Using go-to-market to connect new products and markets

in a lean b2b startup {what | who | how}

by Hans Baumhardt | 21 April 2017

To find out what a market needs and give it to them you need 4 things: product, market, business model and go-to-market.

Having blown up several businesses, I have learnt to begin with the end in mind. That considers what a customer focused go-to-market will look like during initial product and market validation.

it’s never too early to think about sales engagement process.

Most startups fail from market risk, when a significant group of customers for their awesome product can’t be found or engaged. I crashed and burned in 1992 with aviation.

There is also product risk where prospects tell you all about the features they want, but it turns out what they actually need to pay for is a new outcome. Enterprise software nailed me with that in 2007.

To focus on customers and their actual needs I started to use the principles of Helping clients succeed (Mahan Khalsa, 1999) as a consultative engagement method. To validate broader markets I incorporated the similar principles of Customer Development (Steve Blank, 2005), one of the Lean Startup pillars.

The Lean startup validated learning iterates product for market. Customer Development iterates the go-to-market elements I work with. I like to join stuff up, but have not come across a good model that integrates these complimentary activities. Best I can sketch is:

Lean startup product and customer development integration from www.hjbconsulting.uk

Go to market (GtM) foundations

I work with founding teams to bring product, customer and market validation together, using go-to-market (GtM) as a template to test the critical questions:

“who will pay & can we engage enough of them ?”

A GtM defines how an organisation will deliver its product proposition to a specific market. Traditionally this starts with product capability and looks for high propensity markets. The Lean approach can start with market need to create high propensity product.

When building out the commercial sales & marketing function to scale, it covers a lot components. My favourite reference model for this is A16Z Go-to-Market Best Practices for Startups (Mark Cranney, 2015).

The GtM evolves and expands through iterations of product, customer and market validation. During the early days of discovery and validation, the three elements to focus on are:

WHAT value proposition

WHO to target

HOW to engage

WHAT value proposition

You have 30 seconds to get my attention and stimulate my interest. What will your proposition do for me, and why is it worth buying ?

The appropriate customer centric messaging from your business model or value proposition canvas is covered in my associated article So what, and why should I care about your startup proposition ?

In my last startup it took 3 months of customer research iterations to converge the WHAT product proposition with a WHO persona.

WHAT “Work on your legal content with any device, from anywhere, when you want”
WHO “peripatetic professional services fee earner“

WHO to target

Since your product must meet someones needs, start with personas that benefit from your proposition and will part with cash for it.

Persona “Peripatetic legal fee earner“

As you test enterprise b2b deals, they may involve multiple stakeholders such as the user “legal fee earner” and the buyer “managing partner”. Include them all as routes to engage.

Personas are bundled into companies that share common profiles for campaign targeting.

Company “North American legal practices from 5 to 50 fee earners”

Your proposition creates or lives in one or more market segments for competitive differentiation or partnering.

Market “North American legal document management solutions“

HOW to engage

During discovery and product validation there should be no significant sales & marketing function. Hiring sales and marketing execution talent without validating traction will be a frustrating burn. I have been on both sides of that.

The founders, evangelists, magicians or whoever leads your customer and market discovery will need to validate if the proposition will be sales or marketing led. Leslie’s Compass: A Framework For Go-To-Market Strategy has a clear explanation based on complexity and value as a foundation for next step investments.

Establishing early market validation and traction can be super-tough. It depends on risk tolerant visionary early adopters. They must understand the problem and be looking for a solution, without the need for references.

If you are creating a new enterprise market it’s going to take a stack of education and evangelism to create the pool of awareness to fish in. Usually, it’s the founders who publish, speak and network like crazy: “the harder you work, the luckier you get” strategy. Adwords are unlikely to be the answer.

If it’s an existing enterprise market without a great network to exploit, the fastest way to get going is to hire a business development rainmaker with a hyper connected rolodex in your target market. Expensive, but are you just playing or actually competing ?

For a lower value marketing lead solution in an existing market, I read that Adwords and an online funnel can be enough. I have never been that lucky with high value enterprise b2b propositions. “Trust your high value critical business process to my unproven new solution” is a tough online conversion.

For sell-to and sell-through channel or partners, until end user demand is proven, they will be difficult to engage. If you can’t sell it why would they ? Outsourcing your own high value critical business process for initial customer validation and traction to 3^rd parties is a rather hopeful strategy.

So what ?

New product has a high failure rate from market risk. Connect product & market validation with customer centric go-to-market elements to reduce that risk. { what | who | how }