- 2023 is going to be unlike any other year
rising interest rates, shrinking SaaS budgets, reduction
of employees, which means less seats sold per deal.
Here's a big question though.
What do you do with your go-to-market plan as you're going
into a macro-economic environment like this?
In this episode, I'm gonna walk you through the three steps
that I am personally following for all my SaaS companies
that I'm following, for all the SaaS founders that I coach
to actually prepare our go-to-market plan for 2023
and beyond, regardless of what the actual macroeconomic
conditions are going to be.
And when you follow these principles, you will get
into peak performance in terms
of your go-to-market plan so that you're prepared for
anything.
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 size businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
Now, if you are 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 channel,
if you're 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.
Now, I don't know about you, but it seems like every year
in our adult lives, I'm 39 at the moment,
I'm gonna turn 40 next year.
Is a whole new level of unprecedented.
Every year there's some new thing.
There's this is unprecedented, never been seen before
and 2023 that we're going into is no different.
It seems like we're headed into a bunch
of macroeconomic conditions that could lead
to either a huge recession
or it's just a correction from the pandemic,
from a lot of money in the system and it'll correct itself.
We don't know yet.
But here's the big thing that I learned,
during the last great financial crisis
I was working at a hedge fund.
The hedge fund was called Bridgewater Associates.
It's run by Ray Dalio.
In fact, the employee handbook at the time was the printed
out wire bound version of the principles.
This is before the book came out, and one
of the phrases that I learned while I was working there, one
of the principles that I was taught was there's
no such thing as good markets and bad markets.
There's only good bets and bad bets
and Bridgewater did really well
during the great financial crisis.
You can kind of look it up.
But the thing that I took away
from that was regardless of the macroeconomic conditions
what you have to focus on is what you can control.
And the thing that you can control is how you show
up into the market, what your go-to-market strategy is
and how you compete
in the market and talk to your customers.
So in this episode
I'm gonna walk you through the three principles
and the three steps that I'm personally following
that all the founders that I work with are following to get
into peak performance for our go-to-market plan for 2023,
if it's the best year ever, we will be showing
up jacked and ripped and ready to perform.
If it's the worst year ever, we are still gonna be showing
up with focusing on what we can control
and really competing in the market to continue to win.
Now I'm gonna walk you through the exact framework
that I'm using and then I'm gonna go through
the three steps.
So bere excited to dig in.
Go ahead and smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that.
And let's dig right into it.
Now I'm gonna walk you through the three steps.
Each of them are the three key components
of any go-to-market plan.
But as you're going through this, I want you to
ask yourself which category you fall into for each of these.
That's how we're gonna really check our go-to-market plan
and revamp it for 2023 so that we're prepared.
Now, category A is what I would describe
as nice to have,
optional,
otherwise known as vitamin.
Column number two is what I'm gonna call mission critical
or a painkiller.
Okay these are the two vectors.
We're gonna look at all
of our go-to-market plan through and revamp accordingly
because the thing that we have to ask ourselves is
if things are tough,
if companies are having to slash budgets
it's not that they're not gonna buy, they're gonna buy,
they're gonna buy certain things they're gonna choose.
And so if you went through a period of time where
there was free money and people were buying everything
it doesn't mean they're gonna stop buying.
It just means that they're gonna be more discerning.
And it's up to us,
what we can control is how we position ourselves
in this market so that we fall into the right category.
Step number one, as you are working through this
let's actually number these
because we're gonna go through these.
Step number one is to look at your ideal customer profile.
ICP, I talk about this in this channel all the time.
If you don't know what an ICP is
maybe you're new or maybe you haven't been paying attention
you can check out this video where I go
into explaining exactly what an ideal customer profile is.
You don't have to go anywhere right now,
I'll link to it below.
But an ideal customer profile is a specific way
of describing exactly who your customers are.
Now, the thing that we are doing to really
understand what our go-to-market plan should be
is we're revamping our ideal customer profile.
When I work with founders inside
of my SaaS go-to-market coaching program
we've a very detailed process to define our ICP
and we also have a very detailed process to
actually reverse engineer our ICP based on our revenue data.
What you wanna be figuring out is what part
of your ICP considers your solution a nice to have?
That's the first question you want to ask.
And you wanna also find out what section of your ICP,
what segment of your ICP, what size customer, what type
of revenue considers this a mission critical component
of their business.
What I've found in working with
over 250 SaaS companies and in my 15 years
of experience in SaaS is you get a whole mix of customers.
For some customers, they're using some aspect
of your product where it falls
into the nice to have optional category
and they're very quick to churn
or they just go out of business.
The other segment
of the market is they're gonna continue to thrive
in the recession because they're gonna focus on good bets.
Even in a tough macroeconomic environment, just like we are
they're going to grow, they're going to thrive
but they're only going to keep the things that are
actually mission critical to them.
And so what you wanna understand is are we oriented
around an ICP where our product
and our offering is actually mission critical.
Easy things to root out
in this case, if you have a bunch
of tiny customers and a bunch of tiny startups
a lot of them are not going to survive.
So what you wanna figure out is, hey, are we going
after a new segment of the market that are going to survive
and they can actually be alive and we can serve
to their mission critical aspect of their business?
Or do we have to completely re-pivot?
This is a great place to start
because what you're really doing is really identifying
what's the best market to focus on and making sure
looking at it through a lens of who's gonna survive in 2023
we want them as our customers
and how do we make ourselves mission critical to them?
So if you're targeting a part
of your ICP that's just gonna die,
they're gonna have a high mortality rate
and this typically happens in the lower end of the market.
Then it doesn't matter what you do with your product
they just won't have any money to buy.
It doesn't matter what you do
with these rest of the steps, they're just not gonna buy.
And so I always start with market to figure
out what's gonna be the most ripe market
for us as we go into 2023
given the businesses that are actually gonna have money
and budget to spend.
And they're gonna be like, look, we're gonna focus
on the key essentials, but this is mission critical
so we're gonna spend money on it
and we have the money and we're gonna thrive
and that's why they're gonna survive, right?
And that's why you're gonna survive
because you're gonna follow the same principle.
Step number one is to really revamp your ideal
customer profile
in a very specific way to identify who's gonna be alive
in 23 and how do we make ourselves mission critical to them?
And really doing a gut check on
are we just saying we're mission critical
or are we actually mission critical?
Is there a part of the market where we are mission critical
and they're gonna be alive
and that's who you wanna focus on.
And ultimately it comes down to who, right?
If you don't nail down the who,
the people that will have budget that will buy in 2023
and they're gonna be buying the most essential things,
the rest of these things are not really going to matter.
So that's step number one.
Step number two is your manifesto, and the manifesto
is essentially your central strategic narrative.
This is how you communicate what you do in the market.
There are few things the manifesto breaks down into.
This is your value proposition,
this is your positioning and this is your messaging.
These are critical choices you make
in your go-to market so that when you run that ad
you do that LinkedIn post, you write that blog post,
you send that outbound email, you create that video.
Anything that you do in the actual execution of your sales
and marketing right down to your sales deck has a consistent
and strategic message that positions your product
on the transformation you're doing for your customers
and why it's mission critical, urgent, and important.
Another thing that I always highlight when I'm working
with founders on their messaging
and their manifesto is asking
is it urgent and is it important?
Businesses will spend money no matter what an urgent
and important problems.
So if you can frame your product
to an urgent and important problem that these people have
then they're going to buy.
They have to because they have to solve their urgent
and important problems in order to survive.
However, if it's kind of an A problem, it's not urgent
or not important, and it has to be both, right?
It can be an important problem, but if it's not urgent
they're not gonna buy right now.
But if it's urgent and important, they will buy right now.
And what you wanna be doing is doing a gut check on, okay
this is our market.
This is who we're gonna go after.
Do these people have a mission critical problem,
an urgent and important problem?
And are we going to them
with the messaging that communicates the importance
of the problem, the urgency of the problem
and how we solve it?
That is the manifesto.
These two things alone will completely
up level how you talk about your product in 2023
and will help you differentiate against your competition
and will help you focus on where you're most likely to win.
I go back to the original story I told when I was working
at Bridgewater, are you starting to see how it
almost doesn't matter what the macroeconomic conditions are
and also you can't do anything about it
but you can choose which market you're gonna go after.
You can choose how you're gonna communicate, how urgent
and important of a problem it is and how you're solving it.
And when you focus on these two things
you actually stand a chance to win
even if it's a worse economic conditions.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
Before I go to number three, let me pause here
and let me just do a gut check with you.
If you focus on these two things
and you really think about your go-to market in terms
of the lens of is it mission critical, is it urgent?
Is it important?
Are we going
after the market where it's urgent and important?
Do they actually have the urgent important problem?
Are we educating them on it?
Are we communicating how we solve for it?
Can you just start to see
regardless of the economic conditions
you can still make good bets and win?
If you're starting to see the power in this,
can I just get a yes in the comments below
and also smash out like button for the YouTube algorithm?
It really likes it when you do that, and so do we.
We put a lot of love into these videos.
Also, if you're at this point where you're
revamping your go-to-market strategy, you have some revenues
and you're looking to scale and you're looking to win
in 2023, and you're looking to embody this mindset of like
let's go do this
and make good bets regardless of what happens
we're gonna show up jacked and ripped and with the six pack
and actually win, then I encourage you to check
check out my SaaS, go-to-market coaching program.
This is where you and I work together to
revamp your entire go-to-market strategy
test the right way, measure the right metrics
and iterate from there so you can scale.
You don't have to go anywhere right now.
I'll link to it below.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video.
Let's go to principle number three and step number three
because this one's just as important.
So just like how I'm describing
that these companies that are going to survive
and win and thrive are gonna be making some choices
on mission critical things.
They're gonna be making choices
on what moves the needle and what doesn't move the needle.
Where do we spend our money and where do we not?
They're still gonna be spending money,
they're still gonna be buying
but they're gonna be doing it on the most important things.
The same thing applies to you.
You should be doing that as a business as well.
Maybe you don't need the fifth chat application
that your team is paying for.
However, you definitely need to invest in marketing.
You definitely need to invest in sales.
You definitely need to find ways to grow.
You will spend your money
on that because otherwise you don't have a business.
And so the same principle applies, right?
For your customers as it does for you.
And so the third principle, the third component
of go-to market that I always talk
about is your Broadway show and what you wanna think
about in terms of the Broadway show.
The Broadway show is a consistent set
of marketing and sales activities
that you are running to bring your manifesto,
your message to your market, to the ICP.
You do this consistently
on the key channels that are delivering the best ROI
then you are gonna win, then you're gonna be successful.
And if you're not
then you're gonna be spending a whole bunch
of money with no ROI.
The companies and the customers that are gonna win
in 2023 are gonna be making sure they focus
on the high ROI items, and you have to do the same thing.
You need to look
at where are we spending money in terms of marketing?
Where are we spending money in terms of sales?
Cut the bottom performing reps.
If they're not closing deals, then don't keep them.
Cut the underperforming marketing channels.
If you're not getting ROI on marketing channels, cut them.
But also, if there are marketing channels
that are working really well, for example
LinkedIn is working incredibly well
for everyone in the go-to-market program, and we're doubling
down on it because it's free, it's organic
and we actually have a way to actually deliver traffic
and leads and pipeline using the manifesto.
So we're gonna be doubling down on that.
You should do the same.
You should actually look at your stats
or even do a gut check
if you don't have all the metrics and decide, "Hey
what are the nice to haves for us?"
And what are the mission critical channels for us?
What are the channels that are giving us ROI?
What are the channels that are profitable?
What are the channels that are efficient?
These are questions that you should ask.
And if you don't have any channels
like that and you're like, TK, we're just starting out
we don't even know, then pick the highest probability ones.
But if you do have a bunch of things running
then just have an honest look.
Look at the data and start to figure out like,
"Hey what's actually moving the needle and what's not?"
And when you start to do that
you will be one of the companies
just like the companies you are targeting on, Hey
we're gonna focus on the mission critical.
We're gonna invest in the things that has high ROI
We're not gonna die,
so we have to invest in our go-to market.
We have to grow, so let's go place good bets
even in a tough market.
The best part about this plan
and these steps is when you follow this
you are gonna have a stellar go-to-market plan.
The thing is, you should have targeted mission
critical people in the first place.
You should be solving an urgent
and important problem in the first place.
You should be constantly iterating a Broadway show so
that you are focusing on your highest ROI channels anyway.
But in the environment we had over the last couple of years
you could have gotten away
with being a little bit more slack.
In this new environment
you have to be performing at a higher level
and that's what this entails.
But even if, even if everyone's wrong about 2023
and it's the best year ever, the Fed starts cutting rates,
there's more money supply, there's even more funding,
even if those things happen, guess what?
You now have a go-to-market plan that's jacked, ripped, and
with the six-pack, and it'll outperform anyone else again
even in a great market again, because it's a good bet.
Good bets do well
in great markets and in bad markets, it doesn't matter.
And that's the power in this three step strategy.
So to recap, if you want to revamp your go-to-market plan
in 2023, number one, flesh out your ideal customer profile
and focus on mission critical, urgent, and important
and make sure you're a painkiller.
Number two, revamp your messaging, your positioning,
your strategic narrative.
Build a manifesto so that it communicates how
you're solving an urgent important problem,
why it's an urgent important problem,
and how your solution helps.
And then focus on the right channels to bring that manifesto
to your ICP on a consistent basis so
that you are net profitable and you can win
and can accelerate your growth on each channel.
Now you know the three steps that I'm gonna be following
and all the founders that I work with are gonna be
following to revamp our go-to-market strategy for 2023.
What you may not know is, Hey TK
how do I do a proper ICP exercise?
How do I actually build a manifesto?
It's very involved.
It takes iterations.
How do we communicate the urgent
and important problem that we're solving?
And how do we nail the one?
How do we know it's the right one?
How do we communicate our solution in the context of that?
Which channel should we do to bring our manifesto
to our ICP?
This is why I created my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Inside of this program, you and I work together
to actually revamp your go-to-market strategy.
This is the exact framework I follow with you to flesh
out your ideal customer profile, to build your manifesto
and then run a consistent Broadway show
so you can bring your manifesto
to your ICP on a consistent basis.
You also track the right metrics so we know exactly
what we need to tweak as we keep iterating.
It's an incredible program.
We've worked with so many amazing founders.
We've had so many success stories to a point where
now we're publishing two episodes every week, one like this
and one with success stories, and we have an entire playlist
for it that I'll link to below.
If you wanna work together
and you wanna invest in your go-to-market plan.
Cause you gotta grow,
you gotta make good bets regardless of what 2023 holds.
Then I encourage you to check out the go-to-market program.
All you need to do is just go to TKKADER.COM/GTM
TKKADER.COM/GTM.
All the details are in there.
You just fill out a short form.
We'll get on a call, we'll make, make sure we're a good fit.
And if you are, and if we can help
then we're off to the races.
We start revamping your strategy.
And in the first three weeks of being in the program
we'll launch your first version and iterate from there.
And also, you can check
out the success stories once you book the call
so you can see all the incredible impact we've had
through the program with founders talking about it
for 45 minutes each on how they've grown their business
and how they've revamped their go-to-market strategy.
So the link is below
or just go to tkkader.com/gtm.
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.
And so do we.
We put a lot of love and effort into these videos.
Also, I drop an episode every single Sunday and sometimes
on Thursdays with case studies on actionable strategies
and tactics from myself and other founders I work
with from the trenches on how to grow your SaaS business.
So be sure to hear the subscribe button
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That way you'll get notified.
If you have a fellow founder,
if you have a co-founder
they will get value from this video.
They're a little anxious about 23
and you want to like give 'em plan so they feel calmer.
Please share this video with them.
If you're part of a Slack group, a WhatsApp group
please share this video.
We just want to help as many SaaS founders
as possible in revamping the go-to-market plan
for the coming year and beyond.
And also, I'm doing this video
in a way where this is gonna happen again beyond 2023.
This might happen in 2043.
And the principles are the same.
These are timeless principles.
So if you're watching this and it's not 2023,
put in the commons below cause I want to hear from you.
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
of the Go-to-market program where we get to work together.
Take care everybody.