Go To Market Plan - 6 Steps to Creating a Go-to-Market Plan

- If you've built a product and you've got revenues, but you don't have that predictable go-to-market machine yet where you put in a dollar and $2 comes out, if you don't have predictable revenues, if you don't have predictable growth, then you need a go-to-market plan. In this episode, I'm gonna walk you through the six steps that you absolutely need to follow to build your go-to-market plan. And when you implement these steps, you will be able to accelerate your path to that next stage of growth.

Intro. What's up everybody? Welcome to Unstoppable.

I'm TK and on this channel help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses 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 if you're new, be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon, 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 this channel, 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.

Truth be told, I've done this video every single year since I've started this YouTube channel since I've been running my SaaS go-to-market coaching program. And every year, based on my 15 years of experience of actually being a CEO of a scaling SaaS company, ToutApp which was backed by in recent Horowitz and then selling that to Marketo where I joined the executive team, where I became as VP of strategy, I ran alliances, I ran Europe, I ran a NZ and doing go to market functions there. And over the last four years, helping over 250 SaaS founders build their Go-to-market plans, based on all those pieces and all that experience, I bring you this episode every single year completely refreshed on the six steps to actually build your go-to-market plan.

And I'll be honest, when I first started out, I thought I knew what it entailed to build a go-to-market plan. It wasn't until I worked with some of the smartest go-to-market leaders, smartest marketers, smartest advisors, smartest investors, that I truly understand the nuances of properly building a go-to-market plan so that you can actually get to that predictable growth, that's scalable growth. So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through the six steps.

If you're excited to dig into step number one, go ahead and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm. It just loves it when you do that, so we put a lot of love in these videos and let's dig right into it. Step number one in the six steps to building your go-to-market plan is to actually define your market.

Now, let's be clear. You woke up one morning and you decided to start a software company. You decided to build a product because you understood a certain problem.

You've actually built those features and now you've actually got revenues. The big thing to really figure out is, okay, what market am I really playing in? Maybe you've built a CRM tool, maybe you've built an email tool, maybe you've built an AI tool.

What's important to understand is exactly what market you're playing in. This doesn't have to get fancy. The best way to really define the market you are going after is to define what is the urgent and important problem that you're solving.

When you actually force yourself to sit down and say, hey, this is the urgent and important problem that we're solving and these are the kind of people that have it, you essentially are defining a market. If it's a very mature market, that's an existing market, it usually has a three or four letter acronym like CRM, customer relationship management, that's your target market. But if it's a brand new space, if it's a new market, if it's a brand new problem, if it's a unique group of people, it may not have a four letter acronym or a three letter acronym, but there still needs to be some sort of definition of what the market it is that you're going after.

And that's essentially the chess board, this playing field that you are in, that's this bounding box right over here. A lot of times folks start with a product, they get some revenues with their existing network, but they fail to really define what is the market we're playing in. And that's really the first step of really defining a go-to market plan 'cause all these other steps build on that.

Once you have actually defined your target market and define what is the urgent and important problem that your product solves, the next step you really wanna define is why. Why is a way of actually stress testing, why this is truly a valid market to go after. Specifically the way I like to define why is to actually explain why does this urgent and important problem exist.

The reality is no one really wakes up in the morning and says, I want more software. There's some problem that they're dealing with, there's a certain result they want to accomplish. Defining that why and defining why this problem exists and why this market exists is super important.

The best way to actually do this is the trick that I use is to find macro trends. Macro trends are essentially things that are happening. I forgot that O there.

An example of a macro trend is that 92% of SaaS companies will fail despite funding, despite initial growth within three years of actually starting. That's a macro trend that impacts SaaS founders in a very direct way. That's a macro trend that keeps me up at night and I actually wake up every morning thinking about.

What you wanna do is find a macro trend that truly articulates the problem, the transformation or the opportunity that your product solves. This is the best way to justify why your product exists. And really stress test 'cause if you can't find the right macro trend and chances are you don't quite have an urgent and important problem.

And I always do this with founders I work with because it really helps us validate exactly what's going on in the market if it's a real market. But also more importantly, when you start to say the macro trend to your ideal customers, immediately they start to understand the value of your product. So it's one cool way to actually break through the noise as well.

Once you have the second piece, you've got the market, you understand why this market exists, why it's an urgent important problem. Then the third piece comes in. The third piece is essentially positioning.

Now, if this is essentially the bounding box of your market in SaaS, in software in this industry, there's always way to break this market up. So specifically you could be going after small businesses, you could be going after the mid-market, medium-sized companies, or you could be going after the enterprises, large size companies. You could even break that down a little bit more.

There could be the little enterprise, there could be the upper mid market, there could be the lower mid market. But you get the point. There are different ways to actually segment out this large market that you are essentially going after.

And this is super important because you wanna understand exactly how you're going to be taking your product into the market. And the more specific that you get, the better off your go-to market plan is going to be because you can really cater to that segment of the market. The biggest thing that comes into play between these different parts of the market is how they buy.

So for example, if you are selling to the SMB, the lower end of the market, chances are you're gonna have a very simple sales process. On the other hand, if you're selling to large enterprise companies, they're gonna have a very complex buying process. You're gonna have to convince a heck of a lot of people on why they should use your product before you even get it into the door.

So there's essentially a spectrum over here of complexity from simple all the way to complex. And based on that, just naturally speaking, the more complex your product is, the more complex the salespeople are, the more it's gonna cost you to sell to them, therefore, the more you're going to have to charge. Whereas the simpler the product, the smaller the company, the lower the budget, well, in that case, you're really going to be charging a lot less.

Figuring out exactly where you're going to position yourself in the market, how you're going to actually sell to these customers is the next step in the process. So as you start to understand, this is the market, this is how it kind of breaks down between the small to medium sized business SMBs, true mid-market companies, enterprise companies. I can start to understand, okay, there's a simple process that these lower end the companies follow, there's a more complex one that these guys follow, you can start to determine exactly where you're going to play.

This is super important because it helps you really determine do I need to hire salespeople? Do I put a star trial? Do I put talk to sales?

How exactly do I engage with these buyers as they come into discovering my product? And that's the third step in the process. I have steps number four, five, and six.

This is where it really gets fun and these things start to get mobilized. But before I go into four, five, and six, lemme just pause here for a second. I started see the power in this.

I've done this over and over for my own SaaS companies. I've coached SaaS founders over 250 of them over the last four years since I've started this channel in my program. And I followed these steps over and over.

And every single time I meet a founder, I'm working with a founder, they're like, no, I thought I had to go-to market plan, but now that I'm going through the process, I'm following these steps, I really understand the depth of what we're doing. So if you're starting to see the power in this, can I just get yes in the comments below and also smash a like button for the YouTube algorithm? It just loves it when you do that.

Also, if you have questions around these specific steps, if you have applied these steps and gotten some aha moments, put in the comments. We love hearing from you. Alright, now let's go to step number four because this is where this stuff really starts to come together.

As you start to think about this bounding box of your market, as you start to think about what is the urgent important problem, as you start to think about, well, where do we play? One thing that really determines a lot of decisions you're making, this is where a lot of strategic decisions are being made. Maybe you're talking to your co-founder, you're choosing between some of these.

One of the things you really wanna look at is your competition. At this point in the SaaS industry, there's a SaaS for pretty much anything. And if you're starting a SaaS business, if you're scaling a SaaS business, there is competition.

Sometimes the competition is just a spreadsheet. Sometimes the competition is apathy, but more often than not, the competition is a well-established or another SaaS company. So what you wanna do is take a moment and really look at what is the competition in the market I'm going after?

Who else is solving this problem? And often you'll find there's different competitors in different parts of the market. There may be an enterprise competitor for A CRM like Salesforce, but there may not be a true, low end completely free CRM provider.

Maybe there is, for your specific industry maybe there isn't. So you can start to understand the difference segments of the market and you really wanna map out exactly where the competition is. This does two things.

One, it helps you understand if there's white space. There may be segments in the market where there's unmet needs, meaning there's customers with the urgent important problem, but there's no real software company focusing on them. That's what we call white space.

And in that kind of scenario, you can just focus on that white space with your positioning and your messaging, which we'll talk about in a little bit, and really differentiate yourself. In other cases, you may decide, you know what, there are other players in the market, but we have this one feature that is 10 times better than anything that they offer. So you can choose to compete directly with them.

In that kind of scenario, you wanna be very, very direct about the fact that you are competing with them and talk about how you are going to differentiate compared to the competition. This is super powerful. There's other ways to compete as well.

So for example, you could offer the same software, but you can decide, you know what? We're gonna go for an even more premium offering, we're gonna charge that much more, but because we're charging that much more, we're going to give white glove service compared to the competitors in the market. So that's one way to differentiate as well.

The key here in your go to market plan is to understand the competition. Figure out if you're going to go after a white space or you're gonna compete directly with existing competitors and really being intentional about how you're gonna communicate, how you differentiate in the market. A lot of times founders just skip this part and trust me, I've done this too.

I'm afraid to find out about the competition because my baby will look ugly. But the sooner you understand the competition, the sooner you can bake it into your go-to-market plan and say, here's how we're gonna differentiate and here's where we're gonna play, which is a critical component to your go-to-market plan. Once you have the competition defined, then comes the fun part.

The fifth step in the process that you're gonna follow is to build out your messaging. Messaging sounds kind of fancy or overly simple, but really it breaks down to a few things. It's your value proposition.

The value prop is one to two sentences that clearly explains what the problem is you solve and why they should go with you and why they should do it now. if you can explain that really succinctly and you will win against the competition in your target market. When you open up a website, what is the first piece of text that shows?

When you send a cold email, when you run an ad, all these pieces that you may be doing for marketing or for sales, stems off of your messaging. This is why we'll get into the execution on step six. This is why all these pieces come before because if you do these pieces, then by the time you're running that ad or doing that blog post or doing any sort of marketing or sales activity, it's built off of a proper go-to market plan.

And the key part of that is to really define your messaging. So value proposition is one. The other one that really comes in is what we call your strategic narrative.

A strategic narrative is a clear way to really explain the transformation you're bringing to your target customer's lives. It's an all-encompassing message that you can put in front of your customer that explains what is it that you do? What's the macro trend that's happening?

Why you're different? Why you can serve them? And why they should go with you versus the competition?

That's a strategic narrative. This is super important to define at this part of your go-to-market plan because if you do that, by the time you actually execute on your plan, your messaging will be widely different compared to the competition for your target market. So that's step number five.

Once you've done step number five, then comes the fun part. This is where you actually put it all into play, and this is essentially your execution. This is where marketing and sales really happens for your go to market.

This is where you take the messaging and you bring it to your target market, to your ideal customers on a consistent basis. Now, you could be doing this through inbound, so you could be posting on social media, you could be running ads, you could be doing blog posts. You'll take the messaging and you'll mobilize it so that your ideal customers discover it.

You could also be doing it through outbound where you are sending cold emails or DMs and actually engaging with people in the market. Or you could be doing with channels, you could partner with other companies that are already selling to your customers and mobilizing the messaging through them, mobilizing the strategic narrative through them. Either way, by the time you get into execution, you will have created the first five steps, which is your true go-to-market plan, and then it gets into the execution.

So this way you're actually coming from a place of strength. You know exactly what the market is, what problem you're solving, why you're better than the rest, and you know how to communicate it in the market, which is why step six works so much better. The most important part of step six is as you start to get going, you really wanna figure out if it's working or not.

So a big part of this is to actually track the data and actually keep iterating on these steps. The more you iterate on these steps based on the data that you collect, the better and better it gets and that allows you to scale. So let's recap over here.

Here are the six steps to building your go-to-market plan based on my 15 plus years of experience and helping over 250 SaaS founders implement these six steps. Number one, figure out the bounding box that you're playing in. What is the urgent and important problem that you're solving for and what is the target market you're going after?

Number two, why is this an actual urgent and important problem? What is happening in your customer's lives? What is the big macro trend that's happening that makes it where they need to be using your product?

Number three, what is the positioning? Given the market, what segment of the market do you want focus on? How do you actually wanna differentiate?

How do you wanna sell your product? And then number four, figure out where the competition is and figure out if your positioning is right or if you need to tweak it, or more importantly, how do you actually communicate how are you gonna differentiate from the competition. Number five, take all these pieces and codify it into your value proposition and you strategic narrative that you can mobilize.

And then number six, run your sales and marketing on a consistent basis where you're bringing that messaging to your market on a consistent basis so that you can generate pipeline, get into customer conversations and scale growth. And as you're doing this, track the data, keep iterating, and that way you'll be able to get better and better and accelerate your path to that next stage of growth. So now you know the six steps to building a go-to-market plan.

Now what you may not know is, TK, how do I really figure out if I'm solving an urgent important problem, how do I communicate that or how do I find the right macro trends that'll really, really speak to customers? How do I position my product given the opportunities that exist in the market? Do I do enterprise?

Do I do mid-market? Do I do the SMB? Do I do product-led?

Do I do sales-led or some sort of hybrid? You may be thinking about what is my 10 x feature and how do I really communicate that to customers before they demo my product? How do I really differentiate against the competition?

You may be wondering, okay, maybe it has some of this, but how do I actually define my value proposition? Or what does a strategic narrative look like? How do I turn that into something that I can actually promote online or even use as part of my sales deck?

Or you may be wondering, TK, how do I actually build inbound pipeline and mobilize all this? These are questions that come up all the time with SaaS founders that have revenues, that have a product, they know their customers love them, but are now looking to scale predictably, and this is why I created my SaaS go-to-market coaching program. Inside of this program, we go through three core pillars.

The first one is we build out your ideal customer profile. Your ideal customer profile helps us really codify what segment of the market you're going after and what you're solving for. Once you have that, then we go into the second pillar, that's your manifesto.

Your manifesto is the strategic narrative, it's your value prop, it's your messaging all in one place, and I teach you how to create this. Once you have those two pieces, you essentially have your go-to market strategy, and then we go into the third pillar, that's your broadway show. Your broadway show is a consistent set of sales and marketing activities that you use to bring that manifesto to your IAP on a consistent basis.

You're generating pipeline, you're converting them to revenue, you're collecting the data and you're iterating and scaling. It is an incredible program. I've worked with incredible founders inside of this program.

We've shared success stories. If you'd like to work with me directly to actually build out your go-to-market plan, implement these six steps and scale your SaaS business, just go to tkkader. com/gtm.

tkkader. com/gtm Once you go on that page, all the details will be there. Now, the better the fit, the better the results, which is why if you'd like to work together, just fill out the little form and book a call with us.

On the call, we'll review where you are with the business, what your goals are. If it's a fit, we'll get started working together right away. So just go to tkkader.

com/gtm for all the details. Now, if you got values from this video, and if you're still watching this, chances are you have, which is incredible, please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm. It just loves it when you do that.

Also, I drop an episode like this with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches that'll help grow your SaaS business faster. So be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon, so you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode. If you have a fellow founder, if you have a team member, if you're part of a Slack group or WhatsApp group with other SaaS founders that could get value from this video, please share this with them.

We want to help as many SaaS founders as possible build incredible software companies. And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business. When you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.

I'm TK, and I'll see you in the next episode or inside the SaaS Go-to Market coaching program. Take care everybody.