How to refresh your Go-to-Market within 30 days

 

I spoke to an old friend a couple of weeks ago, who is a CMO at a SaaS company.  He was in the process of updating their Go-to-Market (GTM) for their new Fiscal Year and wanted my thoughts on it. Below is an approach I proposed – not an exhaustive study but something that allows him to update within 30 days - ongoing tweaks to their messaging/value proposition to stay current, as well as where they should (re)focus their solution in terms of new geographies and industry verticals/sub segments.

I suggested that they either have their senior product marketing manager run this process or hire a product marketing consultant from outside.  The inputs they need are:

1. Industry analyst reports that highlight key trends in customer buying behavior, recent new entrants, changes in relative positioning/ranking of key players and finally, the strengths/weaknesses of the company with respect to these players.
2. Win-loss analysis, conducted by product marketing, from each of the last four quarters.  If the win-loss analysis does not exist, would recommend doing one using the CRM data as a starting point.
3. Internal competitive analysis, including SWOT analysis, done by either product marketing or product management organization.
4. Review of about ten to fifteen RFP responses/pre-sales responses to deals that are currently in play or the company won/lost in the last 3 months.  This is key to understanding what customers are asking for and if it tells a different story than what you saw in win-loss or competitive analysis.
5. Internal workshop/calls with sales, pre-sales, and professional services teams on what they are seeing with respect to why we win or lose and how customers are deploying and using the software.  This activity allows the product marketing/consultant, who is working on the project to do deep dives into questions/gaps they may have from the first four input sources above.
6. Finally, speak to at least 5 customers who selected your solution in the last 6 months to validate your findings or deep dive into some open areas.

Armed with this information, you can decide what tweaks are needed to ensure Go-to-Market stays aligned with the changing environment. It is always a good idea to do this analysis at the beginning of every 12 months, preferably in the first quarter of the new fiscal year – keeps your go-to-market current by ensuring your messaging/value proposition for your solution aligns with the ever-evolving customer needs, as well as finding new opportunities for your solutions such as new verticals/sub segments or new geographies. This process then helps you identify opportunities for new marketing content, new sales enablement tools/refresh of existing sales enablement content and new marketing programs.