Are you looking for ways to get high returns from your business at a low cost? Some key questions you will need answers to before you start.
Who is the audience that will say yes to you first?
What are clear targeting criteria’s for early customers?
Who is going to be buying your product early and who is going to be getting the greatest value?
Does the customer size fit your solution?
Have you checked if the Pricing model fits the customer?
Are Customer pain points solved efficiently?
It’s all about getting revenue and traction as early as possible with great customers that fit your value proposition, your business model and other characteristics.
A lot of companies look to solve this problem with big game fishing, lots of time and resources are spent to gain big fish everyone is already after. Every startup is pounding on their door; everyone wants that big logo on their website. This is a surefire way to get stuck in a 12 -18 month-long sales cycle which may run out of steam. You can’t close those big fish, and die trying.
However with Back Bay fishing, there are shorter sales cycles, faster adoption and stronger growth; with a lot of fish practically on the dock of the shore, we can work to survive and build another day.
When your value proposition aligns really well with the company’s requirements, it’s easier to get your foot in the door because they have not been over solicited to, they are budgeted, there’s less competition, they have the same problems, which means you could get in there and close the deal more quickly. When you show the logo of an unknown company in your deck, your investor may say I’ve never heard of this company. Tell them yes that’s part of our strategy we like to fish where the fish are and where other people aren’t fishing, you might not recognize any of the logos on our deck but we are driving incredible revenuebecasue part of our strategy is to fish where the fish are biting and they’re easier to get in the boat,
Example of a good target audience: Say you have a company that’s providing security for banks, but you’re not going after all banks, not even huge banks. You’re going after regional banks .Why? Your value proposition fits really well, and because the pricing is going to work. Smaller teams make it easier to make decisions and close deals and add value as a part of the transaction you become a force multiplier because your automation delivers more value. You want to be closer to your early customers to look for markets segments and customers where you can make a difference.
Startups that don’t focus on the right type of customers wind up spending a year and a half going the wrong direction, they get into trials and their boat runs out of Gas, and it’s all because of their early Goto market strategy. All the early targeting Criterias haven’t been thought through and they fail. So you need to ask your selves?
What type of customers do you want?
Why are you going after those types of customers?
What’s your ideal customer litmus test?
Always start where you align with the most customers.
Where are they? LinkedIn groups.(Create good content for linked in and Facebook)
Find your built in communities that have your target audience i.e. (LinkedIn Fb, reddit, Quora, stack over flow) wherever they are, engage with them over a conversation and share knowledge. Talk to them, don’t sell. Ask a lot of questions. Tell me about your aap. Your business, what are you struggling with, then you will understand what the concerns are and tell them how you could solve those particular problems. “Educate, don’t sell”. give them one tip they can use even if they don’t hire you.
A sales call, a client without any budget, or a coaching need, it’s easier to get referrals. Always try to educate first and foremost. Even if they don’t work with you they can walk away with the feeling that you know something and they will refer someone your way. Show some social proof, name dropping, to give potential buyers an indication that you are legitimate. They will always look for reasons not to work with you. Help them understand that you are a big deal. Follow these steps.
First build up your niche,
Build up social proof,
Then go after the big guys because even the big guys are working on a budget, focus on the narrow.
Target audience: Business men, women and entrepreneurs,
What is the Market we are going into? Existing /new. Which market are we serving?
Segments of Markets looking to improve sales, launching new product
Important, urgent, frequent, problem that we are solving.
Dealing with competition, creating brand awareness, providing knowledge, reaching a niche target audience
Why?
What are the big Macro trends?
What are the changes in the landscape?
What are the big problems that are exist today?
What are those factors driving this market specific to their industry?
Ask specific questions to find out what their challenges are then say, well we’ve noticed this trend and we have been able to solve this specific issue by doing x y and z would you be interested in knowing more give them some social proof. Create a situation where they have to think is this an opportunity for us or will there be a risk in us not doing this? Then they will be interested to hear how we can solve it for them. What position am I taking on this? The need is to deliver great results in a short span of time
Availability or requirement for manpower with the right skill set to reach a specific kind of audience
Position for SAS market (segment) (pricing)
SMB, MID, enterprise, uppermid, lowermid,
Low cost player /premium player
More upper market more premium you go / more complex sales/ churn low market
More lower market more low cost you go / more simple sales/ churn high market
Competition; understand your position and who your competitors are in each segment and how you can compete with them differently. Find the big competitors in each segment. When you do that you can understand who you can compete against and how you can differentiate against them effectively, if you go up against enterprise players as a startup it will be difficult to catch up with them. S0 you’re better off in the smb or mid-market
But at the same time if there are really low cost players servicing the market and there are thousands of them then you won’t be able to differentiate yourself. So you may have to go to the mid-market that is the kind of decision making and strategic planning that you can do, you should ask yourself where are the competitors in the different segments and where’s there an unreserved segment where the people are willing to pay a little bit more and get white glove service but don’t need all the bells and whistles and maybe that’s a sphere we can move into. You should be looking for that.
Value proposition in the unreserved market; what is our messaging? What is our strategic narrative?
A lot of time; founders skip this step and jump into the next step which is running ads, going inbound and going outbound.
What are we going to say sitting across from the potential buyer? Why we are different? The value we are going to bring, and why they should pay attention, these are all things that fall into the narrative. You have to do this step you can’t skip this step, you have to finish this step before globalizing every thing
GTM Motion – based on the first 5 steps you decide if we do inbounds, outbound channels decide how to mobilize this narrative to the different strategies that exist to mobilize a Goto market machine.
Conclusion: Careful study and step by step process on a Goto market strategy will bring you to the target audience you’re trying to reach and the business segment you heading into. Let us know down below which set of questions appealed to you the most? What approach will you take to meet your business needs?
