Tag: Go-To-Market Strategy

What is the Importance of a Go-to-Market Strategy for B2B Firms?

November 14, 2022 by Jhaizzle Marcellano

When you plan to bring a new product or service to the market, you must have a solid GTM strategy for a successful launch. The GTM, or go-to-market strategy, is popular approach marketers use to launch products or services. A go-to-market plan can make or break the success of your new products or services. In this post, we’ll shed light on the importance of a go-to-market strategy for B2B businesses. Continue reading to learn about the different aspects of the GTM plan and see  how it can help your B2B business grow.

 

Understanding Go-To-Market Strategy 

A step-by-step plan for launching a product in a new market is known as a go-to-market plan. It includes effective strategies for new product or service launches, rebranding, or product introduction to a new market. A GTM plan is important for launching products/services; otherwise, you might spend valuable time and resources chasing the wrong audience. The critical components of a GTM plan include the following –

     ● Product-market fit
     ● Target audience
     ● Competition and demand
     ● Distribution

 

How to Develop a Go-to-Market Strategy? 

There are two types of methodologies used for creating a GTM plan – the funnel and the flywheel. However, you should be familiar with some important steps regardless of the method you choose.

 

● Analyze the market 

The first step of a good GTM plan is assessing the market you are planning to launch your products in. For this, you will have to do competitive research to identify the key players in the market. The next step is identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors to understand what is working well for them. Try to find answers to the following questions –

     ● Which markets have the biggest and most urgent pain?
     ● Where are the gaps in the market?
     ● Who are your competitors?
     ● What are their strengths and weaknesses?
     ● What does your product offer as a solution?

 

Understanding the Customers

Having customer insights is important for planning and executing a successful GTM plan. Understand who your customers are and how they behave. The customer service representative, sales team, and other client-facing employees can help gain customer insights. You should have answers to the following questions to plan a GTM strategy.

    ● What are your customers saying?
    ● What is common feedback received?
    ● What problems are not being addressed, and what is actively being worked on?
    ● How can you improve?

 

    ● Define Your Offering and Brand Positioning 

Learn and understand the products you are offering and their key features and benefits so that you can better position them in the market. Brand positioning refers to how you position yourself against other competitors in the market. Keep in mind the brand positioning, buyer personas, and company mission while planning the GTM strategy. 

 

    ● Identify Your KPIs

Another important step for planning a GTM strategy is the identification of the key performance indicators or KPIs. The KPIs refer to the metrics used for identifying and measuring the success of the GTM plan. Conversion is an important KPI for a product launch. 

 

Top Benefits of a GTM Strategy 

Now, let’s learn why B2B firms should put an effort into developing a B2B go-to-market strategy, and how it can benefit them. The success of your B2B company depends on the development of a go-to-market plan. This combines all the essential components that boost your business growth, including pricing, distribution, brand awareness, sales, marketing, and more. The GTM plan offers a strategic action plan that clarifies how to connect with your target audience and compete more effectively in your market. 

Marketers must develop a go-to-market plan for both the launch of new items and the ongoing promotion of already existing goods and services. These are some of the top benefits of having a B2B go-to-market strategy: 

● A GTM plan can help save time and keep stress levels lower. Your organization should have a realistic plan that everyone can follow. This will help keep everyone on the same trajectory.   

● When you have a clear plan by your side, it helps you keep focused on solving major challenges. A GTM plan allows marketers to concentrate on every element that could influence the overall strategy. It will keep you on the path to success.

● When you know the needs of potential customers, it is easy to encourage them to buy your products. With a GTM strategy, you  have a list of customer requirements and can meet the needs of the target audience easily. 

● The GTM plan reduces risk and helps overcome the challenges that products or services may face during market entry. It helps increase your profit and protects the business from unpredictable economic conditions. 

● Initially, building a GTM strategy may feel like a huge investment, but with time, you will understand the plethora of benefits it offers. It saves you time and money in the long run by reducing the risk of a failed product launch. Ultimately, this will also help you stay within your budget. 

 

Wrapping Up

Developing a holistic go-to-market strategy is important for business growth. We hope this post helps you understand the various aspects of a GTM plan and its importance for launching products and services successfully.

The leading B2B growth consultant firm, Company Expert, offers a variety of proprietary solution suites, technologies, and resources to give B2B financial services, technology, and professional service firms speed, knowledge, and accelerated growth. With the support of Company Expert’s Go-to-market Strategy framework, you can successfully enter a new market or introduce new products/services to an existing market. From setting GTM strategy goals, to launching a campaign, our playbooks can help you every step of the way. Feel free to visit our website to learn more about our services and playbooks.

Seven Sales Playbooks You Need to Scale the Growth of Your B2B Firm

February 17, 2022 by Bernadette Brogan

These 7 playbooks are a crucial part of ensuring your B2B business’ growth

The natural flow of every business is towards growth. It is the sales department that ensures a business grows consistently. Thus, an effective sales process is at the core of the growth of any business. A sales playbook is all about ensuring that for your business. 

A sales playbook is a manual that includes everything salespeople need to know about the sales process, such as standard operating procedures, roles and responsibilities of salespeople, sales tools, and sales guidance. It is the core document that ensures consistency and efficiency in the sales operations.

Sales Playbook for B2B businesses

A vast range of sales playbooks are available for a business to improve operational efficiency. It can be a regular B2B sales playbook that entails the entire sales process of an organization, or it can be a specific sales playbook on a particular sales strategy.

For example, if you plan to use account-based marketing to target high-worth clients, you can create an ABM sales playbook that provides the framework to develop an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy for your firm. This playbook will help train new salespeople, bring consistency in sales operations, and improve the ROI.      

We have shortlisted the seven playbooks from our collection that you may need for your B2B business to scale the operations. 

7 Playbooks to Scale the Growth of a B2B Business

 

1. Sales Playbook

 

This playbook will act as a living, breathing, working document for your sales department. It provides the framework to create a Sales Playbook for your firm. You can update your sales playbook anytime. 

This 53-pages sales playbook framework contains seven critical elements for success in selling professional services. It will walk you through a process that breaks each element into its core components.

The Sales Playbook helps your B2B sales team to understand the sales process, know the potential clients, manage different stages of the sales cycle, handle objections, and achieve the right positioning and messaging. You can also use this sales playbook to establish effective metrics and expectations for sales teams. 

You can set a systematic approach of how to sell across your organization using the collection of best practices and strategies using this sales playbook.

 

2. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Playbook 

 

Account-based marketing is the highly targeted approach used by B2B firms. It has the highest ROI of all the sales strategies. 

The Account-Based Marketing playbook provides the framework to develop an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy for your firm. It is a 71-pages playbook that will allow you to develop an ABM manual for your firm that can help you with the following:

  • Select target accounts for the account-based marketing 
  • Determine market attractiveness and competitors assets
  • Score the key accounts based on the market attractiveness and competitors assets
  • Find the best data on your accounts 
  • Divide the accounts into tiers for effective targeting  

With the help of this sales playbook, your sales team can create highly personalized marketing campaigns based on a targeted account’s specific needs, and allow the sales team to establish deeper connections with current & future customers. This will result in a complete ABM strategy that reaps a better ROI.

 

3. Account Management Playbook 

 

Account management is the process of managing the existing accounts of a business to nurture the relationship. It includes providing efficient customer support to the accounts to retain or increase the consumption of a product or service. 

The Account Management playbook provides you with the framework to develop a standardized Account Management strategy for your professional services firm. It defines and illustrates the best way to nurture, develop, and grow your most important clients. 

With the help of this playbook, your sales team or customer success team will be able to follow a thorough Account Management strategy to cultivate and grow relationships with the company’s most important clients. 

The playbook framework can help you with the following:

  • Capturing, codifying, and institutionalizing the best practice behaviors of top performers 
  • Help consolidate decentralized sales, marketing, and account management information in one place
  • Create scalable processes to drive predictable revenue and build stronger relationships.  

 

4. Sales Segmentation

 

Sales segmentation is the process of dividing your target audience into approachable groups based on needs, interests, budgets, or other attributes. This allows a business to efficiently market to individual consumers or clients. 

The Sales Segmentation playbook provides the framework to develop a systematic and proven approach for sales segmentation. Adopting an in-depth and analytical approach to sales segmentation helps B2B professional services firms flourish and dramatically increase close ratios and results.

This playbook will help you with the following: 

  • Data-driven sales segmentation using a unique set of criteria/weighting
  • Provide tools to bring in detailed market data to provide you with a complete picture of your target audience 
  • Scoring prospects based on the criteria to compare them against one another 
  • Prioritize communication strategy according to the likelihood of the prospects to purchase your product or service 

 

5. Designing and Executing Sales Campaigns 

 

Most newly established professional services firms do not have a standardized and proven strategy to design and execute the sales campaign. This playbook will help professional service firms’ executives, directors, and staff to develop a systematic sales campaign strategy. In addition, it helps businesses to develop the degree of sophistication surrounding their sales campaigns. 

This playbook can help you with the following:  

  • Adopting a methodical approach to design and execute your sales campaigns 
  • Identify the goals and objectives for your sales campaigns
  • Identifying the target audience  
  • Explaining how to reach your leads 
  • Strategies to nurture relationships, develop trust 

 A well-designed sales campaign can help you achieve your goals, whether it is increasing revenue, penetrating new markets, or strengthening a relationship with a key stakeholder. 

 

 6. Competitive Analysis 

 

Competitor analysis is the process of critically assessing your company’s competitor. Most B2B companies use competitor analysis to research their competitors’ different marketing strategies to use the information to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses relative to each competitor. 

The Competitive Analysis playbook provides a B2B firm with a framework to assess its key competitors. Understanding your competitive environment is crucial to developing the sales strategy of your B2B professional service firm. 

The Competitive Analysis playbook will help you with the following:

  • Determine the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors within your market
  • Provide insights into barriers to prevent competition from entering your market
  • Inform strategies to provide you with a distinct advantage
  • Assess a potential acquisition
  • Highlight certain risks and provide critical information for your sales and marketing staff 

 

7. Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy

 

A Go-To-Market strategy is a short and crisp plan of how a company will engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service. It can be focused on launching one specific product, service, expansion, or venture. 

The Go-To-Market Strategy playbook helps you develop a powerful GTM strategy. This playbook will help you with the following:

  • Defining the purpose of your GTM strategy 
  • Finding your target audience
  • Defining what you are selling
  • Creating strategy on how to position yourself to those targets through sales and marketing 
  • The time to launch the product, service, expansion, or venture.   

 

Why Company Expert? 

Company Expert is a leading B2B growth services firm that helps professional services firms with B2B advisors, B2B tools such as B2B playbooks and proprietary software, and aB2B professional network. 

We manage the largest network of B2B professional service leaders globally, with over 100,000+ members. 

In addition, we have developed proprietary software to help grow and scale professional service firms. Check out our collection of B2B Sales Playbooks.