You're here when: A prospect wants to buy but doesn't quite fit your target profile. The revenue is tempting but the fit is off. You're debating whether to take the deal.
The Heuristic
- Ask: does this generalize? If serving this customer teaches you something that makes your product better for your core ICP, it's worth considering. If it pulls your product in a direction only this one customer needs, walk away.
- Don't dismiss "consulting" by reflex. A lot of what founders call "consulting" is actually deep integration, which can become a moat. The real test isn't "is this consulting?" but "does this work generalize into something exciting?" A long sales cycle and deep integrations are features of enterprise, not bugs.
- Count the cost honestly. Off-ICP customers generate disproportionate support tickets, feature requests that don't align with your roadmap, and churn risk. Factor in the hidden costs, not just the contract value.
- One is fine. A pattern is a problem. Taking one off-ICP deal because the revenue helps and the learning is valuable is pragmatic. Repeatedly selling outside your ICP because "every deal counts" means you don't have product-market fit with your stated ICP.
Quick Example
A useful mental model: if Disney asks you to build a one-off white-label version of your social platform, that's bespoke consulting. If enterprise customers need deep CRM integrations, that's different. That can become a moat competitors won't bother replicating. A lot of defensibility hides inside work that looks messy from the outside.
The Anti-Pattern
The Revenue Rationalization. Justifying every off-ICP deal with "we need the revenue." You close a customer who needs a feature your product doesn't have. You build the feature. Another off-ICP customer needs a different feature. You build that too. Six months later, your product serves nobody well, your core ICP customers feel neglected, and your roadmap is a list of one-off requests from customers who shouldn't have been customers in the first place.
Written with ❤️ by a human (still)