The Q3 product launch had everything going for it. New features that customers had literally requested in win/loss interviews. Competitive differentiation that sales was excited about. A GTM plan that everyone—product, marketing, sales—had signed off on after months of alignment work.
We'd even done the hard work of ICP definition. Not the lazy kind where marketing writes a document and throws it over the wall. The rigorous kind. Cross-functional workshops. Data analysis of our best customers. Persona development based on actual customer research. Agreement from all stakeholders that we were targeting "mid-market B2B SaaS companies, 100-500 employees, with dedicated RevOps teams."
Launch day arrived. Marketing executed the campaign flawlessly. Thousands of impressions, hundreds of demo requests, strong engagement metrics across every channel.
Then sales started working the pipeline.
Within two weeks, we had a problem. Sales was rejecting 60% of the leads as "not qualified." Marketing was furious—these leads matched the ICP perfectly. Sales insisted they didn't.
The VP of Sales and CMO scheduled an emergency meeting. I pulled the ICP document we'd all agreed on three months earlier. Both of them had signed it. Both of them swore they were following it.
That's when I realized: they were both right. And that was the problem.
The Deck That Revealed Everything
I asked product, marketing, and sales to each build a quick deck answering one question: "Show me three examples of companies that fit our ICP."
Product went first. They showed three logos I recognized from our enterprise trial program:
- A Series C SaaS company with 200 employees (perfectly within our 100-500 range)
- Building developer tools (B2B, check)
- With a two-person ops team handling sales ops, marketing ops, and CS ops (RevOps team, check)
"Perfect ICP," product said. "They're exactly who we built the new features for."
Sales went next. They showed three different logos:
- A Series B SaaS company with 350 employees (within range)
- Selling HR software to enterprise customers (B2B, check)
- With a dedicated six-person RevOps department reporting to the CRO (RevOps team, check)
"This is our ICP," sales said. "This is who we can actually close six-figure deals with."
Marketing went last. They showed three more logos:
- A profitable bootstrapped SaaS company with 120 employees (within range)
- Serving mid-market ecommerce brands (B2B, check)
- With one Director of Revenue Operations who built the tech stack from scratch (RevOps team, check)
"These companies engage with every piece of our content," marketing said. "They're clearly our ICP."
All nine companies fit our written ICP definition. Zero overlap between the three groups.
Product was targeting companies that needed the features but had no budget. Sales was targeting companies with budget but no need for the features. Marketing was targeting companies that loved our content but weren't ready to buy.
We'd spent three months getting everyone to agree on words. We'd spent zero time getting everyone to agree on what those words actually meant.
The Four Definitions of "Mid-Market"
After that meeting, I went hunting for where the misalignment started. Turned out, it was in the very first phrase: "mid-market B2B SaaS companies."
Product's definition of mid-market: Companies that have outgrown basic tools but can't afford enterprise prices. The "squeezed middle" that's underserved by both startup-focused and enterprise-focused vendors.
Sales's definition of mid-market: Companies with $20M-$100M in revenue. Not SMB (too small to have budget), not enterprise (too many decision-makers and too slow to close). The "sweet spot" for deal size and sales cycle length.
Marketing's definition of mid-market: Companies with 100-500 employees. Not startups (too early, high churn), not large enterprises (different buying process). The "goldilocks zone" for our content and messaging.
Finance's definition of mid-market: Companies that can pay $50K+ ACV. Not small deals (too expensive to acquire relative to revenue), not huge deals (too much risk concentration).
Same term. Four different operational definitions. Everyone thought we were aligned because we all used the same vocabulary.
The "RevOps Team" Disaster
The mid-market discrepancy was bad. But the "RevOps team" requirement was worse.
Product meant: someone whose job includes thinking about revenue operations, even if it's 20% of their responsibilities along with sales ops, marketing ops, and customer success ops.
Sales meant: a formal RevOps department with multiple specialized roles—sales ops analyst, marketing ops analyst, CS ops analyst, maybe a data engineer. Minimum three people with "operations" in their title reporting to a VP or Director of RevOps.
Marketing meant: someone with "RevOps" or "Revenue Operations" in their LinkedIn title, regardless of whether they were a solo practitioner or part of a larger team.
When we launched the campaign, marketing targeted anyone with "RevOps" in their title. This generated thousands of leads. About 30% were solo operators at companies with $5M ARR who could never afford our product. Another 40% were part of loosely defined "ops teams" that didn't have budget authority or strategic remit. Maybe 30% matched what sales actually wanted.
Sales rejected 70% of the leads as unqualified. Marketing pointed at the ICP document: "We're targeting companies with RevOps teams. These people have RevOps in their title. What's the problem?"
The problem was that we'd agreed on the label without agreeing on what the label meant.
What Gartner Won't Tell You
There's a reason this keeps happening. Gartner's 2025 research on product marketing leaders identifies "unified GTM strategy" as a critical trend. Fifty percent of tech CMOs cite poor cross-functional collaboration as a top barrier to growth.
The recommended solution: more alignment meetings. Better ICP documentation. Shared definitions of target audiences.
What Gartner doesn't tell you: written definitions don't solve this problem. Because the misalignment isn't about vocabulary. It's about what success looks like for each function.
Product defines ICP around fit: which customers have the problems our product solves most effectively?
Sales defines ICP around closability: which customers can we actually close, renew, and expand with acceptable CAC and sales cycle length?
Marketing defines ICP around engagement: which customers engage with our content, respond to our campaigns, and convert at healthy rates?
Customer Success defines ICP around retention: which customers stick around, realize value, and don't churn after six months?
Finance defines ICP around economics: which customers hit our target ACV, profit margin, and payback period?
These are different questions. They produce different answers. Getting everyone to agree on words like "mid-market" and "RevOps team" without reconciling these underlying differences just creates the illusion of alignment.
The Spreadsheet Exercise That Fixed It
After the failed launch post-mortem, I proposed something that felt uncomfortably concrete: we're going to build a shared spreadsheet with fifty real company logos and collectively decide whether each one is in or out of our ICP.
Not hypothetically. Not "companies like this." Actual logos from our CRM, our trial database, our marketing automation system.
The rules were simple:
- Every company gets reviewed by product, sales, marketing, and customer success
- Each function marks it green (strong yes), yellow (maybe), or red (no)
- We only advance if all four functions agree on green
- Any red from any function moves it to the "not our ICP" column
- Yellows require discussion until we resolve to green or red
The first ten companies took ninety minutes. Product marked a company green. Sales marked it red. Marketing marked it yellow. CS marked it green.
The argument started immediately. But this time it was productive, because we were arguing about a specific company with actual data, not abstract definitions.
"Why is this company red for sales?" "Because they have two users and $3M ARR. They'll never hit our $50K ACV target."
"Why is it green for product?" "Because they have the exact problem our new features solve. The product-market fit is perfect."
"So what do we do with companies that have perfect fit but can't afford us?" "We don't target them for new customer acquisition. Maybe we target them for a freemium/PLG motion later."
That single conversation clarified something three months of ICP documentation hadn't: we needed two different ICPs. One for enterprise sales motion (what sales cared about). One for product-led growth motion (what product cared about). Trying to collapse them into a single "ICP" was creating the misalignment.
By company thirty, the pattern was clear:
Sales ICP (enterprise motion):
- $20M+ revenue
- 5+ person RevOps team
- Existing tech stack budget
- Complex workflows that require enterprise features
PLG ICP (product-led motion):
- $3M-$20M revenue
- 1-3 person ops team
- Limited budget, high DIY orientation
- Simpler workflows, need core features
Both were "mid-market B2B SaaS companies with RevOps teams." But the operational reality was completely different.
The Uncomfortable Question Nobody Wanted to Answer
The dual-ICP revelation created a new problem: we didn't have the resources to pursue both ICPs simultaneously.
Our sales team was built for enterprise motion—long cycles, high touch, relationship-driven. They couldn't efficiently work $20K deals with solo operators.
Our product was priced for enterprise motion—$50K+ ACV with implementation services. We didn't have a self-serve option or transparent pricing for smaller companies.
Our marketing was schizophrenic—some campaigns targeted enterprise, some targeted smaller companies, most tried to do both and satisfied neither.
Clarifying the two ICPs forced the question we'd been avoiding: which one are we actually going after?
Product wanted the PLG ICP. More companies, faster feedback loops, higher velocity innovation.
Sales wanted the enterprise ICP. Bigger deals, more predictable revenue, better economics.
Marketing was split. Brand building favored enterprise. Demand gen favored PLG.
Finance wanted whichever one had better unit economics, but we didn't have clean data to answer that question because we'd been mixing both motions together.
The CEO finally made the call: enterprise ICP for the next eighteen months, with a parallel investment in building PLG capability that would launch in 2026.
This meant explicitly saying no to thousands of potential customers who fit our product but not our GTM motion. Product hated it. But it clarified everything.
What We Actually Changed
With a single, clearly defined enterprise ICP, the alignment problems mostly disappeared:
Marketing stopped generating leads sales couldn't close. We narrowed targeting to companies with $20M+ revenue and 5+ person ops teams. Lead volume dropped 60%. Qualified pipeline increased 40%.
Sales stopped rejecting qualified leads. When marketing sent over a lead from a company with $30M revenue and an eight-person RevOps team, sales knew it was worth working.
Product stopped building features for customers we weren't targeting. The PLG features got pushed to the 2026 roadmap. The enterprise features that sales needed got prioritized.
Customer Success stopped onboarding customers with bad fit. We implemented qualification criteria at the trial stage. Companies below our ICP thresholds got pointed to alternative solutions or waitlisted for the PLG motion.
The short-term cost was real. We turned away business. We frustrated people who wanted to buy but didn't fit the ICP. We had tough conversations with champions at companies we'd decided not to target.
But the efficiency gains were dramatic. Sales cycles dropped from 120 days to 75 days. Win rates increased from 18% to 31%. Churn on new customers decreased from 22% to 9%.
Turns out a real ICP—one that everyone not only agrees on but defines the same way—produces better outcomes than a fake ICP that creates the illusion of alignment without the reality of it.
The Real Reason Companies Avoid This
Six months after the ICP realignment, I talked to a friend running product marketing at a similar company. They were going through the exact same problem—sales and marketing agreeing on ICP language but targeting completely different customers.
I told him about the logo spreadsheet exercise. He loved it. "We should do this."
Two months later, I checked in. "Did you run the exercise?"
"We started it," he said. "Got through ten companies. Then the VP of Sales stopped it."
"Why?"
"Because it revealed that half the sales team was working deals outside our ICP and hitting quota anyway. If we enforce the real ICP, those reps miss their number and we miss the revenue target for the quarter."
That's the real reason most companies don't fix this problem. It's not that they can't define their ICP precisely. It's that defining it precisely requires saying no to revenue, and nobody wants to be responsible for that decision.
It's easier to maintain the fiction that everyone's aligned on "mid-market B2B SaaS companies with RevOps teams" while product, sales, and marketing each pursue different customer segments. Less efficient, more frustrating, but politically safer.
The companies that fix this are the ones willing to make the uncomfortable tradeoff: accept short-term revenue loss for long-term GTM efficiency.
And that requires something most companies don't have: leadership willing to choose who not to serve.
For teams trying to maintain true GTM alignment while tracking how buyer priorities shift across different segments, platforms like Segment8 help surface when your sales, marketing, and product teams are seeing different signals from the market—the early warning system that your ICP alignment is breaking down.
The Test You Can Run This Week
You don't need to launch a failed product to discover this problem. You can diagnose it in one meeting.
Pull together product, sales, and marketing. Give them all the same exercise: "Write down five company logos that represent our ideal customer. Real companies, not hypotheticals. Companies you'd be thrilled to win."
If the three lists have significant overlap, your ICP alignment is real.
If the lists are completely different, your ICP alignment is fiction.
Most companies will have completely different lists. Because most ICP definitions are just vocabulary agreements that paper over fundamental disagreements about who you're actually serving.
The question is whether you're willing to do something about it.
Because Gartner is right: 50% of tech companies cite poor cross-functional collaboration as a barrier to growth.
But the solution isn't more alignment meetings.
It's the courage to make real alignment painful enough that everyone has to mean the same thing when they say they agree.