- Predictability in our revenues.
We all want it, but when we're trying to get it,
it seems so elusive.
Here's the thing though, if you can actually
achieve predictability in your SaaS business,
if you can build a go-to-market machine
that predictably delivers revenues for you,
not only are you gonna be a lot calmer as a founder
and as a CEO,
the markets are gonna reward you handsomely for it,
especially in this market.
Here's a question, though.
It seems so chaotic
in the front lines of your SaaS business,
how do you learn to take a step back,
figure out exactly how to drive predictability
and scalability for your go-to-market machine?
In this episode, I'm gonna walk you
through the three principles,
the three principles that you absolutely need to know
that I've learned from my own SaaS journey
that will help you instrument your go-to-market machine
and revamp your go-to-market strategy
so that you can actually achieve predictability
and scalability for your SaaS business.
Intro.
(intense 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, welcome back.
It's really awesome to see you over here.
So my last company, ToutApp,
I hired a BizOps person,
and that BizOps person came in,
analyzed everything around the business,
and mind you, at the time I hired him, it was chaos.
We were growing really quickly,
and I'm like, oh my God,
like I can't believe we're holding on for dear life
and we're still kind of making it.
But as I worked with him,
we were able to actually understand
the key levers that were driving the business.
And as we really started to instrument those things,
it became very clear that when I took a step back,
there was actual predictability in the business
that we had control over,
and we could actually make it more scalable
and more predictable once we knew what those levers were.
That was the power of it.
We sold ToutApp to Marketo.
I joined Marketo on the executive team as a VP of strategy
and that was nearly at a half a billion in EAR,
and that was actually owned by PE.
And so, I saw a whole nother level
of what it takes to build a predictable business.
And trust me, the PE guys really know how
to build a predictable and scalable business.
And so, having gone through all of that,
I learned that there are three key principles
that I even employ today that I teach
the founders that I work with to actually achieve
a go-to-market machine that drives
for predictability and scalability.
So I'm gonna walk you through those principles
in this episode.
So if you're excited to dig into principle number one,
go ahead and smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm.
It just loves it when you do that,
and let's dig right into it.
So principle number one over here
is you first need to understand
that there's two key parts of this equation.
The first one is revenue.
We're focused on what is our revenue target
and let's just say we wanna hit 100K of new business.
Well, principle number one is just to do the math
and recognize that if you want to predictively generate
100K or 1,000,000 or 10,000,000,
whatever your number is, on a quarterly basis,
let's just say it's for quarterly, you can make it monthly,
then you need to think in terms of pipeline.
That's real opportunities, if you're sales driven,
or actual trial users if you're product led,
that are actually entering into your world
and starting to enter into your buying process,
whether you're product led or sales led, it doesn't matter.
And typically speaking, you want to achieve 5X
of whatever your target number is.
So if you're trying to generate 100K of net new business,
it means that you need 500K of pipeline.
And that is the first principle that I learned
as I started to really learn from the best
on how to drive predictability for a SaaS business.
If you wanna hit a certain number,
don't just focus on that number,
focus on the amount of pipeline you have
to achieve that number and 5X that.
If you have 5X the amount of pipeline
for your target number,
you're gonna be so much more likely
to actually hit your number.
Now there are nuances on it.
Well, TK, is it 2X or 3X or 4X or 5X?
Well, the amount of pipeline that you have,
you're gonna win a certain percentage of it.
It's the law of averages,
and I've talked about that in this channel before.
So if you aim for a 5X bar,
then you're gonna be just that much more likely
to actually hit your new business number
or your new revenue number.
And so 5X is a good benchmark to target
'cause that makes sure that you have wiggle room,
and if things slip and things go wrong,
you're still gonna be hitting your number.
That's part of that predictability
because you're leaving in wiggle room
for things to kinda go wrong
or for you to exceed your target.
So once you have that down,
this is where principle number two comes in.
And once you have that down,
that's what we call, essentially, the math.
That's principle number one.
Just know the math of what it takes
to hit your target number.
Once you have that down,
one of the most important things you need to understand
is that you actually need to have
a certain number of activities
that was going to deliver results for you.
Predictable activities delivers predictable results.
And this is something that sounds obvious when you say it,
but isn't always done in practice,
which is why it's important to highlight it.
So if you're looking for predictable activities
and then you get predictable results,
well in order to generate this pipeline,
you are doing a set of sales and marketing activities.
You could be doing LinkedIn, you could be doing ads,
you could be doing outbound, you could be doing events.
And what we find very often is that,
when you are executing on your sales
and marketing activities, you're all over the place.
You're not consistent,
and because you're not consistent in your activities,
the results are inconsistent.
And this is why this principle is so powerful
because when you start to understand, okay,
I need to do 100K of new business,
and therefore, I need 500K of pipeline,
then you start to ask, cool,
in order to generate 500K worth of pipeline today
so that maybe next quarter I can actually hit this number
'cause it takes time to build that pipeline,
what are the consistent set of activities that I need to do
to actually deliver these results?
That's where principle number two is really powerful,
because once you know your math,
it ends up being a question of activities.
A lot of times where founders go wrong,
especially in the early stages
when you're owning your go-to-market,
you're in that founder-led go-to-market stage,
a lot of times where they go wrong
is they rely on hope as a strategy.
Like, well, this stuff is working,
hopefully it'll continue to work.
Or they have a junior marketer on the team
that has never really run a scalable machine before,
and they don't quite know how to do the math,
and no one does the math.
But if you start to do the math,
and then you say, cool, this is the number I need to hit
and I can measure myself and my team around it,
then you can start to say, cool,
what are the set of activities that I need to do?
And you can actually hold yourself intellectually honest
about, am I gonna hit that number or not?
Am I gonna hit that pipeline number or not?
And remember, there's a delayed reward
for these kind of things.
The work that you do today and this week
and next week for pipeline generation
is gonna yield in revenue a month from now
or two months from now or three months from now,
depending on your sales cycle
and maybe upwards of 12 months from now
if you have an enterprise sales cycle,
which is why it's the sooner
you actually start to do the math
and start to get consistent in your activities,
the sooner you're gonna start to get
towards predictability and scalability.
Now, before I go to principle number three,
and principle number three really brings
all these pieces together
to actually nail this predictability and scalability,
particularly scalability.
Let me just pause here for a second.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
If you are kind of wondering, you know,
we're making money, we're generating revenues,
but man, I know there's a next level for us,
and I just don't know how to break out of that.
I don't know how to break through to that next level.
Or we had an awesome month last month
and this month is crazy.
And sure, you can blame it on some economic conditions,
but it's rarely that, people are still buying.
If you're starting to see like, oh my God,
if I do the math, and then I start to instrument
my activities which are gonna deliver the results,
then I can actually have some control over this,
and get to predictably.
If you're starting to see the power
in just these two principles,
can I just get a yes in the comments below,
and also smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It just loves it when you do that.
Also, if you're in this stage where you're starting
to figure out, hey,
how do I actually revamp my go-to-market strategy
so it's predictable and scalable?
How do I do this math?
What should my number be?
How do I actually drive these consistent activities?
This is why I run my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
It's an incredible program.
It's where I work with you to actually revamp
your go-to-market strategy and execute on it.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this episode.
You don't have to go anywhere right now.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of the episode.
I'll also link to it below.
But right now, let's go to principle number three,
because this is the one that really brings it together.
Now, one of the things that you're gonna start to realize
as you go do the math and you look at your activities,
you're gonna start to realize like it's a heavier lift.
Like, oh my God, we were maybe generating 100K of pipeline,
but now I know my number,
and this is why a lot of people shy away from it,
from doing the math,
'cause it's a scary number that you look at.
Ultimately, you are gonna look at the number
and you're gonna be like, that's a scary number.
How do we hit that?
Especially if you have aggressive growth targets.
It's perfectly normal.
It's perfectly normal to look at it and be like, oh my God,
how are we gonna hit that?
That's totally normal, even the best do that.
But then you can move to a space of, well,
if we had to, how would we do it?
Because remember the alternative.
The alternative is you don't do the math
and a quarter later, you don't hit your number,
and a quarter later, you don't hit your number again,
and then you can't raise the next round
or you run outta cash if you're bootstrapping and you die.
So that's the alternative.
In this case, I'd much rather look at a scary number
and say, how do I actually hit that?
And you may be looking at like, you know,
if we're just consistent in our activities,
well, at least we'll get the same outcome
that we have right now,
because let's just say right now
you're only generating 100K in pipeline.
Well, if you get consistent in your activities,
at least you'll generate that 100K, maybe.
Really, the question becomes,
in order to hit this new level,
in order to break through to this new level,
how do we revamp our go-to-market strategy?
So the third piece becomes revamp GTM for scale.
And this is something that I see very often
where the go-to-market machine
that got you to your current stage,
the stage that you're at right now,
isn't usually going to be the machine
that gets you to that next stage.
It's just a different machine, it's a different scale.
Every new scale requires you to re-architect the machine.
The same is true for your platform.
And so, the third principle that you need to understand
is in order to hit these larger pipeline numbers
to hit your new, larger, new revenue goals in which,
by the way, is gonna increase quarter to quarter
as you continue to grow.
One, it's gonna be scary,
but two, all it requires is for you rethink
how you're actually going to revamp
your go-to-market strategy.
What this means is, if you're doing your new business,
if you're generating pipeline just
from your existing network right now.
I meet a lot of founders who like, hey,
we hit up all of our friends and family,
and you know, I happen to be in the industry,
and we got a bunch of sweetheart deals out of that.
Well, that's a channel that's going to tap out.
Eventually, you're gonna run outta people that you know
that are gonna buy from you just on the trust
that you've established over a decade
of just working together.
So eventually you have to find additional channels.
So the key to revamping your go-to-market strategy
is to find the activities that are scalable,
to actually think about what is our message,
who are we targeting,
and what are the additional channels we can use
to actually reach our people in an effective way?
And typically, what this means is you have
to think about new channels,
you have to think about your message,
and you have to think about your ideal customer.
And these are the kind of things that you would revamp
in your go-to-market strategy to achieve that higher number.
And lemme tell you something, having been through this,
this number will look scary
and sometimes people shy away from doing the math
but if you do the math, at least you're staring at reality.
But then, if you actually look at it from a sense of like,
cool, well, this is the number,
but if we revamp the channels we're operating in,
we choose some channels that are more scalable,
if we start to think about what our message is,
and how do we up-level that message in those channels,
and we get super targeted about who we're targeting
for customers with our ideal customer profile,
all of a sudden, this number will start
to feel a lot more approachable,
because you start to realize,
it's not the stuff that we were doing
that's gonna get us to the next phase,
it's a better version of it.
And when you start to think in terms of that,
you're like, oh, we can totally do this.
Like, let's go figure it out.
We may not have all the answers,
but at least we know there's a path forward,
and we know what the math is.
And that's the biggest thing that I learned.
All of this is possible.
The biggest place people go wrong
is essentially principle number one, they never do the math.
And once they do the math, they shy away from the math,
and say, well, maybe we don't need to grow that much.
And they actually just don't get consistent on activities.
They don't revamp their go-to-market strategy.
But on the other side,
if you actually do the math and then you figure out, well,
I need to do predictable activities
which will lead to predictable results.
And then you say, in order to hit this number
and be predictable and consistent in my activities
and to get these results,
I'm gonna revamp my go-to-market strategy based
on everything that I've learned and go for more scale,
then you're gonna have a revamp go-to-market strategy.
You're gonna get predictability for your SaaS business,
and more importantly, you're gonna get scalability
for your SaaS business.
So to recap, principle number one.
To revamp your go-to-market strategy
and get more predictability
and get more scalability is to first do the math.
Just 5X your target number, simple place to start.
Once you have that number,
then figure out what activities are working,
what do you double down on,
and how do you get consistent with it?
And then figure out what do you need to revamp
to actually reach this new level of scale?
How do you revamp your channels you're operating in?
How do you revamp the message
you're going out to the market with?
How do you revamp your ideal customer profile
so you can target those right people?
When you do these three things,
you are going to be able to accelerate your path
to that next stage of growth,
and now you know exactly the three steps that are involved.
What you may not know is, hey, TK,
how do I know if I'm doing the math right?
Like, what should my target number be?
How much should I be growing,
especially in this environment?
What you may not know is, well,
how do I understand what activities
are actually yielding results and what isn't?
How do I know which has more scale potential
versus I'm gonna be tapping out?
Or more importantly,
how do I actually build a proper go-to-market strategy?
You maybe got to this point by just doing whatever we could,
but now it's very clear to get to this next level,
to hit these kind of numbers,
we need to get formalized on exactly how
to revamp our go-to-market strategy and execute on it.
This is why I created my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Inside this program, we follow three key steps.
First, we flesh out your ideal customer profile.
This brings together exactly
who you're gonna be targeting at this bigger scale.
The more focused it is, the more effective it's going to be.
Everyone thinks they have an ICP until they work with me.
We have a 29-point analysis on exactly how
to flesh out your ICP,
and that's why we're so effective inside of the program.
Once you flesh out your ICP,
then we flesh out your manifesto.
Your manifesto is your messaging, your positioning,
your differentiation in the market,
your strategic narrative.
This is how we communicate into the market
of exactly what you do,
why they should go for you versus anyone else in the market.
This permeates into your website,
into your outbound emails, into your ads, everywhere.
And once you have these two pieces,
you have a revamped go-to-market strategy,
and then we teach you how to run a Broadway show.
A Broadway show is a consistent set of scalable
and predictable activities in terms of sales
and marketing that you can run to bring your manifesto
to your ICP on a consistent basis.
And when you follow these three key principles
inside of the program, the ICP,
and the manifest and the Broadway show,
you are able to lever your go-to-market strategy
and get to a SaaS business that's not only growing,
but is predictable and scalable.
You're at the stage where you know that what got you here
isn't gonna get you to that next stage of growth,
it's time to do the math
and revamp your go-to-market strategy
and build a more scalable go-to-market machine.
So to learn more about it,
just go to tkkader.com/gtm, tkkader.com/gtm.
All the details will be over there.
If it sounds like it's a fit,
just fill out the little form and we'll get on a call.
On the call, we'll figure out exactly
where you are in terms of your SaaS business.
We'll figure out if you're a good fit for working together.
The better the fit, the better the results,
and that's why we do this call.
And if it sounds like it's a great fit,
then we're off to the races.
We'll start working together right away,
and we'll help you revamp your go-to-market strategy
and drive growth for your SaaS business.
So just go to tkkader.com/gtm.
I'll also include the link below.
Also, if you got value from this video,
please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It just loves it when you do that.
If you have a fellow founder,
a team member that would get value from this video,
please share this video with them.
It would just mean the world to us.
We put a lot of love in this video,
and we wanna help as many SaaS founders
and SaaS practitioners and SaaS leaders as possible.
If you're part of a WhatsApp group, a Slack group,
a mailing list, please share this video in there as well.
We wanna help as many people as possible.
Seriously, that's why we do this.
Also, I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actual 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
where 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.
See you later.
(intense music)