good results.”
In a value chain, integrated models tend to win early in a market and cheaper modular models tend to win as it matures. Listen
Dan uses Apple and Android to explain value chain strategy, citing the book Innovator's Solution as the source. An integrated owner of more layers builds a better product at a higher price, while a cheaper good-enough model wins as the market matures, and he says this is how he thinks about measuring the strength of a company's value chain.
“when you have an early stage market, Apple will win every time. And then when you have a more mature market, the Google model will typically play out.”
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Sellers should do their homework and book fewer, higher-quality meetings tied to an ICP use case. Listen
McMahon says managers push reps to get more meetings, so reps go low in the org into weak use cases that later fall off the forecast. He advises going after high-quality meetings based on the ICP and doing the preparation before the meeting.
“If you're going to go in to get a meeting, go get a high quality meeting with a high quality use case based upon your ICP and do the homework before you go into the meeting.”
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Automated SDR tools that send thousands of emails without ICP knowledge get very poor click and response rates. Listen
Dan says some automated SDR companies he has spoken with do not know their ICPs, so they can send about 4,000 emails a day yet have abysmal click-through and response rates. He adds that some were interested in licensing his software. A host responds that these companies are making a bad name for all salespeople.
“they can blast 4,000 emails a day. But when you look at the click-through rates, when you look at the response rates, they're abysmal.”
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