Go-to-market execution issues present various symptoms in Private Equity and VC-backed companies. The most obvious symptom is a top or bottom-line miss. Other symptoms of go-to-market execution issues might include:
- GTM operations that are too opaque for the board and CEO
- Management team friction
- Lack of board confidence in the operating plan
- Considered turnover of the CRO or CMO
Troubleshooting these symptoms can yield a list of soundbites causes if not done correctly. These soundbite diagnoses might include:
- “Sales can’t close.”
- “The marketing leads are no good.”
- “Sales doesn’t follow up on the leads.”
- “We don’t have a product/market fit.”
- “The sales quotas are too high.”
- “The sales methodology is wrong.”
- “The CRO can’t forecast.”
- “The CMO is a brand person.”
- “We should be more enterprise.”
- “We need more _______(sales, marketing, SE, support) people.”
While these issues might be causing some GTM execution issues, attempting to solve them without checking for underlying GTM execution conditions can result in a misdiagnosis. For example, while marketing leads may be no good, and sales might need to follow up on leads promptly, these issues don’t matter if the company is focused on the wrong customer segment or if an agreed-upon operating model has never been established. Every day spent trying to solve the wrong problem of leads and follow-up, or worse, turning over the CRO or CMO, can add six months to the time it takes to solve the actual problem impacting the company.
Before assigning a tactical cause to GTM execution issues, it is essential to ensure the three legs that prop up GTM execution are solid. The three legs are:
- Product story
- Product-Marketing-Sales Alignment
- Operating Model
Product Story
The product story is the foundation for go-to-market execution. A logical product story should contain items such as:
- The job to be done
- Ideal customer
- Prospect pain points
- Requirements for a solution
- Compelling event for consideration
- An industry wave to ride
- The solution
- An ROI
The product story is the basis for the marketing plan, sales approach, positioning, and roadmap. With the right story, teams can drive the product roadmap to meet more and more of the problems a customer is experiencing when doing their “job to be done.”
Product – Marketing – Sales Alignment
With a rational product story, the next checkpoint is alignment between the Product, Marketing, and Sales teams. Customers buy products to solve problems. Vendors capture a percentage of the problem’s ROI in the product’s value. The value of this solution to a company can be worth <$100/month at one end of a spectrum to >$100K/month or more. The value a product provides requires alignment in product deliverables, marketing execution, and sales execution. For example, you rarely sell a lower-value product (<$100/month ARR) that requires extensive customization, professional services, and an outbound BDR-led effort to support an enterprise sales team. The reverse is also a rarity. Ensuring your teams are aligned is vital to the GTM execution framework.
Operating Model
With a solid product story and alignment between sales, marketing, and product, it is time to look at the operating model used to generate revenue. The operating model describes the “raw materials” of traffic, conversion rates, outbound calls, follow-up cadence, goals, compensation, staffing, expected funnel metrics, and closed deals, among other raw materials. For high-value offerings, BDR teams are likely working against target account lists, marketing is doing account-based marketing, and sales teams perform demonstrations using strategic selling frameworks. For lower-value products, volume sales models likely involve lots of inbound traffic, conversion, trials/freemiums, product-led growth, BDR teams sorting through inbound leads, and sales teams taking over at some conversion point. In both models, lots of data and automated workflows move information around. The operating model describes the machinery, metrics, and goals to transform these raw materials into deals.
The machinery to transform leads, traffic, and prospects into deals is quite complex and likely split across different teams with different managers, each with the ability to make decisions for their teams. While autonomy is good, decisions made by a single team can break the go-to-market machinery. Ensuring everyone has goals and adequate reporting to detect deviations in the model is the final ingredient to ensuring your GTM execution fundamentals are in place.
The Three Pillars Are Good – Now What?
What if your product story makes sense, there is alignment between product, marketing, and sales, and there is a working model for how the machinery is supposed to work? If all these check out, how do you diagnose GTM execution issues?
Examining the model and results should determine where to dive deeper into funnel execution. You can divide the work into lead creation, top-of-funnel creation, or funnel conversion. The GTM machinery is complex enough that something is always not optimal. The key is to understand the next worst inhibitor and solve it.
Conclusion
Looking at the three pillars of go-to-market execution before deep diving into troubleshooting avoids chasing soundbite execution issues that are symptoms of a more significant problem. Starting with pillars of GTM execution will assist in prioritizing the rough spots in execution and help create a prioritized list of what to fix first.
