3-Step GTM Order: ICP → Strategy → Playbooks (Why Teams Skip Step 1)

If you’ve ever watched a go-to-market (GTM) team ship “perfectly good” campaigns that somehow don’t move pipeline,

you’ve seen this pattern:

Marketing launches a sequence.
Sales asks for better leads.
RevOps tweaks scoring.
Leadership wants “more outbound.”
The team builds more assets, more content, more ads, more enablement.

And six weeks later, everyone agrees on the same diagnosis: we need better execution.

Most of the time, that’s not true.

What you actually need is the correct order of operations.

Because GTM isn’t a pile of tactics. It’s a system. And systems break when you build them backwards.

The order is simple:

ICP → Strategy → Playbooks

Yet most teams start at the end—building playbooks—then wonder why nothing sticks. Let’s fix that.

Step 1: ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) — The Filter That Makes Everything Easier

Your ICP is not a persona and it’s not “mid-market B2B SaaS.” It’s a decision filter.

A strong ICP answers questions like:

Who gets value fastest from what we do?
Who has the highest willingness to pay?
Who has the fewest implementation barriers?
Who churns least and expands most?
Who already has the problem and feels urgency about it?

When you define your ICP properly, you stop arguing about “lead quality” because your system only targets buyers who can actually win with you.

What an ICP Should Include (in plain English)

A practical ICP is built from hard constraints and buying triggers, not vibes:

Firmographics: industry, size, region, business model
Technographics: tools they already use (and can integrate with)
Operational reality: how they buy, how they implement, who owns the problem
Pain signals: what’s broken, what it costs them, why now
Success conditions: what must be true for your product to deliver outcomes quickly

If your “ICP” can’t tell you who to exclude, it’s not an ICP. It’s a hope.

Why Most Teams Skip Step 1 (and pay for it)

Teams skip ICP work for three reasons:

It feels slow. Everyone wants movement. ICP feels like a workshop, not momentum.
It feels political. Narrowing the market forces hard tradeoffs: “Are we saying no to these customers?”
It feels abstract. Without a clear framework, ICP sessions become opinion battles.

So teams take the shortcut: “We’ll refine as we go.”

In reality, skipping ICP doesn’t speed you up—it guarantees rework.

Here’s what happens when you build GTM without a real ICP:

Messaging becomes generic because it tries to speak to everyone.
Targeting becomes too broad, so CAC climbs and conversion drops.
Sales cycles stretch because you’re pitching people who can’t implement.
Churn increases because customers weren’t a fit from day one.
The team “iterates,” but it’s mostly thrash: new segments, new angles, new campaigns.

You can’t optimize your way out of unclear focus.

Step 2: Strategy — The Choices That Turn Focus Into a Plan

Once your ICP is sharp, strategy becomes obvious.

Strategy isn’t your mission statement or your positioning doc. It’s the set of choices that answer:

Where do we win?
How do we win?
What do we say no to?
What is the shortest path to revenue?

A practical GTM strategy connects four things:

Segment focus: the ICP you’re prioritizing right now
Value narrative: the specific outcomes that segment wants
Route to market: inbound, outbound, partners, PLG, ABM—based on how they buy
Revenue motion: who does what across marketing, sales, CS, and product

The Strategy Checkpoint: “Can we Explain the Motion in One Breath?”

If you can’t describe your GTM motion simply, your team will default to random acts of marketing.

Example of a “one-breath” GTM strategy:

“We target RevOps leaders at 200–1,000 employee B2B SaaS companies using Salesforce and a modern data stack, lead with a ‘fewer manual ops hours’ narrative, run outbound to trigger-based accounts, and convert through a technical demo plus a short pilot.”

That’s actionable. That’s buildable.

Step 3: Playbooks — Execution That Scales Because It’s Built on Truth

Playbooks are where GTM becomes repeatable.

But playbooks only work when they’re downstream of clear ICP and strategy. Otherwise, they’re just templates in a folder.

A real playbook includes:

Target criteria (who it’s for, who it’s not)
Triggers and timing (why now)
Messaging pillars (what to lead with)
Channel sequence (email, calls, LinkedIn, ads, events)
Proof points (case studies, metrics, objections handled)
Conversion path (CTA → meeting → demo → pilot → close)
Handoff rules (marketing → sales → CS)

When playbooks are built correctly, you get compounding benefits:

Faster onboarding for reps and marketers
Cleaner pipeline attribution
More consistent win rates
Less “reinventing” every quarter

The goal isn’t to run more campaigns. It’s to run fewer motions better.

The Telltale Sign your Team Skipped ICP

If any of these sound familiar, you’re likely building playbooks on sand:

“Our TAM is huge.” (So is your confusion.)
“We sell to anyone with this problem.” (No, you don’t.)
“We need more top-of-funnel.” (Maybe. Or maybe you’re targeting wrong.)
“Outbound isn’t working.” (Outbound to the wrong ICP never works.)
“Messaging doesn’t land.” (It won’t if it’s not written for a specific buyer reality.)

This is why teams feel busy but stuck.

They’re executing without a filter.

A Simple GTM Reset you Can do this Week

If you want a fast reality check, do this in one working session:

Pull your last 20 closed-won deals and last 20 churned deals.
Identify the common traits in the wins (who got value quickly).
Identify the common traits in churn (who struggled to adopt, who had weak urgency).
Write down the differences as ICP constraints and success conditions.

You’ll usually find that your best customers cluster tightly—and your worst customers share patterns you can avoid.

That’s your Step 1.

Everything else becomes easier once you stop trying to be everything to everyone.

Build the Right Order—Without the Six-Week Workshop

If you want to implement ICP → Strategy → Playbooks quickly (and without the typical endless internal debate), Marketing Mavens has a purpose-built solution that’s designed for speed and clarity.

In our AI Assisted ICP & GTM Strategy Lab, you don’t just “talk about” your ICP. You develop it using structured inputs, research-backed prompts, and guided decision frameworks—then translate it into a GTM strategy that actually matches how your buyers purchase.

Most importantly, once your ICP and GTM strategy are defined, you walk away with targeted playbooks built for your specific motion—so your team can execute immediately instead of starting from a blank page.

You can learn more and see exactly how the ICP & GTM Lab works here.

Because the fastest way to scale isn’t more tactics.

It’s building in the right order—and never skipping Step 1.

FAQ's

What is the correct GTM order?
ICP → Strategy → Playbooks. Define who you win with first, then decide how you’ll win, then operationalize it into repeatable execution.

What does ICP mean in GTM?
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is the specific type of company and buying situation that gets value fastest, converts highest, pays most, and churns least.

Is ICP the same as a persona?
No. A persona describes a person. An ICP is a fit filter for accounts (company + context + triggers + constraints).

Why do most teams skip ICP?
Because it feels slower, it forces tradeoffs, and it can become political. But skipping it creates wasted spend, generic messaging, and rework.

What happens if you build playbooks without ICP?
You get “busy” execution that doesn’t scale: broad targeting, weak conversion rates, longer cycles, inconsistent wins, and higher churn.

What comes after ICP?
GTM strategy—the choices about positioning, channels, route-to-market, and how revenue teams align to convert the ICP.

What is a GTM playbook?
A playbook is a repeatable motion: targeting rules, triggers, messaging, sequence, proof points, objection handling, and handoffs.

How do you know your ICP is strong?
It clearly says who to exclude, predicts faster time-to-value, and aligns sales + marketing on what “good” looks like.

How long should ICP work take?
It shouldn’t take months. With the right structure and inputs, teams can get a usable ICP in days, then refine with feedback loops.

What’s the fastest way to fix a struggling GTM?
Stop adding tactics. Re-establish the order: tighten ICP → clarify strategy → rebuild playbooks around the buyers you actually win.

Where can teams build ICP + GTM strategy + targeted playbooks quickly?
Marketing Mavens’ AI Assisted ICP & GTM Strategy Lab is designed to move from ICP to strategy to targeted playbooks efficiently: https://marketingmavens.ai/marketing-mavens-icp-gtm-lab-app