Stop celebrating short-term wins that lead to long-term churn

In the fast-moving B2B environment, marketing and sales teams are pressured to hit short-term numbers. Focusing on immediate bookings can build a shaky foundation where revenue initially looks strong but doesn’t hold up because businesses target the wrong customers.

“We’re closing deals that make the quarter but break the business next year,” said Dan Sperring, CEO of AlignICP, a vendor of optimized GTM solutions.

A big problem is that companies go after the wrong ICPs. Many build ICPs based on superficial signals like industry, revenue bands or behaviors suggested by platforms, rather than profitability.

“Marketers aren’t even looking at customer data,” he said. “They’re building ICPs based on lookalikes, not long-term value.”

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Sperring said they should be based on lasting customer value—measured by metrics like LTV, NRR and successful adoption. “Product-market fit isn’t about who you can close. It’s about who stays, grows and truly benefits.”

You’re celebrating the wrong wins

Sperring said a client company once had an unusual quarter in which new logo targets were met with gusto—only to see 80% of those customers churn within a year. That big quarter offered standout results on the surface but faded quickly.

“It was a problem waiting to happen,” he said. “We were closing customers who only needed our solution because of COVID. When things normalized, they left.”

The lesson: Not all revenue is created equal. Quality matters—and it’s often missing from GTM discussions focused on the next quarter.

“Most companies spend time analyzing losses,” he said. “But the smarter question is, ‘Why do we win?’ Find those customers and build from there.”

Customer success can’t be siloed

Sperring believes one major problem for companies is having customer success as a separate function.

“When CS becomes its own silo, shift happens,” he said. Instead, retention and expansion should be everyone’s responsibility—sales, marketing and product.

He said over-investing in go‑to‑market and product—sometimes as much as ~64% of revenue—often occurs without real visibility into usage or value delivered.

As a result, CS becomes a quick fix for a deeper problem like misaligned ICP or weak product fit.

Misaligned incentives undermine growth

It’s not just data—it’s how teams are measured. The GTM culture rewards short-term wins, which can come back to bite you later.

“When everyone’s focused on bookings, you’ll take any deal to hit the number,” Sperring said. “But today’s wins can become tomorrow’s liabilities.”

Instead of relying on intent or pipeline signals, companies should use actual retention and LTV data. That can highlight which segments produce recurring value, steering teams toward profitable growth.

Most ABM and martech tools use shallow proxies like visits or engagement spikes to generate fit scores. One customer spent $200K on such a tool, only to find that those “ideal segments” spanned 17 industries, many with low LTV and high churn.

“Intent is helpful,” Sperring said. “Only when you’ve validated that segment through retention and real product use.”

Dig deeper: Are your CX metrics hurting your customer experience?

One compelling example: a client had 50 of 61 customers using a single use case, but marketing campaigns targeted 10 different use cases. Once they focused on the right one, win rates jumped from 21% to 45%.

That clarity improved retention, product fit and ultimately NRR.

Marketing must expand its role

Marketing has traditionally driven demand—but it should play a larger part post-sale. “Few marketers have a budget for customer marketing,” Sperring said. Expansion is more cost-efficient than a net-new acquisition.

Despite its cost-efficiency, expansion is often overlooked—mainly because most organizations still reward acquisition over retention.

Here’s Sperring’s playbook:

• Redefine ICP using retention, LTV and use case adoption—not just intent or pipeline signals.
• Break down silos so CS, marketing, sales and product share responsibility for customer outcomes.
• Update incentives to reward long-term value, not just closed deals.
• Align teams around shared intelligence—a data layer grounded in retention and usage.
• Run GTM experiments based on segments tied to value, not just creative ideas.

Bottom line: Alignment is a practice, not a tool

“You can’t buy alignment—you’ve got to build it,” Sperring said.  When alignment works well, it boosts marketing and sales efficiency and improves metrics like LTV:CAC.

A platform alone won’t fix siloed revenue teams. Without a unified GTM strategy, one team may move in a completely different direction from another.

“You’ll never have alignment if ICP is dictated top-down,” Sperring said. “All teams must weigh in, validate the data, and agree collectively.”

In complex, resource-constrained environments, building shared understanding is essential to long-term success.