The "False Funnel": Is Your Ideal Customer Profile a Reality or an Aspiration?

In the boardrooms of Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland, a recurring delusion is quietly sabotaging the growth of promising B2B IT and MSP firms. It’s a phenomenon we call the "False Funnel."

It works like this: The CEO presents a slide deck to the board showing a pipeline full of "Enterprise" opportunities—the ASX or NZX 100, the big four banks, and the tier-one government departments. Marketing is hitting its Lead Gen targets by bringing in names from these companies. Sales is "busy" having discovery calls. On paper, growth looks inevitable.

But look closer. Those enterprise deals have been in the "negotiation" stage for 18 months. Good lord, some of these are going out for 900 days. The win rate is sub-5%. Meanwhile, the actual revenue keeping the lights on is coming from mid-market law firms, regional healthcare providers, and secondary financial services—segments that aren't even mentioned in the official Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy.

This misalignment is more than just a reporting error; it is a fundamental waste of capital and talent.

The Aspirational Trap

In the ANZ tech sector, there is a certain prestige associated with "Enterprise" logos. We tell ourselves that if we can just land one "Big Four" bank or a major New Zealand utility, the rest will follow.

However, an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is not a wishlist. It is not a collection of logos you would like to have on your website. A true ICP is a data-backed definition of the customers where you have a "right to win."

When you market to an aspirational ICP rather than your real one, you create a "False Funnel." You are effectively lying to your sales team about the quality of the leads, lying to your marketing team about where to spend their budget, and lying to your board about your future revenue.

The High Cost of the "Big Fish"

For cybersecurity and SaaS founders, the lure of the "big fish" is particularly dangerous. Enterprise deals in Australia often require specific compliance hurdles—IRAP, SOC2, or complex integration requirements. If you chase these accounts without being truly "Enterprise Ready," you end up in a cycle of "feature chasing," where your product and service roadmap is dictated by the whims of a single massive prospect who may never actually sign the contract.

Furthermore, there is a hidden danger: Non-ICP churn. Even if you do land that aspirational customer, if they aren't a true fit for your current product or service, they will be high-touch, low-margin, and ultimately, they will churn. In the ANZ market, where word-of-mouth travels fast, a high-profile "failed implementation" is a brand tax you cannot afford to pay.

Finding Your Champions

“Weeee are the champions! Weee are the champions!” (I couldn't write this blog without having this song on repeat in my head. You’re welcome.)

Ok, so to fix the funnel, you need to move from aspiration to validation. This requires looking at your data through the lens of Efficiency and Customer Happiness.

This means identifying your Champion opportunities and customers. These are the segments where your win rate is significantly higher than the average—ideally 25% or higher, and where your customers just love working with you.

If your win rate for ASX 200 companies is 3%, but your win rate for mid-market/commercial organisations is 30%, your champion segment is mid-market. In 2026, a B2B tech firm that doubles down on a 30% win-rate segment will outgrow a firm chasing a 3% win-rate segment every single time.

The "Data vs. Wishlist" Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide

For IT CEOs and Sales Leaders in ANZ, the path to profitable growth starts with a ruthless audit of the last 24 months of sales data.

1. The "Last 20 Wins" Analysis

Look at your last 20 closed-won deals in the ANZ region. Forget the "potential" deals; focus on the ones that actually put money in the bank.

• What was the actual company size (not the parent company)?

• What industry are they in?

• What was the "Trigger Event" (e.g., a change in the Australian Privacy Act, a recent breach, or a specific technology migration)?

  
  

2. Calculate Segment Win Rates

Break your pipeline down by segment. If you see a massive volume of leads in a segment with a win rate below 10%, that is a "Drain" on your resources. If you see a small volume of leads with a win rate above 25%, that is your "Growth Engine."

With this data, look to build marketing campaigns that tailor to attracting your Growth Engine areas - this could be vertical, geographical, role based, use-case based. Whatever the options look like, reach out to us and we can build it out for you.

3. Identify the "Anti-ICP"

Be brave enough to name the customers you won't sell to. If a prospect requires 12 months of custom development just to get through the security review, and they don't fit your core product, they are Anti-ICP. Or if they have an internal team that is reluctant to outsource, this will kill your time and profitability, too. 

Disqualifying these early saves your sales and engineering team hundreds of hours.

Action Point: Realign Your Budget

Once you have identified your Champion segment, you must align your spending with reality.

• Marketing: Stop running ads targeting "Enterprise IT Managers" if your data shows you win with "Mid-Market Compliance Officers."

• Sales: Incentivise your BDRs and Account Executives to find more of what is already working, rather than chasing the "white whales."

• Product or Service: Build features that deepen your expertise in your Champion segment rather than building "one-off" features for aspirational leads. Does your business excel at cybersecurity solutions for the agricultural sector? Awesome, lets go for it. 

  
  

In the ANZ IT market for 2026, growth is about who has the most efficient funnel. Stop chasing the aspiration and start winning where the data tells you you're a champion. 

Why? Because you are a champion, sugar.

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