Congratulations! If you are reading this you have reached the milestone of product-market fit!
Transitioning to 'go-to-market fit' is a challenging and exciting phase for any early stage B2B SaaS company, though one often under-appreciated by Founders.
If you are a technical founder the best advice we can give is 'think of GTM as a product'. Treat it with the same discipline and rigour as you would if you are launching a new product.
You can avoid the common pitfalls we often see with GTM initiatives by:
1. Understand Your Customer Segments Even Better
Refine Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Analyse your early adopters and refine your ICP based on real user data, behaviours, and feedback.
Buyer Personas: Create detailed buyer personas within your ICP to understand the specific needs, pain points, and preferences of your target customers.
Don't assume. Ask customers why they did and did not buy from you. Measure user behaviour and interrogate the date.
2. Build a Scalable Sales Model
Start with the customer in mind. Map the customer journey and tailor your Sales & Marketing Strategy to meet your customer where they live. Map out a scalable sales process that aligns with your customer's journey.
Sales Enablement: Over invest in your customer facing teams so they can be hyper-relevant to your customers and only then will they be able to effectively communicate your value proposition. Invest in tools, training and resources to empower your people. Don't assume they will pick it up as quickly as you do.
Only automate once you know for sure you process is working. Enablement first, automated processes second.
3. Marketing Strategies for Growth
Account Based Marketing: A well defined ICP in B2B means you know (or can find out) the names of your ideal customer accounts. Tailor messaging specifically for what they care about. Think precision targeting and personalisation.
Content Strategy: Develop a content strategy that speaks to your key persona stakeholders wherever they are in their customer journey. It may be educational, engaging, informative or even provoking. Only publish content which is relevant to your target customer.
Digital Marketing: Yes, hanging out where your customer hangs out means tradeshows and events, but more importantly it means where they hang out in the digital world. Leverage SEO, content marketing, and social media to reach and nurture customers along the customer journey (aka sales funnel).
Whatever you do and say, be hyper-relevant to your Ideal Customers.
4. Refine Pricing and Packaging
What is the Best Pricing Strategy? If you are innovating a new category or even a new product, customers won't have a budget line item for your innovation. You won't know how much to charge, neither will the customer. It's hard. Test, measure, iterate to find the sweet spot. If you have a clear goal eg market share over revenue, profitability from the beginning, it will make it easy to know when you find your sweet spot.
Regardless, put yourself in your customer's shoes when making pricing decisions in an early stage business.
5. Customer Success and Retention
Customer Onboarding: The reason for a churned customer can often be traced back to a poor onboarding experience. Obsess over the onboarding experience to ensure new customers derive value quickly and easily from your product.
Customer Success Equals Growth: Invest in customer success early! Growth from your customers comes faster and more predicably with proactive customer engagement.
You worked hard for those customers, don't lose them now.
6. Metrics and KPIs
Data Driven Decision Making: Using metrics to inform next best action is a no-brainer - if you want to grow.
Key Metrics: Define and track key metrics related to go-to-market efforts, such as customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (CLTV), conversion rates, churn rate, etc. Use these metrics to optimize strategies.
Read this article for more in-depth discussion of the key B2B SaaS metrics.
7. Iterate and Experiment
Continuous Improvement: Maintain agility and a culture of experimentation. Test different strategies, channels, messaging, and sales approaches to identify what resonates best with your customers.
Feedback Loops: Continuously gather feedback from customers, sales, marketing, and other stakeholders to iterate and improve your go-to-market strategy.
Nobody has all the answers, your situation is unique. With curiosity you will find the right fit.
8. Maintain Focus and Flexibility
Commercial Convergence: Ensure all teams are aligned with your go-to-market strategy and understand their role in achieving the company's goals. Align everyone to a single metric.
Flexibility: Having a strategy is essential, but be flexible enough to adapt to market changes or unexpected challenges.
Too often we see companies chasing 'quick wins', 'short term revenue'. Don't. Stay the course until you have enough data to adapt.
Transitioning from product-market fit to go-to-market fit involves treating GTM with as much discipline and rigour as you would if you were launching a new product. It's an ongoing process that requires continuous learning, adaptation, and innovation. Oh and a bunch of hard work!
If this article has resonated, and you wish to take the first step towards accelerating customer acquisition and revenue please get in touch. Our structured GTM discovery process will shed light on what you need to change to achieve 'GTM fit'.
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