June 13, 2026 | Read online
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Here we go again
Q1 was really good for me. I was traveling to different onsite sessions for training and keynotes, my pipeline was healthy with solid opportunities, deals were moving, and things felt like they were clicking.
Then, I got back from my Q1 travels, and my Q2 and Q3 pipeline seemed to disappear in front of my eyes.
And it's not just me. Almost every sales leader and rep I'm talking to right now is seeing the same thing. They're doing everything right - problem identified, impact quantified, stakeholders aligned, executive engagement, the whole playbook. And deals are still stalling. People are pushing out decisions or changing priorities almost daily. AI has thrown such a monkey wrench into how companies buy that the rules are shifting faster than anyone can keep up.
If you've been reading this newsletter the past few weeks, you know I've been talking about this. The SaaSpocalypse, the pressure on the per-seat SaaS model, the ground moving underneath our industry. This is what it looks like when it hits your pipeline.
When this happens, I do the same thing every time. I go into full-blown prospecting mode and research mode simultaneously. I start setting up meetings with everybody and anybody. Prospects, partners, former clients, people I haven't talked to in years. Not because I have something to pitch. Because I need to learn what people are actually dealing with so I can figure out where I fit, where I can help the most, and where the market is headed next.
And one of the first things I reanalyze every time is my ideal customer profile.
Most people treat ICP like a one-time exercise. You pick an industry, a company size, a title, and you move on. That's a huge mistake. Your ICP should be something you revisit constantly, especially when the market is moving this fast. If you're running the same ICP you built in 2024, you're prospecting into a world that doesn't exist anymore.
I learned this in 2023.
When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, it took the majority of my client base with it. The vast majority of my customers were in SaaS/Tech, and everyone was telling me to get out of the industry entirely because it was too volatile. But I've spent years building my reputation in SaaS and didn’t want to start over in an industry where nobody knew my name.
So instead of abandoning SaaS, I reanalyzed which SaaS companies I should be targeting. I not only revisited my ICP, I also looked at my ICP’s ICP.
I went back through my clients and found a pattern. The SaaS companies that sold outside of SaaS and tech, into retail, finance, and manufacturing, were doing far better than the SaaS companies that mainly sold to other SaaS companies. With a small adjustment to my ICP, I started gaining traction again.
The same thing is happening now, and I’m using AI to figure it out way faster than before. I fed my entire client history into Claude CoWork and had it build a heat map of every customer I've worked with, broken out by industry, deal size, and results. It helped me identify a strong cluster of manufacturing clients where I've done great work and seen real results. That became a new target market. I refined the messaging, built a targeted sequence, and started executing in that market to test what sticks.
That whole analysis took minutes, not days.
Here's why I'm telling you this. ICP isn't a box you check. It's the foundation that every part of your prospecting system is built on. Your personas, trigger events, messaging, and contact strategy... all of it depends on getting your ICP right first. Skip it or phone it in, and everything downstream falls apart.
I built an AI prompt pack that walks you through the exact ICP exercise I run. It goes way deeper than industry and company size. It forces you to analyze your actual client data, find the patterns, and pressure-test your assumptions about who you should be targeting. I recorded a full walkthrough of how it works and why.
Watch the ICP Prompt Pack video here.
This prompt pack is part of a bigger operating system I'm building with reps and clients. The idea is to take everything in my Filling the Funnel program and turn it into a personal prospecting system that runs inside whatever AI tool you use. ICP is step one. Everything else builds on top of it.
Once your ICP is tight, the next question is execution and how you approach each Tier. Your Tier 1 accounts should get high-quality, personalized, AND relevant outreach. For your Tier2 accounts, you can do more volume but in a targeted way by finding commonalities in their ICP characteristics and creating relevant messaging for them that doesn't necessarily have to be personalized. Tier 3 is where you practice and sharpen your approach.
None of that tiering works if your data is a mess. Your ICP accounts, personas, trigger events, and pipeline stages all need to live in one system so you can execute on them. Not in a spreadsheet or in your head.
That’s why I’m running a free workshop next week sponsored by Insightly CRM. I’m going to share with you my Tier1 Quality Email and Phone approach that I train and use myself to drive consistent results and stand out in a world of AI slop.
Insightly combines CRM, project management, and automation in one platform and is built for teams that need a simple, scalable system without enterprise-level complexity.
Personalization at scale is an oxymoron. When everyone is using AI to personalize, the noise goes up, not the bar. We're going to break down what quality outreach actually looks like, how to structure emails and calls that get responses, and how to use AI for research and prep without outsourcing your thinking.
The market is going to do whatever it's going to do, and there’s nothing you can do to control it. What you can control is your effort and your approach. If you’re willing to put in the effort, I can show you the approach.
Let’s #MakeitHappen.
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