New Segment, New Problems: How to Expand GTM | E112 with Anastasia Albert

Going after a new segment sounds sexy… until you actually try to do it. 😅
 New vertical, new geography, new buyer, new motion — and suddenly everything breaks: messaging, pricing, onboarding, customer success, and your sanity.

In this episode, Emma and Ruta are joined by Anastasia, founder of B2B Practitioners, to talk about when segment expansion is actually smart — and when it’s a fast track to chaos (especially in seed and Series A land).

Marketing confession of the episode:
 Anastasia changed lead scoring in HubSpot and accidentally applied it to older contacts… nuking the MQL and SQL stages. Reversible, but emotionally scarring.

We get into:
 ✅ The first question to ask: why do you want a new segment — and have you actually exhausted the current one?
 ✅ The 18-month reality test: how likely are you to win this segment in the next year and a half?
 ✅ ICP validation when you have no customers there yet: 10 to 15 interviews, then patterns and buying triggers
 ✅ Disqualifying hard: why 60 percent ICP fit should often be a no
 ✅ Expansion myths: “Let’s just break into the US” and why CAC and competition explode
 ✅ Partnerships and relationships: the fastest way into a segment (and why cold entry is brutal)
 ✅ AI positioning: “AI-enabled” is not differentiation — outcomes are
 ✅ Product vs marketing: how to spot a product-market fit problem (Sean Ellis test, discount dependence, early churn)
 ✅ Service vs software tension: when customers want the service but investors want SaaS ARR
 ✅ Operational readiness: what must change across product, pricing, marketing, sales, and CS when you pick a new segment
 ✅ The vertical-agnostic trap: why “we can sell to everyone” usually means wasted spend and worse retention
 ✅ Healthy churn: why letting bad-fit customers go can actually strengthen your brand and flywheel

If your team is about to say “Let’s go after a new segment” — play this first. It’ll save you six months of pain.

#B2BMarketing #GTM #StartupMarketing #ICP #ProductMarketFit #ABM #MarketingStrategy #RevOps #AIinMarketing

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing. 

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Transcript

0:00

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Blame It on Marketing with Emma and Ruta. And today we are gonna talk about going after a new segment and whether it's actually possible or not. And we are joined by the awesome Anastasia who yeah, introduce yourself to everyone. Hi, yeah, thank you for having me on the show. I'm Anastasia, I'm the founder of B2B Practitioners. We are a boutique go to market advisory for tech companies, B2B focused tech companies, mainly working with series A and B. before that I was on the venture capital side for quite some time working for Project A Ventures as head of marketing. I led the growth marketing team at X Central in ERP system that is funded by Sequoia Capital. and yeah, before that a lot of different stations in startups and scale-ups that had also a bunch of exits. to major corporates and yeah happy to be here. lovely to have you. Someone very much more reflective than us once told us that because we work with like seeds series A, Series B, they're like, you're just masochistic, and we were like, we never thought about it that way. So welcome to the club, Anastasia. Um, welcome to the masochism club. as normal, we would love to hear your marketing confessions or what's something that you fucked up royally that you want to get off your chest and share with us. Do we have to do this? well I once changed the lead scoring in HubSpot and I accidentally pushed it on yeah older contacts as well so it fucked up the whole kind of MQL SQL stages quite a bit. So yeah that was My confession that was n not good, but yeah, at least you could revert it back, but it was a bit confusing for everyone. In the moment it's the panic, isn't it, of like no yes. of the love HubSpot. You can revert stuff, but also like it's not like you're just like, click the previous version. Like you have to do a whole thing, which which I understand why some people are scared of it and want Salesforce, because Salesforce is a whole other, you know, management system for reverting to things. But anyway, I like that one. I don't think we've had a lead score confession before. I think this is a first. Very good. Very good. but also I think it is a good one because I think it's su it's such a common thing that we're all working on. So I think, you know, also they have changed the lead scoring in HubSpot, how you set it up. It's very different these wonder I wonder if we could still do that. Maybe I'll try, who knows? not with my own data as well, with someone else's. The reason we wanted to talk about this subject, obviously, Anastasia, you're a go-to-market genius. and this is a conversation that happens a lot, especially in startup land. and especially when someone gets a new funding round, I think the initial thought is let's go after a new segment, whether that's let's go for after if you're in the UK, let's go after the US, or let's go after another industry vertical. There's a lot to do that. and so we wanted to talk through the kind of practicalities of that. So, talk to us about when a company decides. it wants to go after a new segment. What are some of the like first questions they should really be asking themselves about why they want to do it and what are some of the like tactical things they should be thinking through when they do decide to do it. Yeah, I think the why question is the most important one. I think most of the companies that want to go for a new segment haven't actually exhausted their segment that they're already targeting, right? So I would say especially if you're early stage, you shouldn't do it. Period. I mean unless Great advice. Don't. would you define as early stage? obviously if you're very, very early stage, right? Seed pre-seed, you first need to define a segment, right? A segment. so not a new segment, but something that you want to focus on. and then once your series Later stage series B, for example, C, then it might make sense to move into a new segment once you've exhausted your existing ones or once you cross the chasm to speak in Moores' language in your current segment. I mean, but the questions that you need to ask obviously, and this is Whether you're going for a segment or a new segment, is how likely can you win the segment within the next 18 months? how strong is the pain in the segment, right? what is the need of the segment? So, what will the product need to be? how do you need to adapt the product differently for the segment? Also, what is the willingness to pay, right? So For example, we had a a company that in the HR Tech space, Series B, they were quite good in acquiring mid market and enterprise customers. So they they were good in their segment, right? And and suddenly they wanted to go for the smaller smaller companies and do PLG, product led growth. So essentially completely new motion. Completely new go to market, right? so then obviously, you need to think about okay, what's the willingness to pay in this segment? Do I need to adjust something there? and then also does this market continue to grow in the future? Is growing, right? That's also I think an interesting one. For example, everyone is proclaiming SaaS is gonna die. Are you focusing on SaaS? Are you focusing now on AI native companies? That could be a question. and then also do do you have a lighthouse customer in this segment already? Do you see some traction, right? and and then lastly, how do you know that it will work? So defining some success metrics upfront. So I would say these are the the questions. And I I think it's true for whether you're kind of defining a new ICP on an early customer profile or you want to go for a new segment. Very wise words. I'm so glad you mentioned Crossing the Chasm, by the way. I have met very few CEOs and business leaders that actually reference it. I think I think a lot of them kind of reference it a little bit naturally, but I think it's very much underutilized and it's such a great framework. If if you haven't read it, if you're listening, please go read it. It's like a three hour read, it's really fast. but I was wondering if you have any examples of where you're having these conversations with your potential clients and there's just really bad whys like what is a complete red flag to you immediately that like this is just not gonna work out Mm, I mean once you start going into the data, right? you see that for example the new segment that they want to go after is churning Or you look at closed lost reasons and the smaller segment is actually deciding that it's too expensive or the price is the decisive factor. Although it could also be that they're not bringing the value across properly, but So I think once you start digging into the data, obviously if you're early stage you won't have that much data, but in our case, talking about this series B company, they already had quite some some data. I have also another example w in the compliance space where Regulation was coming up to make websites more accessible, and they were like, okay, now we have to go for three different segments or even four, because this disregulation affects everyone. and then yeah, I was also looking at closed lost reasons and saw, okay. But I mean this the smaller segment they they most often say okay price is an issue etc and also the regulation has also a threshold, right? You if you're a 10 person company, you don't need to do this. So there's still an ICP, an ideal customer profile, and there there's there is a non-ICP that you want to disqualify. And typically what we say it's a bit like an onion right so 100% of iCP that is the segment we're building our product for eighty percent icp fit we still want to get the handraisers and we obviously yeah 100% ICP we we target those companies and then if if it's only sixty percent iCP fit you should rather disqualify it because you will spend way too much time on those companies. the sales cycle will be way too long. and then it's yeah, you have to focus your team, right? so they cannot do everything. Um you're gonna break someone's mind with a fifty percent disqualify 'cause sixty percent excuse me disqualify hates that, but don't we know between the three of us that that's the truth? I was actually gonna say as well, one of the things that I was thinking about as you were saying that, Anastasia, is also like cost of acquisition. That's a massive problem. So like let's what we have seen more typically, I think, is where you've been in the UK and then you're like, we're gonna go break America. Because we can just do that because someone sold you on a dream that that's possible. And what people haven't realized is marketing in America is like 5x more expensive, you know, it's five times, 10 times more competitive, it's you haven't got people on the ground. So there are like there are like like you say, there's almost like a structure of like questions that you need to ask yourself. One of those is have you actually modelled how much it's gonna cost to acquire those businesses? Also I would always say, like, what relationships do you have with people in the segment as well? Like, I think that's a really important question. Cause you were talking about the lighthouse customers, but also even amongst the team, like, are there partners, are there like other collaborators that you have that are like actually involved in that segment? Like, I'm working with a client at the moment who one of their partners has got great relationships with huge enterprises because he's worked in them and they've now built a partnership. So of course they can go into that enterprise segment because he's selling it in. So he's doing the job for them. But that is purely based on the relationship, right? Otherwise there would be no there would be no way that you would be able to enter that enterprise segment. And I don't think people think that's with going from like mid market to enterprise. Most peop like most companies are in mid market, they're like, Let's just get bigger customers. They'll pay more money. That must be easy. But the cost of acquiring an enterprise is like Yeah. the cost goes up, the everything, the type of people you need on the team goes up, like everything, the infrastructure you need to service those clients changes. There's a whole There's a whole like operational part, which actually we're gonna talk about later, so I'm not gonna skip too far. But let's talk about ideal customer profiles a little bit, because we've already touched on those and they're really important. So if you are gonna go after a new segment and it's not a proven segment, but you've ticked some of those initial questions off where you can say, like, okay, we actually think going after this segment's a good idea, how do you actually validate an ICP for a new segment if you haven't really got any customers in that space already? Mm-hmm. Yeah, if you haven't got any customers in that space, otherwise you can pull obviously your your customer data, then we always go out and talk to the segment, right? So really try to get at least, I don't know, 10, 15 interviews to understand okay, what are what are their problems. What are they using now? How do they solve those problems now? Is there maybe already a a competitor or even like a workaround, right? It doesn't always need to be a direct competitor. It's always just like, I'm using, you know, some kind of workaround with Excel and Claude or whatever whatever. and then yeah, so essentially try to to to understand their pains, how they work now, what solutions they might already evaluate or might not, maybe they they they're not solution aware, they're not problem aware. we don't know that, right? And then that's kind of the qualitative part, of course, if depending on your company stage again You would also do a bit of a quantitative analysis, but if you're early stage, I think the interviews would already be telling you a lot. And then you you look for similarities, right? So how can you group them? what do they have in common? Like any firmographics, any buying triggers I mean there's the obvious things like revenue, employee size, but there's also triggers like okay they're a hiring or they just raised the series A and they want yeah to expand their team or have a a certain problem right they have go to market they have product market fit but not no go to market fit and so on and so forth. So yeah th those would be kind of the the company level signals and I would also look for negative flags, right? So we definitely look at things that if we hear those then we want to disqualify as quickly as possible. Very sensible advice. I'm really enjoying this conversation. I'm like, it's so nice to talk to somebody who actually wants to validate this stuff before doing it. So not the norm. I don't think I've ever had such a sensible conversation about going after a segment without feeling like I'm losing my mind. So it's quite nice. There's a there's a lot of divisions with going off to new segments, I main problem. Absolutely. So one of the things that is obviously impacting most tech companies is AI so whether you now have to put AI powered on on every sentence in your website or you are actually doing something cool with AI, how does that change things? are we going after companies that work with AI now? Are we s positioning ourselves as an AI company? Have what kind of like I guess examples or or experiences have you had with that in the last couple of years since ChatGPT blew up? yeah, that's a that's a good one. I I feel like everyone is just putting AI enabled onto it. but I think it it's not always good to be honest. But maybe I'll talk a little bit about how we are approaching positioning. So typically what we do is analyze the competition and then write for basically every competitive alternative and that can be obviously direct competitors but also your yeah do nothing right that's the most most important actually competitive alternative and I feel like in today's market it's very very much the case that people just don't decide because they're a bit of Okay, can I build this with Claude maybe? And so yeah so you need to be aware of of of how people are solving it right now. And then for each competitive alternative, we look for okay, what's the unique attributes of my software, right? based on on that alternative. then we we look for value and proof. So typically this needs to be justifiable numbers right so you your saving time, your saving costs, so something that we can quantify, we can prove and which is objective and not subjective. and then typically also look for relevant trends so wh to create urgency. So why now? Why should you decide for the solution now? And and then we come up with this value proposition that is typically two pillars. One the first pillar is typically you define your category for people that might now solve the the the issue through pen and paper or do nothing or Excel or any other kind of a scrappy way. And then the second pillar is actually where you differentiate yourself against your direct competitors, and where you put in the value improve and you you show how you're different from similar solutions. and yeah and coming back to that question, I I think If you're in certain industries, this could rather be a negative lag because you people are like, Okay, GDPR, my god, the data is going to the LLMs or what whatever. so you need to really again be be careful and and also I mean I th I think by now it's a standard feature in the in each product, to have AI capabilities, right? So I don't think it's it's a huge differentiator by now, to be honest. so Yeah, you you need more than than that, right? yeah. I also it's that thing of saying if if the if the if you know what the challenges are that your audience have and your customers have and AI is part of that solution, I think my you know, my view is always if that is part of the solution that's fine if you can articulate why it's part of the solution to the problem that they have. If it isn't, it doesn't need to go in there. You know. we always say like don't s cite your features, right? So um of course like you need to you need to make sure that they get the value. So what's the outcome that you're selling, right? You're selling an outcome. I don't care if it's AI or not AI, I want a certain thing to be to certain job to be done. So yeah. Yeah, always. Always lead with the problem. I think that's why it's interesting, isn't it? Because when it comes to like other types of marketing, like even just B to C it's so obvious that that's the way that people buy and I think in B2B in particular, we kind of forget that. It's like there's still humans with problems buying your thing. And that's why they bought the thing, because they want to make their life easier. it's usually the f the the sort of basic basic um like reasons for buying new product product or service, right? Um so when it comes to kind of product market fit, because again this is another problem we always talk about on this podcast, Anastasia, that you can't outmarket a bad product. It's quite hard to do that. so when you are entering a new segment, like what are some of the ways that you could potentially figure out if it's the product or if it's the marketing? I mean the the really quick one is if you see there's great retention, but yeah, customers love it once they have it, but you can't get enough of the rights once. There could be rather marketing problem. if you can get people in but they don't stick, that's typically a product market fit problem. Or they don't use it enough or yeah, they churn. So I think a a great test is the Sean Ellis test. you probably know that one. so if you ask your this sp specific segment, how disappointed would you be if this product wouldn't exist any longer? And if 40% need to say that they would be very disappointed, then you kind of have product market fit. if not, yeah, and and then yeah, you have to obviously do it on your segment. So other red flags I would say are the sales cycles are extending. even if you have good enablement, every deal requires some kind of customization or you need to discount every time to close the deal. And we know that this is a a common one. Like almost everyone is discounting. you have high churn in the first, I don't know, 90 days or so. Yeah, so so I would say these are the the the ones where you say, okay, this is probably a product market fit problem. Absolutely. I haven't thought about that question too much. So it's nice to have some like pointers because you t you tend to like feel it a little bit, you know what I mean? Where you're like, oof, there's there's something up here, like I don't know if it's the marketing, but it's good to have like some specific numbers to to fall back on. Um, because yeah, marketing fit products is so hard. in an ideal world, you know, if you've got that kind of like if product and marketing are close, which I would like to see more of in organizations, I don't see a lot of that to be honest. Even when there's a product marketer, I'm like, we're not cl as close as we could be. And I think, you know, like marketing has the ability to help with product market fit because we can obviously feed into, we can feed back a lot of the information, a lot of the data that tells you whether the product market fit is right. Some of the things you're talking about, Anastasia, like, I don't know, like even if you keep trying to run like G2 review campaigns and you never get any. reviews out of anybody, it's highly unlikely that it's just the marketing that's the problem. You know, like I think you can take there are things that we are doing where you can take indication like from what we're doing. Even if your website's got terrible conversion rates, but you're really clear on your website about what you do and you get lots of traffic and you get lots of people clicking around Mm-hmm. No, I think there's there are there are signs I think that you could be using and I I I'll be honest, like I definitely don't use those enough in conversations with people about product because No, don't get asked. Yeah. But we could be having we could initiate some of those conversations, couldn't we as marketers? We could be the ones who are like, okay, I've got a set of metrics from marketing that to tell us whether there's a product issue or not. Um and then obviously you go out and validate it with some of the the numbers that Anastasia's talking about. But you can you can like you say, if you want to, I guess, put your finger on the feeling that you're talking about router, that's the way to do it, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, agreed. Absolutely. So another example maybe as well, with a customer of ours where I went out to talk to their customers, like different segments as well, smaller ones, bigger ones. and the customers basically all told me, Yeah, we're actually not really using the software we're using because they had a bit of a software plus service approach. So mm and and most of the smaller companies were only using this the service approach. So data protection officer and not the data protection software. And I was like, okay, but you want to be a software co company. so we need to figure out who actually uses the software more, who are the power users who actually get value out of it. And so So then we discovered that it only makes sense to automate these data privacy things. once you're a bigger company, you're rather mid-market where you have already legal person that struggles with these problems. And w and if you're small you're like, I don't care, like I have the d data protection officer, you'll figure it out. I don't wanna to do anything with it, right? So and that was clearly okay, we apparently don't have product market fit in this particular segment. I want to ask you a question about that, Anastasia, because obviously Root and I do work predominantly with SaaS as well. and there is usually a plus service bit in there. And I have seen the exact example that you're talking about play out where people want the service first and they want the software second, and sort of the software is a bit of a like extra added extra. But then what happens is there's pressure from the VCs in the board, um, with the CEO or the founder because they're they're like, no, we only want to invest where you've got ARR and yeah, and and service doesn't fall into the ARR category. So how do you tackle that kind of conundrum? Because that is that is quite common. yes, yes. I mean again I I would try to identify the segment that will most likely benefit from your software right and and I think you can basically like the criteria that I said okay is it a a particular vertical right do they have a particular problem is it certain size of people certain revenue or maybe also the team size from from when they need something like that right for example we also have with this HR software for example they only needed a talent acquisition suite once they actually had a VP of talent acquisition, right? and then they they they were ready for it. So but yeah it's it's quite interesting actually now with all the AI stuff that you you you almost get like the service component first so peop Some companies even do this forward deployed engineering bit where they go in, they say, Okay, we offer you as a service, we will co develop something and then we'll see what kind of use case and build build it for you customizable. I think that changed a little bit a little bit, but if you're a SaaS and you do mostly service, that's a bit of a tricky one, I would say. Yeah, yeah. feel like a lot of service companies also get funding to then turn into SaaS companies. Um true. also a tricky one because again the clients that you were servicing as a service company, there's a lot of service in that, um, are probably not the same clients that are gonna want software because actually like the notion of do it yourself versus someone else doing it for you is already like very different, right? Different persona, different different needs. So yeah, we we see that a lot as well. So let's go back to something that we alluded to earlier, which is operational readiness. what are some of the operational, I guess, checks and commitments that you need to think about before you try to break into a new segment. So resources, process, people, what what are those? Systems. Yes, so I think the first thing you need to be aware of once you identified a new segment or you decided to go for a new segment, this changes your whole go to market. So which means your product needs to be adapted, maybe. your pricing needs to be adapted, right? So in as I said in the earlier example of the series B HR tech. if you're going if you were a mid-market enterprise and then you're going for a smaller segment now, SMB or something, then okay, what's the pricing then? which go-to-market motion are you now doing to acquire those customers? So is it still outbound, is it inbound, is it product led, account-based, etc. Then yes, how do you on onboard people? the whole marketing bit. So how do you qualify them against your ICP? how you nurture them, how you route them. So essentially everything. So that's why we we say, okay, first ICP research, then ICP development, and then once you've taken this decision. you need to do go to market team enablement, we call it. so what does that mean for the team? And typically what we do is go into the different into the different teams. And by the way, the teams are obviously already in the development research phase, they're already involved. So they will give their perspective as well. Maybe I I forgot to mention that. So so the workshopping bit and how sales is selling to to various segments. But then the enablement bit is really what does that mean for your daily work now? Right? So if you're in customer success, what does that mean when you were always enterprise and you s you tend to tended to spend a lot of time on quarterly business reviews with the customers because they're huge huge clients you need to make sure you you hit the value targets and so on. Now you go for a smaller segment. What what does that mean? You cannot do the same, right? You cannot spend as much time because the the average contract value is much lower, so you have to do some kind of health check, maybe automated health check. Same for the for for marketing, okay. your website probably speaks to the enterprise segment, not to the small customer segment. So what do you do? Like how do you adapt it? what's what's the messaging? What what is the persona you are talking to? Do they do they do then a free trial or can they self-onboard? So There's massive massive massive change once you decide that that you wanna go for a different segment. It's it's interesting, Anastasia, 'cause obviously like everything you're describing sounds completely rational and pragmatic to us, but the reality is we we encounter founders and CEOs all the time that basically are like Yeah, that all sounds great. We'll kind of just do it if we can. What's what's your sense of that? So I was having a bit of an existential crisis the other day where I was like, maybe Rutra and I are wrong. Maybe we shouldn't do all this pragmatic, logical stuff that's grounded. Maybe we should just be a bit more like these founders that are like, nah, let's just give it a go and let's all just get on board and like stop making it difficult. Have you is it possible that it can work if you ignore this stuff? That's my first question. It's unlikely, but like I yeah, the other day I had that conversation actually with a founder of an AI native company. Very fast growing, and of course they think okay, we're vertical agnostic, we're gonna just, you know. do a lot of performance marketing and bring in, I mean they're also focused on SMBs rather S than as a really small customers and doing a lot of performance marketing. And I think yeah for to start with, I mean that can work. But what I typically see is after a certain time of acquiring everyone they see also that a certain segment is churning. they're spending a certain more time on on maybe non-good fit customers to onboard them because they're not as technical. and then then you spend a lot of internal resources and money on on the onboarding bit. and Or you spent a lot of money on even acquiring the customers as you said, so high customer acquisition cost. so typically I say, Yeah, you you can try that, but then after something they come to us. They come back to us. They come back and they're like, Yeah, Anastasia, you were right. they if they can make it a year with that mentality, they're doing all right. But generally I would say after about six months, we get messages where they've come back and they're like, wait, maybe we shouldn't have. But I I it's it's very validating to hear that. Makes me feel less insane. we had a conversation not too long ago with someone about like Going into the market and we were like, Okay, it's a competitive market, there's a lot out there, you're brand new, you don't have like the necessary partnerships, et cetera. So how would we actually go to market with you launching? And we put together a plan that was like fairly hardcore because like that is probably what they need to get enough customers to keep going. And it was like an immediate no because they're at the stage where they're like, no, it's fine. Like, this is great. This what people are gonna love it. We've got a couple useless, they're gonna love it, and we're like we we hope it's true. We wish you the best of luck. We're here later. Yeah, we'll be we'll still be here. I thought folks in the UK are are better in actually thinking the go to market bits earlier in the process. you know, it's a mix. say out of every ten people I speak to, there's one that is very logical and reasonable. And the rest are, I don't know. There's some there's a there's a gradient, right? Like some of them are willing to do it, but then you kind of I feel like with some people you cross over into the like, I wanna do all the things that you're talking about, Anastasia, and then the majority are like, absolutely not. And then they and then they have a really hard time. Mm. And then we either come back or you know or they they they push on, you know, they keep they run out of money. Yeah. Yeah. well, I feel like I say I feel very validated. obviously one of the big things in all of this, and you've mentioned it already, is the total addressable market. And we've given examples of people who are like, I'm my tech and one of the big ones is HR Tech. We work a lot of HR Tech, you know, we're vertical agnostic, we can sell to anybody and everyone, but actually that causes a lot of problems, especially if you're gonna try and go after a new segment, because you actually can't be all things to everybody. So what are some of the conversations that you have around that and how do you try and like convince people not to just try and market to everybody? Yeah, I mean the the biggest one I think is the the messaging bit, right? So if if you say you're vertically agnostic, that means you have to have because I mean verticals are still different, right? So y one if you for example do decide to do outbound, and you you say, Okay The verticals are pretty pretty similar in a way that they always they all have a CFO, for example, just making stuff up. then the question is still once you do outbound bit, what message are you sending them? So is it the same for each vertical? Probably not, because they have the CFO in in finance vertical versus the CFO in the manufacturing vertical is probably different, ha has a different problem. And I mean with the whole AI craze you're now able to personalize it, right? So you still need to kind of even if you say okay I want to go for various verticals, you still need to adapt the messaging. So that's that's one one point. and I think the the most interesting one is that or the what I see is why founders are struggling to to do a clear or to define a clear ICP is that they think they will they will leave money on the table. But actually the opposite is true because you you will get more revenue from a good fit customer than if you're doing spray and pray and and and vertical agnostic and and whatnot. so I think y you will see it in the numbers very quickly. and especially if you're early stage you need to just focus. You you cannot put your you don't have a huge team to do multiple go to market motions, multiple segments, 'cause you need to mm customize everything for each each segment, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting as well with the vertical agnostic thing, 'cause I think quite a lot of the founders I speak to anyway would say, yeah, but we're doing okay. But actually if you if you doubled down you'd be doing more than okay, wouldn't you? Because I think at the moment they probably don't look at things like the actual wastage and the inefficiency in their marketing spend, in their the time their CSMs spend trying to retain, like you say, bad fit customers in the sales cycle length with bad fit customers. You know, there's probably like a bit of work that they could do there to kind of maybe surface some of that stuff. I've actually been with a client who's done a repositioning and what they've discovered is actually Their products are great for businesses that have like deskless workers because they're the customers that we retain the longest, that have the highest adoption of the product, and they used to market like that, and they stopped because they wanted to go after everybody, and they've taken a hit. There's churn. So I'm like Mm. repositioned ourselves back against like what the product's actually used for and the type of customers that use it. So I think yeah, there's a lot there's a lot to to be learned for like actually being like, no, no, no, it's okay to be that those people. Like it's good. It's a good thing that those people like your product and use it and you retain them. Because lifetime value is as important as the instant AR instant hit of like getting a contract signed, isn't it? So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, especially in times where now everyone is questioning how many tools and and software you actually have within the company. but yeah, I feel like pulling the data, showing the founder, okay, see, based on the data, we have a bunch of customers that are really not a good fit. We should let them go. I think that helps a lot. also mega scary and nobody wants to do it because like what do you mean we have to let go of customers? Wild. Yeah. Yeah. the word churn 'cause I feel like it's the thing that scares everyone, but actually there is there should be a category of acceptable churn, which is basically bad fit customers. If they're a bad fit from the get go, it's not good for anybody. It's not good for them. Also, it creates like it can create other pro problems like reputational issues, which I think people then don't think through. It's like actually if you've got a bad fit client and they're complaining all the time, what are they actually saying to their network about your business? So I I I do think that that like thinking about it like that as well helps 'cause it's it is ultimately it's like if you have good relationships with people, you can retain your clients. If you have good product, if you have good service, you know, and you retain people, then people are gonna say good things about you. If you don't do that, they're gonna say bad things about you. Um which then makes it all even harder. Um I right? I I wish the flywheel had really taken off, guys. And said we're still stuck with this funnel mentality, aren't we? it's been an awesome conversation, yeah. Super practical. so if you're listening to this, I hope you've got loads of takeaways and lots of things to look at now that you've got some practical tips to go off. But just to wrap up the episode, we'd love to hear if you've got any marketing gossip for us. So something that you love or you hate or something that you just can't stop thinking about in the marketing world. Yeah, so what I hate is actually that everyone is doing the AI enabled outbound. feel like everyone is, we don't need marketing. We can just do, you know, a bunch of emails on certain target account lists and then we'll we'll, you know, get our customers. and to be honest, I get like flooded with emails every week and I think and bad ones. Yeah. very bad ones that are not even personalized and and so I I'm not even sure this this channel or this motion will prevail. what I love is it's obviously the best time to be in tech. with everything you you you can automate like you can automate the boring stuff you can be more creative now we're playing around currently with A AI agent services, so building agents for nurturing, for for lead routing and so on. So I think that's a lot of fun. if you yeah are courageous to test it and if you know how to to set this up. I think it's a lot of fun. Brings back the fun into our profession. It's it's almost a bit like use you get to play with all this really cool tech, but please use it in the right way. Yeah. Yes, I mean you still need to to know your strategy, right? You still need to know your ICP, you still need to understand the buyer decision process, you need to understand d you draft your positioning 'cause that is essentially the context that you have to give the LLMs and all the tools out there, because just using the the tools won't won't help you. Yeah. Thank you so much, Anastasia. This has been a wonderful conversation. we didn't even get to, you know, creating a new category, which is I feel like the the ultimate version of a new segment, but that's the whole of the conversation. don't do it. unless you have a lot of money. We tried just unless you have a lot of money and time, don't do it. Yeah. thank you so much for this, and yeah, all of Anastasia's details will be down in the show notes. thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you in the next episode.