- If you're driving growth for your SaaS business,
it can be really easy and tempting
to just jump into go-to-market execution.
Execution is you running a thousand cold emails
or running a bunch of ads or running a bunch of blog posts
and hiring an SEO consultant.
All of those things can be really easy to just jump into
'cause it feels good, it's a bunch of activities.
But here's the thing though.
You can send a thousand emails
and you may still hear crickets.
You can spend a thousand dollars on ads
and still get nothing back.
This is where go-to-market strategy comes into play.
Here's the question though.
What exactly goes into a go-to-market strategy?
What do you actually need to do
so you're not wasting a bunch of time on froufrou stuff
and you actually get to the brass tacks
of creating a go-to-market strategy
so that when you send those thousand emails,
they're actually effective?
In this episode, I'm gonna break down
the five key components
to revamping your go-to-market strategy
so that you can accelerate your path
to that next stage of growth.
Intro.
(lively music)
What's up, everybody? Welcome to Unstoppable.
I'm TK, and on this channel,
I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS business faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
Now, if you're new to this channel, welcome.
I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches
on how to grow your SaaS business faster.
So be sure to hit that Subscribe button and that bell icon.
That way you'll get notified
every single time I drop an episode 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.
Ooh, that hurt. Welcome back.
It's really awesome to see you over here.
So I was on a call with the founder once
and they were walking me
through what they were doing for their go-to-market.
They had sent a thousand cold emails,
they had hired an agency to run a bunch of ads,
and yet there was no pipeline actually being generated.
In fact, the only revenue
they actually generated successfully
was through their own network,
through actual referrals that were coming through
from just talking to people they already knew,
but they were tapping out of that.
And we dug into exactly what they were doing.
And very quickly it was pretty clear
that they were making the same mistake that baby TK made.
They were jumping to execution
instead of actually thinking about strategy.
Now, in this episode, I'm gonna walk you
through the five critical components
that you absolutely need to know
on how to transform your go-to-market strategy.
And I've only included the things that actually matter
and cut out the things that are just a waste of time.
So if you're excited to dig into principle number one,
go ahead and smash that Like button
for the YouTube algorithm
that just loves it when you do that,
and let's dig right into it.
So first thing to understand is what is the difference
between strategy versus execution.
I kind of alluded to this already,
but it's important to really define it.
Execution is the stuff that you do.
It's what you are doing to actually generate pipeline.
Now, strategy is how you go about doing it.
Now, when I put it in a thing like this,
it makes perfect sense that you should do strategy.
Why do we not do it?
Because so many people go around just talking strategy
and it seems like a waste of time.
There are parts of it that actually matter.
How you go about running your go-to-market plays
makes a difference on how effective it's going to be,
regardless of how hard you work at it.
So that's principle number one.
What you're really doing
when you're defining your go-to-market strategy,
how do you filter through what matters and what doesn't,
you're focusing on how are we gonna go
about sending those code emails
or running those ads or running those blog posts
or anything else that you are doing.
Principle number two,
as part of go-to-market strategy, is to do the math.
This is a piece of math that most people don't do.
There are natural laws of averages.
What that means is if you reach out
and generate 50 ICP leads, ICP meaning your ideal customers,
if you're doing 50 leads that are completely new random,
then it'll be 0% conversion rate.
But let's just say you really target
your targeted customers,
people that are perfect for your SaaS product.
Well, out of those 50,
no matter how great your product is,
only five of them will turn
into real opportunities and trials.
That's the law of averages, that's just how it works.
Why isn't it 100%?
Well, they might be busy, it might not be the right time,
they didn't get you email, any number of those things.
Out of those five trials or opportunities,
one will become a customer.
This rough conversion rate
where only 10% of the people you're engaging with
will turn into real opportunities at that time
and only 20% of those people will turn into real customer
is pretty much average when it comes to SaaS.
Can it be better? Absolutely.
But that's basically your average.
And if you're not doing this math,
you're not really realizing
exactly how much activity you need to drive
as part of your go-to-market to get results.
And you might stop at the 49th lead and say,
"This is not working, let's just stop, let's give up."
Instead, if you do the math
as part of your go-to-market strategy, then you'll know,
"Well, we need to generate
at least 50 ideal customer profile leads
in order to really know if this is working or not."
So that's principle number two.
Principle number three
is to actually flesh out what your target is.
So this happens all the time
when you hire an agency that doesn't know any better.
They'll say, "Cool, we'll spend all your money."
They make a percentage of every ad dollar you spend.
So they don't really care that much.
Even if they only last three months,
that's still money in their bank no matter what.
It's kind of like how Wall Street works.
When you are fleshing out your go-to-market strategy
that allows you to make some decisions
that can hold any marketing contractor,
any agency truly accountable,
you should go to them and say,
"Hey, this is the entire world.
This is our total addressable market.
This is the group of customers that are most likely to buy."
Now, that is an example of an ideal customer profile.
When I work with founders
on developing their ideal customer profile,
there are 29 different points
that go into developing an ideal customer profile.
That's why it's so effective when you run the execution.
What's really important for you to flesh out
right this moment is to figure out
what your true, ideal customer profile looks like.
Where are you gonna be targeting
your go-to-market activities?
And most importantly,
how are you going to differentiate in the market?
Because here's the thing.
I'm sure your SaaS product is very unique,
but when you approach a random stranger,
even in your ideal customer profile,
they probably can think of one
or two other software companies
that have already approached them or they've tried
or they have an Excel spreadsheet
that's already doing the job pretty well.
And so you have to show up in a very differentiated way,
and you have to be able to compete
against the other players that are in the market,
which is why it's super important
when you're defining your ideal customer profile,
one of the 29 points we talk about
is how do you actually differentiate.
Where can you differentiate?
Where are you actually differentiated?
And let's focus on that group,
and then you can expand over time.
And that's the power of principle number three
to actually flesh out your targeting.
Now, lemme just pause here for a second.
I have two more right here.
But before I go into principle number four
and principle number five,
are you starting to see the power in this?
These are not complicated things.
They're not totally crazy, waste of timers.
These are basic brass tacks of strategy
you need to just lay out
so that you're going to be successful
in any go-to-market activity that you're gonna run.
If you just do these three basics,
you start to think about how are we gonna approach this,
what is our math, and what is our targeting,
if you just start on these three things
and even don't do number four and number five,
can you see the power of what you're gonna be doing
in terms of your actual activities
or whoever you hire to do the job for you?
If you start to see the power in this,
can I just get a yes in the comments below?
That way I know you're with me.
Also smash out Like button
for the YouTube algorithm if you're getting value.
Just loves it when you do that and so do we.
We put a lot of love into these videos.
Also, if you're in this stage where you're like,
"Oh my God, I gotta figure out
how to generate more pipeline,
I gotta flesh out my go-to-market strategy,
I need to actually do this in a proper way,"
then this is why I run my SaaS go-to-market coaching program
where you and I work together
to actually build your go-to-market strategy
and drive the execution.
You don't have to go anywhere right now.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this episode.
I'll link to it below.
Let's go to principle number four
'cause this one's super important,
one of my favorites, and brings it all together.
Principle number four is once you have,
okay, we're gonna think about the strategy,
this is our math, this is our ideal customer profile,
principle number four is to figure out your messaging.
You might say, "We already have our messaging."
It's great. Well, let's stress test it.
Fill out this simple sentence.
We help blank accomplish blank.
That's the result.
If you can fill out this sentence
without overrunning the index card or going into font six,
then you may have some solid messaging.
Then I would ask you, is it working or not?
What I find very often is because the ICP is not defined,
the messaging is not great,
which means that every outbound email you're writing
or every ad you're writing
or the topic you're selecting for your blog is off
because you're not thinking
about exactly who you're targeting
and what they need to hear
for you to differentiate in the market.
So that's principle number four.
Once you have those pieces,
you can custom craft the right messaging.
And this example sentence is just a part of your messaging.
This is your value proposition.
This value proposition can go in a lot of places,
including your homepage.
But there's a deeper framework to follow
to really develop the messaging
so that every cold email, every ad,
every lead magnet, your homepage,
your investor page deck has a crisp message
on exactly who you're targeting,
why, and why they should go with you.
Once you have all of these pieces, congratulations,
you have the beginnings of a go-to-market strategy.
Then comes the execution,
and this is where a lot of people go wrong as well.
What tends to happen very often is you do TikTok today
and then you do YouTube.
Oh, TK's doing a YouTube channel,
I should do a YouTube channel for my SaaS business.
Or you do LinkedIn or maybe you switch to Twitter,
you're all over the place.
The right way to deploy your go-to-market strategy
is through principle number five,
which is what I call a Broadway show.
A Broadway show is a consistent set of sales
and marketing activities that you run
to achieve what I call conversation dominance
around your ideal customer profile.
This is your ideal customer.
They have a phone, they have social feeds,
they have their inbox, they're searching on Google.
You need to make sure you're running an orchestrated
set of activities to actually have your messaging appear
around your targeted ideal customer profile,
and you need to do that consistently every single week.
That's the power of a true, scalable go-to-market machine.
And so if you're running a bunch
of random thousand emails or some blog posts
or you paid some random agency run by an ex-pizza boy
and you're like, "I don't know why it's working,"
these are the five principles that you need to follow
to revamp your go-to-market strategy.
Let's recap.
So principle number one,
know the difference between strategy versus execution.
Strategy is how you're gonna go about generating pipeline,
execution is what you're going to do.
And guess what?
You really, really, especially in the early stages,
can't hire someone to do it.
It has to be founder led.
That's what I found.
Number two, do the go-to-market math.
Just know that out of 50 ICP leads,
five will become opportunities, one will become a customer,
and you need to keep iterating, and every time you iterate,
you may have to reset the math.
That's how you get better and better.
Number three, make sure you have clear targeting.
Build out an ideal customer profile
where you're gonna be differentiated.
That's super important.
Know who the competition is, and then based on that,
number four, build the messaging.
Your value prop is just one part of it.
There are other pieces that go into proper messaging.
And then finally, run a set of consistent set of sales
and marketing activities called a Broadway show
to achieve conversation dominance
around your ideal customer.
That way, everywhere they go,
your company, your messaging will appear.
That's the power of a proper go-to-market strategy.
And now you know the five critical components
that you need to focus on and start thinking about
to transform your go-to-market strategy
so you can actually drive growth for your SaaS business.
Now, what you may not know is,
TK, how actually do I think about strategy?
Like what are the steps?
How do I think about the go-to-market math?
This seems pretty simple, but there must be more to it.
How do I build an ideal customer profile?
How do I flesh out my messaging
so it's actually differentiated versus me making it up?
And lastly, how do I take that go-to-market strategy
and actually run a Broadway show,
a consistent set of sales and marketing activities
that gets my message to my ideal customers?
This is why I run my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Inside of this program, we follow a three-step process
to revamp your go-to-market strategy
and run a Broadway show.
We first out your ideal customer profile.
This is the 29 points that we look through
to make sure you have a proper ideal customer profile.
Then we develop your messaging.
That's what I call a manifesto.
That's your core strategic narrative.
That's your value prop, that's your positioning
to make sure that you're differentiated in the market.
And then you deploy the manifesto
and bring it to your ideal customers using a Broadway show.
It is an incredible program.
We've shared so many success stories on this channel
on founders that have gone through this program,
grown their companies, raised follow-on funding,
or gotten to profitability.
Half the founders in the program are bootstrapped
and the other half are venture backed.
And I work with you directly when you join the program.
So if you wanna work together
inside of the go-to-market program
and actually revamp your go-to-market strategy
and implement these steps
in a step-by-step way with my coaching,
I encourage you to go to tkkader.com/gtm,
tkkader.com/gtm.
On that page, you'll get all the details about the program.
And if it sounds like it's a fit,
just go ahead and fill out the little form
and we'll get on a call.
On the call, we'll go through exactly
where you are with your SaaS business
and if it sounds like we can actually help you
through my SaaS go-to-market program.
The better the fit, the better the results,
which is why we get on a call
to figure out if this is the right fit.
If it is the right fit,
then we're off to the races right away.
Running this program and working with founders like you
on your go-to-market is what I absolutely love doing.
Now, these YouTube videos give you
the high level principles,
but when you work with me inside of the program,
we have a very step-by-step training
on do this, do this, do this,
and then come talk to me and then we'll review everything.
And that's why people are so successful
as they go through the program.
So just go to tkkader.com/gtm.
If you got value from this video,
please smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It just loves it when you do that, and so we.
If you have a fellow founder,
a team member that would also get value from this video,
if you're part of a Slack channel,
a WhatsApp group, a mailing list,
please share this video with fellow founders.
We wanna help as many SaaS founders as possible.
Also, I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategy and tactics from the trenches
on how to grow your SaaS business faster,
a video just like this.
So be sure to hit the Subscribe button and that bell icon.
That way you'll get notified
every single time I drop an episode.
And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours, it's gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK, and I'll see you in the next episode
or inside the SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Just follow the link below.
(bright music)
Principle number one, no, no, that's not number one.
Hold on a second. There's a lot of these.