Peep Laja

Continuous Listening Beats One‑Time ICP Checklists

A few years ago, I was telling my buddy Noah about the hard time I was having recruiting for a role. He challenged me: how much effort have I put in? Did I hop on airplanes and take potential candidates out to lunch? Did I do all I could? The answer was "no". I did the bare minimum and then complained. He was right. But also, my excuses of lack of time and resource allocation (prioritizing other things) were not made up. Also real. I think of this every time I hear a marketer wonder about what the market might want, which pain point to focus on, etc. Your ICPs can tell you what they need. But are you making an effort to listen? Too often, companies treat ICP research like a checkbox: define it once, then move on. The real magic happens when you keep getting quarterly insights on how their priorities and needs are evolving. Sometimes reality changes due to internal stuff, sometimes external (elections, stock market, competitor fundraised, etc). Companies like Cognism have reimagined their GTM by weaving ICP insights into every layer of their strategy, from product to marketing to sales, and it’s driving real results for them ($50M --> $80M). ICP insights can become your go-to-market playbook. When I ask marketing leaders what's holding them back from doing ongoing ICP research, the top 3 reasons are: 1. lack of access to ICPs 2. time constraints (takes too long to do it) 3. hard to prioritize insights over other stuff that needs to get done (resource allocation) I get it. I empathize with that. Having this in mind, we've been working on a new thing at Wynter to make all 3 reasons become non-issues. It's a product that delivers you rich, qualitative insights from specific ICPs on a quarterly basis. Without you lifting a finger. We're calling it ICP Pulse. It launched today, starting with the mid-market SaaS marketing leadership audience. If you sell to marketers, you get must-have insights on their needs, challenges and wants every single month. So you can market to them better.