Is your Go-To-Market right for your product?
Hey there,
It is already the second last to last Sunday of 2022, where did all the time go! Time always goes pass fast if you’re focused on growing a startup. As we recharge our batteries going into the holidays, we wanted to help you frame the right mindset for growth in 2023.
If you just stumbled upon this blog, we share a free newsletter that helps you scale your business faster and better. Every week, we’ll ask you one question on how you’re building your startup and we’ll share a piece of suggested reading with clear action points to help you tackle it. Think of us as your free advisory board, just us today!
❓Here’s our question of the week:
How do you know if your GTM is right for your product?
📑Leslie’s Compass is a framework created by Mark Leslie, the billionaire Founder & CEO of Veritas Technologies. It is for startups to use when determining their go-to-market strategy. It suggests that marketing and sales should be used as counterbalances, and that startups should determine which one to activate by examining variables such as price, market size, level of complexity, fit and finish, and whether the product is for business or consumer use. This framework can help startups make the most of their limited resources when launching a product and making a first impression.
Essentially, a go-to-market strategy has two muscles — Sales & Marketing. To determine the right mix of each function, you need to be asking yourself these questions across each of the variables:
- Price: Is this a large or small economic decision for the buyer? — The price must be able to justify the cost of a salesperson
- Market size: Is it easier for them to find you or for you to find them? — If there aren’t actually that many potential customers then you should find each of them
- Level of Complexity: Can a customer self-serve to use or is education required? — If a product is complex, then it’s always sold and never marketed.
- Fit and Finish: After all is designed, done and shipped, is there still much more for the consumer to do? — If a product works out of the box then its value should be able to market itself
- Business or consumer: Am I predominately selling directly to people or companies? — Consumers are homogenous and a good product should be easily marked
- The customer economic lifetime: Do I measure successful customer relationships by transactions or longevity? — The longer the lifetime of the relationship, the more consideration goes into how I actually deliver and sell this product.
- High-touch or low-touch: How much agency do you have in developing your relationship with your customer? Can your efforts compound or are the mostly one-off? If there is a long process involved in selling a product (Tenders, relationship-building) then you need to sell it
The underlying idea is that you need to understand your customers really well and see how all these factors align and where they fall on the spectrum. The framework would then help you determine whether your GTM should be Sales serves Marketing or Marketing serves Sales (And it could change over time). In the former case, marketing generates the demand and sales provides a place (e.g. physical store, distributors) to be complete the transaction. In the latter scenario. marketing creates and passes qualified leads to the sales machine.
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Have a Merry Christmas 🎅🏿
Team Pangolin
