- Okay, so, there's sales, there's marketing,
there's product, there's customer success,
there's maybe your financial model for your business,
there's your pitch deck.
What exactly is a go-to market strategy?
And, is this like a fancy word
that consultants just made up?
It's not.
It's actually a little bit of an old school term
that now is all new again.
And if you're going to be growing
your SaaS business effectively, then you're gonna need
a go-to-market strategy.
Now, what exactly goes into a go-to market strategy?
And what's different between your go-to-market strategy
and your sales plan, or your marketing plan,
or your product led growth plan?
In this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three principles you absolutely need to know about
what exactly is a go-to-market strategy,
how it's different than these other components
of your business, how to fit it all together
and how to actually build one so that
when you actually operate with your go-to-market strategy,
you can actually accelerate the growth
of your SaaS business.
Intro.
(energetic 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.
I drop an episode like this every single Sunday
with actionable principles and strategies
on how to grow your SaaS business faster.
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 like this, with the TK energy.
Now, if you're already part of this community,
this fast-growing community,
if you're already part of my coaching programs
for growing your SaaS business, my people, welcome back,
it's really awesome to see you over here.
Now, I remember when I was building our Tout App,
we started with product led growth.
People would just sign up, swipe a credit card.
Then we started getting into a sales model,
and then I ended up hiring a chief revenue officer
who was this like, old school dude that used to come
into work with a three piece suit,
and his name was Frank Swain, incredible person,
I learned so much from him, and he was like,
"TK, we got to get aligned on the go-to-market strategy."
And it was one of those things where I'm like,
what's a go-to market strategy?
Like, how does this work?
We already have sales, we have marketing,
we have distribution, we have product-led growth,
like, how does this all come together?
And that's when I really learned the power
of a real go-to-market strategy
and how it can actually help you accelerate the growth
of your SaaS business.
Now, go-to-market is now a term that's thrown around
all the time now, along with a bunch of other terms.
There's distribution, there's product-led growth,
there's sales strategies, marketing strategies,
there's SDR strategy, outbound strategy, content strategy.
It can get really, really confusing,
but it doesn't need to,
it doesn't have to be this confusing.
And so, my job here is to actually break this down
into the three core principles you absolutely need to know,
and when you apply these, you'll be able to accelerate
the growth of your SaaS business.
If you're excited to dig into principle number one,
go ahead and smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm and let's dig right into it.
So traditionally, in any company,
you're gonna essentially have some key pillars.
You're gonna have product,
that's essentially, well, what is it that we're selling?
How does the product work?
Does the product help in distribution
or is it something they just get into once they buy it,
right?
Those are some questions you're gonna be answering.
Number two, there's marketing.
Marketing is essentially, how do I get more people
to know about me today than they did yesterday?
What channels do I use? Do I run ads?
Do I do blogging? Do I do content? Do I do SEO?
Those are questions that you'd be answering
for your marketing.
So, there's your sales.
Now, does the product sell itself?
Do they just swipe the credit card
and we have a product-led growth approach?
Or do we need actual salespeople?
Because people are gonna have questions
before they fork over $100,000 to buy our platform,
so, there's essentially going to be sales questions.
And then there's customer success
because we're in a recurring revenue business model,
that's why SaaS is so powerful.
And for that it's, well, do we have customer success people?
Do we do renewals? What kind of upsells can we do?
So, these are all the things that go into essentially,
your revenue strategy.
Now, in a lot of cases, even in the early stages,
you tend to break these into these pillars and these silos.
Product is over there with engineering,
and they're like, well, how do we do this?
And let's just create the features
and make it really beautiful,
and we got to add this one more feature
'cause everyone's asking for it.
Marketing's over there, they're just trying to
do the blogging thing and get the brand out there.
Sales is over here, they're like,
the marketing leads are terrible,
we're gonna go figure this out on our own.
Everyone's in silos.
And the power of a go-to-market strategy is
you kind of flip that and you say, you know what?
Let's create this one end-to-end strategy
that's going to really align all these critical pillars
in the business.
And you as the CEO, and you as the founder,
are essentially owning this, not your VP of marketing
or your CMO or your VP of sales,
you can't outsource this core strategy,
you're essentially owning this as the CEO or the founder.
And you're saying, cool, how do all these disparate pieces
actually start to align together in a cohesive
go-to-market strategy?
And that's the difference.
The difference is, instead of just saying, well,
we're product-led, meaning let the product people
figure it out.
You're saying, let's bring the product people,
let's bring the marketing people,
let's bring the salespeople, let's bring the success,
and let's all sit together and define exactly
how we're gonna bring in customers,
what the experience is gonna be,
how are we gonna convert to revenue
and how are we gonna grow that revenue?
And you are essentially, creating that end-to-end strategy
and that's the difference.
A lot of times companies, and this could be
even in the super earliest of stages where it's just you
and your co-founder and you figuring this out,
or it could be in much later stages where you have
a full team of VP of marketing and VP of sales,
you still have to get very crystal clear
about what your go-to-market strategy is.
And the more definite that you get in defining this,
the more successful you are gonna be in driving that growth.
So, that's the fundamental difference.
Instead of thinking in silos,
thinking about a cohesive strategy that aligns
all these critical functions,
and this is true for companies of all sizes.
If it's just you and your co-founder,
you're essentially wearing the hat
of product and marketing and sales,
so you want to get aligned on exactly how all these pieces
are gonna work.
If you are in the mid stages, right?
Like, maybe you raise a seed round
and you have a couple of people but no one's like
a full VP leader, so you still want to get aligned.
Or you could be in a series A, series B, series C,
I have coaching clients in those stages as well,
they still needed to revamp their go-to-market strategy.
So this is not stage specific,
everyone needs to be doing this to make sure
you're all aligned across these core pillars
instead of operating as silos.
So, that's principle number one.
You want to flip it, you don't want to think about it
in terms of pillars, you want to think about it
in a cohesive way to bring everyone together.
That's principle number one.
Principle number two are on a go-to-market strategy
and how to think differently about it
is you want to think about strategy
separate from execution, all right?
So, let's break that down.
Why is it called go-to-market strategy
versus go-to-market execution?
Well, execution,
like if we were to really dig into that part,
let me see if I can do this right.
Execution.
It's so tricky with the mirror. There we go.
With execution, you essentially have the activities.
And a lot of times, teams, go-to-market teams,
founders, will skip the go-to-market strategy part
and they'll jump to the execution.
They'll be writing blog posts,
they'll be sending outbound emails,
they'll be spending money on ads,
they'll be putting in a viral component
because they're product-led.
And a lot of times they'll come to me and you know,
apply to join my coaching program, and they'll say, look,
we sent out 1,000 outbound emails, no one responded.
I'm like, okay,
so you did the activities, but did you do the strategy?
Did you actually define the strategy?
So, a lot of times we make this common mistake
and I've done this myself,
that's why I know to recognize it in others,
you kind of jump to the execution without thinking
about the strategy.
Now, what is the strategy?
Well, to put it simply, and we'll get into this
in the third principle more, but to put it simply,
the strategy is, well, who are you serving?
I talk a lot about building your ideal customer profile,
but an ideal customer profile, when done right,
is very specific.
It gets into triggers,
it gets into specific attributes
which most people don't get into,
they kind of have a very half-baked ICP.
So, getting super clear on who are we serving?
Who are we not serving?
It also goes into, why us?
Like, what is uniquely differentiated about you
and your offering and your company,
why they should do business with you?
Before you write a single email, before you run a single ad,
you should ask yourself that and create a real strategy
around that.
It also goes into, how? Right?
Like, how does a customer go from being aware of us
to actually trusting us, to actually paying for our product?
Do they do a free trial? Do they get on a demo?
And you want to be thoughtful about those things
because those impact the type of channels you go after,
the way you message things.
So, all of these things get skipped over
and you start executing, and no wonder you don't get
responses to your outbound or your ads
and you're losing money, it's because a lot of companies
and a lot of founders, and I've made this mistake
before too, you skip to the execution part
instead of first defining the strategy.
And so, principle number two is
don't just do the execution, align all these functions
and teams into thinking about,
well, what is our strategy around this?
Get these core components down.
And again, it can be very easy to just outsource it
to your demand gen person or your VP of marketing,
but truly, as I said in principle number one,
it spans all these different pillars of your company,
so the founder and the CEO really needs to own it.
Now, they could enlist the help of all the other people
but you kind of need to own it because this is
a company level strategy on how are we gonna go to market?
There's a lot of tough things
that you're gonna be deciding on.
This is one of the big reasons I'll have, you know,
like a random marketing lead
or like even VPs of marketing apply
for my go-to-market program,
and I'll say, kind of like, hey, I'm sorry,
we only work with the CEO.
We work with the CEO and the CEO brings in everyone else.
I'm not trying to be snooty but it's only the CEO
that can make the decisions necessary
to really get the go-to-market strategy aligned.
You can't, you won't be able to
and so, I don't want to set you up for failure.
So, the CEO really owns this.
Now, now you know like the first two,
which is how do you get alignment and what is the difference
between strategy and execution?
I have a third one that goes into, well,
what does an unstoppable go-to-market strategy
even look like?
Like, what are the key components so you can build yours?
Now, before I go into that,
let me just pause here for a second.
Are you starting to see the power
of a go-to-market strategy?
Are you starting to see the difference between,
well, there's marketing and there's product, there's sales
versus bringing it all together into one cohesive strategy
on how we go-to-market and how are we differentiate
and who we market to?
Are you starting to see the power in this?
If you're starting to see the power in this,
go ahead and smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm.
And also, can I just get a yes in the comments below?
I just love hearing from all you guys.
Now, if you're in this stage where you're saying,
you know what?
We need a go-to-market strategy,
we're doing maybe the execution or we're doing the silos,
we need a cohesive go-to-market strategy
so we can grow faster, then I encourage you to check out
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video,
I'll also link to it below,
but right now let's go into principle number three
which is super important, because principle number three
is gonna tell you how to bring all this together.
Principle number three is, well, how do I create
an unstoppable go-to-market strategy?
Now, there's just actually three core pieces
to a great go-to-market strategy.
It can get overly complicated for no good reason
and people do over-complicate it, try and make you like,
them being like, oh my God, you can't figure it out.
Look, there's three core components to it.
The first thing is your ideal customer profile.
This is a great way to really align your functions,
your marketing, your product, your sales,
even if it's three people and wearing multiple hats,
you can align yourselves, or if you've got a full team,
around hey, who is the type of customer
we're really serving?
What is our ideal customer profile?
This type of work can actually lead to a lot of
important decisions being made easier,
meaning you can decide, you know what,
we're only gonna go into the mid market,
we're not gonna go into enterprise.
What this means is then, product can properly prioritize
whether they need to do single sign on or not,
or whether they need to do a certain type of
security audit or not, depending on the type of
ideal customer profile you're going into.
In the same way, marketing,
or whoever's in charge of marketing, can decide,
well, who are the 100 companies we absolutely must go after
and send outbound emails to?
Instead of trying to blanket 1,000 and send a generic email,
we can get a lot more personalized.
And so, you can start to see how,
if you define the ideal customer profile
in a very specific way, you can get a lot smarter
about how to align these teams
and setting the priorities for all of them.
For example, if you're going after,
let's just say the small business market,
and you're doing a $9 a month product,
then you probably don't need to have salespeople,
in fact, you shouldn't have salespeople.
And so, that really defines, well,
we don't want salespeople,
we need a much more product-led strategy.
So, these kinds of questions
that are on your ideal customer profile
help flesh out the strategy and helps you make decisions
about the key pillars in your business.
The second piece of an unstoppable go-to-market strategy
is your manifesto.
Manifesto is this core document that really defines
what movement you're creating,
what transformation you're bringing to your customers.
Why you guys versus anyone else?
What happens if they don't go with this transformation
that you're going to be pitching them?
Manifesto is one of my ways to actually
create the core messaging, the positioning,
the value proposition, the strategic narrative
around your business.
And so often, as I said in principle number two,
companies will start to do the execution and send out
those 1,000 emails without doing the core work
around the messaging and the manifesto.
But, when you do that, then you can actually be
a lot more specific in who you're going after and how,
and that's the power in this.
And the cool part about this is,
the reason I call it my Unstoppable go-to-market strategy
is because one builds off of the other.
Because you're getting specific about your ICP,
your manifesto is gonna be a lot more specific.
And the more specific you are in SaaS and in marketing,
the more successful you're gonna be.
The more generic you are, there's so much competition,
there's so many companies doing the same thing,
you just won't differentiate yourself,
and that's super important and very powerful.
And so, the first two is your ICP and your manifesto,
and once you have those two
then you kind of have the strategy piece,
and then what you're starting to jump into is,
well, what is our execution?
And the big thing that I see is,
a lot of times companies get very scatterbrained
in their execution, meaning you're like,
oh, we'll do a blog post,
oh, we'll do a webinar,
or maybe we'll send out an (indistinct),
and you're all over the place.
And ultimately, it takes a lot of work to really master
one channel, and it takes a lot of work to build
that momentum and build that trust
with your target audience.
Just one email going to your target audience,
no matter how great it is, isn't gonna build that trust,
it gets built over time as they see you
more and more and more,
as they see you in the outbound emails,
as they you in a retargeting ad,
as they see you in a LinkedIn post,
then you can start to piece together the right play.
This is what I call a Broadway Show.
A Broadway Show is the third key component
of an unstoppable go-to-market strategy,
and when you have that, it's a consistent set of activities
that you're running every single week,
that you're measuring, that you're iterating on,
and that you're ratcheting up as you get more success,
and this is what creates a scalable go-to-market machine.
And that's the third piece of
an unstoppable go-to-market strategy.
So, let's recap.
All right, why do you even need a go-to-market strategy?
Well, the difference is instead of operating in silos,
a go-to-market strategy will align all the key functions,
regardless of whether it's multiple hats being worn
by a few people, or you have a full team,
regardless of stage, a proper go-to-market strategy
will actually help you align all your key functions around,
here's exactly how we're gonna go into the market.
A proper go-to-market strategy will stop you
from executing blindly, and first help you define
the key questions that you need to answer
to help you decide on exactly how to execute,
that's super important, that's principle number two.
And number three, when you actually write out
your go-to-market strategy and you actually flash out
your ICP, your manifesto, your Broadway Show,
then you don't just have any go-to-market strategy,
you actually have an unstoppable go-to-market strategy,
and that's gonna be scalable, that's gonna be measurable
and you'll be able to iterate on it
and make it better and better.
And as you do that, it's gonna make your next round
of funding that much easier, because you can
clearly articulate exactly how your go-to-market machine
is working.
Now, those are the three core principles that I wanted
to show you, and that's why you need
a go-to-market strategy.
It's not all hype.
And, we can cut through all the noise,
this is clearly what you need to focus on,
these three key things,
ICP, manifesto, and your Broadway Show
and you have a go-to-market strategy.
Now, you may not know exactly how to build out
a go-to-market strategy, how to really nail
these three key components.
This is exactly why I created
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Inside of this coaching program
I give you the step-by-step training and instructions
on how to flash out these core pillars.
And I give you my coaching so that we can actually
figure out the strategy, make the tough calls, run it,
test it and iterate on it.
So, if you're serious about building out
your go-to-market strategy and accelerating the growth
of your SaaS business and putting these principles
into play, I encourage you to join
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
To learn more about it, just go to tkkader.com/gtm.
tkkader.com/gtm, all the details are there.
There's a small application process, it's super easy,
and then we can figure out if we can help you.
Now, if you got value from this video,
be sure to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm,
it just loves it when you do that.
I also drop a video like this,
where I go in depth from my 15 years of experience
in building, scaling and exiting SaaS businesses.
I go in-depth into core principles that you need to know
to actually scale your SaaS business.
So, be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon,
if you haven't already.
Also, if you have a fellow founder or a team member,
if you're part of a founder community, a slack group,
a WhatsApp group, and you feel that these founders
that you're with or your team members will get value
from this video, please share it with them,
it'll mean the world to us, we put a lot of love
into these videos.
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,
or I'll see you inside of the go-to-market program.
We'll link to it below so you can get all the details.
(melodious music)