- When you're looking to drive growth
for your SaaS business,
there's a lot of things that need to come together.
And a lot of times, in order to drive growth,
multiple disciplines need to actually come together
and get aligned.
This is departments including sales, marketing,
and even product.
If you're in the super early stages,
chances are it's you, the founder that's sitting in a room
trying to figure all this parts out.
If you're in the mid stages or the later stages,
you may have a whole team of people
but at the end of the day,
at the core of all of these activities
that are gonna be going on,
is your one singular go-to-market strategy.
In order to drive growth for your SaaS business,
you actually need to have a differentiated
go-to-market strategy.
So in this episode,
I'm gonna walk you through my golden checklist.
The five key things
that you absolutely need to have as part
of your go-to-market strategy.
And when you have these five key things,
everything comes together, the people get aligned
and you're gonna be able to drive the growth
of your SaaS business.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody, welcome to "Unstoppable."
I'm TK and on this channel,
I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses
faster with an unstoppable strategy.
Now, if you are new to this channel, welcome.
Be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon
because I drop a video like this two to three times a week
with actionable strategies to grow your SaaS business
with the TK energy.
Now, if you're already part of this community,
if you're part of my SaaS go-to-market coaching programs,
my people, welcome back,
it's really good to see you over here.
I remember in the super early days of ToutApp,
the sales engagement platform that I started back in 2011.
Even though we had raised a couple million dollars,
we still were in this catch 22 situation.
We had a few million dollars but we couldn't really recruit
or find quality demand gen people or a VP of marketing.
And so, in those super early stages,
it was literally me and a couple others
sitting in a dark room
trying to figure out all these core pieces
on how to drive growth for the SaaS business.
Now, fast forward a few years as we grew,
as we figured out a few things, as we raise more money,
we were able to bring on a full leadership team.
We had heads of marketing,
we had a VP of sales and through those really smart people,
I started to get a rounded understanding
of what it takes to actually build a go-to-market strategy.
Some of the stuff I had to learn it and earn it on my own
in the super early days,
some of the stuff I learned from some of the best.
And so, what I started to appreciate
is that in the early stages,
a lot of times the strategy gets grazed over.
Specific parts of a go-to market strategy
doesn't get addressed and when you do that,
now that I have over 75 founders in my go-to-market program,
I started to learn
that there are key things that need to go
in your go-to-market strategy and if you don't have them,
then you're actually not going to be successful
despite your best efforts.
So, in this episode,
I'm gonna walk you through the five key items you need
in your go-to-market strategy, why you need them
and if you stay till the end of the video,
I'll give you a bonus one as well
which is super, super powerful.
So if you're excited to dig in,
go and smash that like button and let's dig right into it.
So, item number one is your ideal customer profile.
Now, a lot of times when I talk to founders
and when I talk to exec teams,
I'll ask them, "Do you have an ideal customer profile?"
And it turns out they don't really have an ideal
customer profile, they have an ideal customer list
or they have a notion of an ideal customer profile
but they don't actually have
a fleshed out proper version of it.
A great ideal customer profile goes into a lot more detail
into who are these people, why they matter,
why they're buying now,
it has a much deeper understanding
on exactly how to find them,
that's a true ideal customer profile.
I remember at the Marketo days, Marketo bought ToutApp.
We actually instituted an ideal customer profile.
And when we did the analysis,
we found that when we did deals that were in the ICP,
the ideal customer profile, our win rates were higher.
The deal sizes were longer
and our sales cycles were actually shorter.
Whenever we did deals outside of the ICP,
everything was a lot slower and a lot more terrible
and our win rates were horrendous.
And so we started to see the power
of truly doing the work on an ideal customer profile.
And if you're truly trying to drive growth
for your SaaS business,
and you actually need to really define your ICP
and create a proper ideal customer profile.
That's the first thing you absolutely need to do
in your go-to-market strategy
and get alignment with whether it's your co-founder in you,
or it's a couple of people or your full leadership team.
Related to the ideal customer profile,
the next thing that you really absolutely need
to flesh out are macro trends.
Now, this is something that I learned
isn't talked about as much by all the marketing people
out there and the experts out there.
And even in my early days,
I conceptually kind of intrinsically knew it was important
but no one explicitly called it out.
Macro trends are big external things
that are happening in the world to your ICP
that really necessitate your solution.
So, my favorite example of all time
is I invested in a company,
it's my friend's company called DataGrail.
DataGrail is an incredible company,
they're a GDPR compliance company
and their CEO is Daniel Barber, longtime friend of mine
and I deeply respect him as a CEO.
They realized that most of the world
is gonna be under some sort of a compliance
and privacy law by 2025, 2030
and so there needs to be a privacy compliance platform.
That's a macro trend.
Meaning every customer they go to they can say,
"Look, most of the world is gonna have some sort
of a privacy law.
There's GDPR, there's CCPA, New York is gonna have one,
Mexico is gonna have one, Canada is gonna have one,
everyone's gonna have one, so you need a privacy platform."
These are what I call macro trends.
These are things that are happening to your ideal customers
whether they want it to happen or not, it's happening.
And it just so happens that it aligns with the problem
and the solution that you are trying to market and sell
into the market.
So, understanding what the macro trends are
and how they're impacting your ideal customers
is super, super important in your go-to-market strategy.
Don't skip this part
because if you go to the rest of the parts,
then you won't really know
how to actually flesh out these other things
that I'm going to tell you.
This is super important for your ICP.
And one of the things you'll notice is each of these items
actually build on each other.
Meaning your ideal customer profile becomes that much richer
when you actually add the macro trends to it.
So now, let's go to the third item.
Once you have that ideal customer profile
and you have the macro trends,
the third thing that you really need to flesh out
in your go-to-market strategy is your value proposition.
And in addition to your value proposition,
this really bundles into your messaging
and your positioning.
These three things essentially bring together
exactly how you're gonna position your product.
Meaning how are you going to differentiate
from your competitors, other players in the market,
what segment of the market you're gonna go into,
that pulls from your ICP
and it also clearly communicates
what customers or future customers get
when they buy your product.
Simple litmus test for our value proposition is my software,
ToutApp helps salespeople generate more pipeline.
That's essentially a very simple value prop.
Obviously it's gotten involved,
sales engagement as a much bigger space
but at the core of it, that was our value proposition.
And while it's simple to say
it took a lot of market development
understanding of our ideal customer,
understanding the macro trends for us to really understand
that this was an important value proposition
and it actually made it necessary for us to actually dig
into what's going on in their worlds
and what are the macro trends
so we can actually message this properly
and position this properly.
So, one simple example of this is we knew
that when it came to pipeline,
marketing was responsible for pipeline
and there was marketing automation.
So, when we all of a sudden had an email tool
for emailing your future customers, we were like,
"Well, isn't that what marketing automation is for?"
And we actually had to massage our messaging
and clarify our value proposition
and actually position ourselves to say,
"No, this is for salespeople.
It is email, it is phone calls
but it's the generated pipeline
but this is separate from marketing."
There was a whole amount of work that went into this
to actually define the value prop,
to actually talk about the messaging
and to position it in the right way
so that people would understand
why this is a new piece of technology they need to add
even if they already had marketing automation.
This is the first three things
that you absolutely need to have fleshed out
in your go-to-market market strategy.
Now, before I go on to number four and number five
and I do have a bonus one for you,
let me just pause here for a second.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
Are you starting to see the power
of actually fleshing out a strategy?
One of the biggest mistakes that I personally made
is not knowing the difference
between strategy and execution
especially when it comes to go-to-market.
Execution is sending those emails, running those ads,
making those phone calls, asking for referrals.
Strategy is actually fleshing out what we're gonna say,
how are we gonna say it and who are we gonna say it to
when we are doing those activities.
And if you just do those activities,
it's almost like loading up a giant machine gun
and loading it with blanks and firing away at anything
and nothing happens and you're like,
"I'm firing away, nothing's happening."
It's because you don't have the strategy.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
If you're starting to see the power in this,
can I just get a yes in the comments below?
Also, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm,
it really likes it when you do that.
Do you wanna know why it really likes it when you do that?
Because then, it can go to other founders
and really spread our message
and it can share it with more people
that are looking for this type of advice.
That just means the world to us.
So, please smash that like button
and also comment below with a yes.
Now, if you're in the stages where you're realizing,
"Hey, we need to flesh out our go-to-market strategy."
But you don't quite know how to do each of these pieces,
this is exactly why I created
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
I have over 75 founders inside of this program.
We actually help founders and CEOs and leadership teams
flesh out their go-to-market strategy
and accelerate their growth.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video,
I'll also link to it below,
but let's go to principle number four, step number four,
item number four in this golden checklist
before we go to market strategy.
Item number four
is once you've had the ideal customer profile,
and you understand them in a deeper level
with the macro trends,
you've started to flesh out your value proposition,
your messaging, your positioning,
then you need to codify
all of these into a strategic narrative.
And what I like to call this especially in my program,
founders in my program will know this
and leaders of my program.
I call this your manifesto.
Now, I believe that every software company,
the successful ones,
you think of any successful software company out there,
I believe that their movements, their transformations,
these are change agents in the world
especially for this ICP.
And in order for them to be successful
and drive this transformation
and convince people that they need to transform,
you actually need to write your manifesto.
And a manifesto in a strategic narrative
is a compelling way to explain why you exist,
what's the big change in the world that's happening,
how are you gonna help them with that transformation
and how are we gonna help them win.
That's your strategic narrative and that's your manifesto.
And if you don't do this piece,
then a lot of other stuff won't work
and you can't do this piece unless you do these things.
So like I said, they all build on each other.
What this means
is when you actually have a strategic narrative,
you'll get more alignment and clarity just within yourself
on why you're building it and what the big change is.
You will get alignment with your team,
you'll get alignment with your board, your investors,
most importantly, you'll get alignment with the market
because you'll go out and tell your story
in a very compelling way.
I've found that when you actually have nailed
your strategic narrative, your website becomes easier.
Your pitch deck becomes clearer.
Your sales demo deck becomes more succinct.
All of these things start to come together
from the strategic narrative
because you've really started codify
how all these pieces work together.
So, once you have these critical components,
the ideal customer profile, the macro trends,
the value prop messaging, the positioning
and the strategic narrative,
then you can actually start executing.
But right before you start executing,
you should be very thoughtful about your key channels.
Now, there are different ways
to get attention out there in the world.
You can do outbound, you can send emails that are cold,
you can run ads, you can post on LinkedIn and do social.
You can do SEO.
There's literally so many ways you can get attention
with your ideal customers
and get your messaging and your strategic narrative
in front of them so they take action,
but not every channel is perfect for every audience.
Not every channel is ideal
depending on your ideal customer profile.
And so you wanna be very purposeful
about which channels you go after
and how you actually dominate them.
Most startups, especially in the early stages
when they really start to crack growth,
they master one channel.
And it's a different channel for every company
but they find that one channel where they're like,
"This is it. We can get really great at this."
And so, this is why it's even more important
to really think about what are key channels
and what's the one where we dominate.
Because if you can find that and you can double down
on that, then you'll be able to accelerate your growth
and take all this messaging work that you did
and positioning work that you did
and tell your story to your ideal customers
in a very, very effective way.
So, this is super important
in that as you're thinking about the channels,
you wanna think about which ones are within the capabilities
of your team, how to do it, how to do it effectively
and how to make sure that you don't burn your brand.
You don't want to do send out a thousand emails
that are poorly crafted
and now everyone knows your company sucks.
So, you wanna be very, very purposeful about it.
Now, if you wanna dig more into how these channels work
and which ones to prioritize and how to think about it,
check out this video
where I go a lot more into the key B2B SaaS channels
that you can use to get attention in the world
once you've actually fleshed out your go-to-market strategy.
You don't have to go right now
because I have a bonus one for you.
I'll link to it below
so you can check it out after this video.
Once you have all these key pieces,
there's one more thing that I've found
to actually codify in your go-to-market strategy
that will actually help you grow faster.
Learn what it is.
It is pricing strategy.
Now this, I didn't think about I wasn't as proactive.
There we go, I think I got strategy.
STRA...
There we go, strategy.
I wasn't as proactive about it as I should have been
the first time around in the earlier days of ToutApp
but I realized that I could do all this work
and start to get a lot more pipeline,
a lot more people getting into trials,
a lot more people getting into demos.
But if my pricing strategy wasn't optimized,
I would be leaving money on the table
or I would be losing deals.
And so, I started to understand
that you can be a lot more effective
with your pricing strategy
then with the same pipeline
you're generating same number of users,
you can actually make more money.
And this is super powerful
because it also helps you differentiate in the market
along with your messaging.
Along with everything that you're saying that you do,
your pricing also communicates volumes
about how you position yourself in the market.
So, fleshing out your pricing strategy
is also one of the key components
to your go-to-market strategy.
So, let's recap all the key items that you need.
Number one, you need your ideal customer profile,
not an ideal customer list, not an idea,
but an actual profile to be actually fleshed out.
Number two, you need to actually research your macro trends
and understand what's going on with these folks.
Number three, you need to develop your value prop,
your messaging and your positioning
and then you can take that
and actually build out your strategic narrative.
Once you've done that,
then you actually need to deploy that in a consistent way
across key channels
and you need to figure out which one you can dominate
in so you can scale.
And then as you're doing all these pieces
and getting into deals and converting users
depending on whether you're sales driven or product led,
you actually need to flesh out your pricing strategy
and make sure that's effective as well
so you're not leaving money on the table.
You do these key things,
this is my golden checklist for our go-to-market strategy.
You'll be able to align key parts of your team,
key disciplines, you'll be able to accelerate
the growth of your SaaS business.
Now you know what those key things are,
so you don't skip over were any of them.
And remember,
each one of these things builds over the previous.
You won't be able to do a strategic narrative
if you don't have these things actually fleshed out.
And you won't be able to do these things
if you don't know the macro trends
and the macro trends won't matter
if you don't have a specific ideal customer profile.
So, they all build off of each other.
And when you do it in this order,
you're gonna be a lot more effective
and actually crafting a go-to-market strategy and on it.
Now you know what the key items are but you may not know
how to do each of these things.
You may not know
how to actually flesh out an ideal customer profile,
what it really looks like.
You may not know how to find the right macro trends
and which ones work and which ones don't work.
You may not know how to actually develop your value prop.
You may not know how to craft your strategic narrative
and you may not know how to operate in specific channels.
This is exactly
why I created my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
My SaaS go-to-market coaching program
has over 75 founders in it.
It's a very boutique program
specifically only for B2B SaaS businesses
that are in the early stages
and look and accelerate their growth.
And inside of this program,
I'll help you flesh out your ideal customer profile,
I'll help you build your positioning and messaging,
I'll help you actually craft your strategic narrative,
I'll help you craft your pricing strategy
and then I'll help you execute one channel at a time
and figure out where you can dominate
and then scale from there.
It's an end to end program,
I'm really proud of all the progress we've made
inside of this program with all the founders we have,
and we do have more spots open for you to join.
So, if you're looking to build
out your go-to-market strategy,
go through each of these key things
and you want guidance, you want my coaching,
you want my step-by-step training, then I invite you
to check out my SaaS go-to-market coaching program
and apply to join.
Just go to tkkader.com/gtm
tkkader.com/gtm
I'll link to it below as well,
you can go over there,
you can check out all the details around the program
and at the end of the page
you'll be able to fill out your email
and fill out a little application.
They'll allow us to get on a call
and on that call, we can do a strategy session
and figure out if we can actually help you
given where you are with your SaaS business.
And if we can, we're off to the races
we get started working right away
to build out your go-to-market strategy
and then we scale from there.
I wanna thank you for watching this video
all the way to the end, it really means a lot.
If you got value from this,
please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
If you have a fellow founder,
if you have a team member that could get value from this,
please share this video with them,
it will would mean the world to us,
I'll link to the additional video I mentioned down below
so you can check that out as well.
I'll link to the coaching program application
form down below so we can explore working together.
And also, I drop a video like this
two to three times a week
specifically on how to grow your SaaS business.
So, be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon
if you haven't already.
And lastly, remember everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours is going to be unstoppable.
I'm TK, and I'll see you in the next episode,
(gentle music)