How we abandoned our original ICP, switched from private to public schools, and acquired x3 more customers in just 2 months.
2 months
New GTM strategy
x3 customer acquisition
We were sinking
At the end of Year 1, Zynergic had signed 4 B2B customers: 2 private schools, 1 charter school and 1 public school.
Based on those first customers, our hypothesis was clear: private schools were our ideal customer profile.
They had more purchasing power, greater autonomy, and were generally more willing to adopt innovative solutions.
So we built our acquisition strategy around them.
But by May, something wasn’t working.
We had spent months generating and nurturing leads, and our pipeline looked promising on paper. Yet prospects weren’t moving forward.
The feedback was consistent:
“Come back when you have more schools using the product.”
“We can’t take the risk with a product that hasn’t been validated yet.”
They were interested. They just weren’t ready to buy.
With only ~2 months left in the school year, continuing with the same strategy wasn’t an option.
If we didn’t close enough customers, there wouldn’t be a next year.
The pivot
We had two options:
- Keep nurturing private schools and hope they were ready to buy later.
- Or change our target market completely and focus on customers who could buy now.
We chose the second.
We temporarily parked the private-school pipeline and switched our focus to public schools.
This wasn’t because we suddenly believed public schools were a better long-term market.
It was because they were a better fit for our short-term constraint: time.
The new GTM strategy
With only a few weeks left, we couldn’t rely on long nurturing cycles or wait for brand awareness to grow.
We needed conversations. Fast.
So we made cold calling our primary acquisition channel.
Public schools were significantly more responsive to phone outreach, making the channel a better fit for the new ICP.
The new GTM was simple:
New ICP → Public schools
Primary channel → Cold calling
Objective → Close annual contracts before the end of the school year
We moved from a long, nurture-heavy sales process to a much more direct outbound motion.
Results
The pivot worked:
12 B2B schools acquire in 2 months
Compared with 4 customers during the entire previous year, this gave us enough credibility to continue operating for another year.
And that time proved valuable.
The public-school contracts gave us the runway to keep improving the product, build social proof and continue nurturing the private-school segment.
What initially looked like abandoning our original strategy became a way to buy enough time to make that strategy work later.
My learnings
1. Your ICP is a hypothesis, not a fact.
Our first 4 customers pointed us towards private schools. But early traction isn’t enough to prove an ICP.
2. Pipeline ≠ revenue.
A pipeline full of interested prospects means very little if none of them are ready to buy within the timeframe your business needs.
3. Growth is about optimizing for constraints.
There wasn’t necessarily a “better” acquisition channel.
We needed the channel that matched our ICP, buying behaviour and time constraint.
Sometimes Growth isn’t about optimizing the strategy you have.
It’s about knowing when to replace it.
