eBook

How

Why

When

THE EXPERT’S GUIDE Where

TO BUILDING A GTM
STRATEGY THAT WORKS
Who
What
Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Chapter 1: Product/Market Fit ........................................................................................................................................ 4

Chapter 2: Target Audience ......................................................................................................................................... 5-6

Chapter 3: Addressable Market .................................................................................................................................. 7-9

Chapter 4: Pricing Model ........................................................................................................................................... 10-11

Chapter 5: Marketing Plan ........................................................................................................................................ 12-15

Chapter 6: Sales Strategy .......................................................................................................................................... 16-19

Conclusion: Your Path to Profitability ................................................................................................................ 20-22

 3

INTRODUCTION

Running a business is a constant race to find new customers. Whether launching a new product,
entering a new market, or even branding your business, you have to get the message out. That’s
what the GTM strategy is for. But like any guide, let’s start with a proper definition:

A go.to.market strategy,/ Product

at its core, is a tactical action plan
that dictates the steps a company
needs to take to reach out to the right
audience with the right message for
business growth and branding. In
simple terms, it covers all the aspects
of business strategy and operations
between product development and
customer support.
Development
>
GTM
Strategy
<
Customer
Support
While it’s applicable both in the B2B
and B2C domains, this guide will focus
With such vast scope and application, on the B2B aspects. To that extent, the
the GTM strategy is the single most process of building a GTM strategy can
important factor in the success or be segmented into 6 categories:
failure of any business. Its importance 1: Product/Market Fit
can be encapsulated in the simple fact 2: Target Audience
that you can sell a bad product with a 3: Addressable Market
good GTM strategy, but you can’t sell 4: Pricing Model
a good product with a bad 5: Marketing Plan
GTM strategy. 6: Sales Strategy
 4

CHAPTER 1: PRODUCT/MARKET FIT

The first step of taking your product or service to the market is determining whether the
market is conducive to it. You can sell a product only if either the market is a good fit for your
product or your product is a good fit for the customers. That is, either the market already
exists for your product category or the customers want a solution like your product and there
is a gap you can fill.

If your product is simply an improved
version of similar products on the
market, it indicates proven demand
and a good fit. But if you are solving a
unique problem and have a one-of-a-
kind offering, you’ll have to prove that
customers are willing to pay for it.
It must be noted that Product/Market
Fit has nothing to do with the quality
of your product. You can have the
most innovative and groundbreaking
products but still poor product/
market fit.
Remember, Google Glass? Google
spent hundreds of millions of dollars
on its development but quickly
shelved the product after launch
saying the market wasn’t yet ready.
On the other hand, even if you build a
cheap CRM, it would be a good
Product/Market fit because it has a
proven market with millions of
paying customers.
 5

CHAPTER 2. TARGET AUDIENCE

The next step is identifying your customers. Generally, this is done extensively at the product
development stage, so it shouldn’t be a heavy lift. That said, each subsequent stage relies on the
target audience, so any mistakes at this point would amplify across the whole process sabotaging
your entire GTM strategy.

For example, if you misidentify your
target audience, your assessment of
the addressable market would also be
flawed. That would influence your
pricing strategy and ultimately render
your sales and marketing strategy
ineffective.
This is also a reminder for all those
businesses struggling in their sales
and marketing campaigns. It is
worthwhile stepping back to look at
the larger picture to ensure their
campaigns are based on the right data
and insights.
Typically, the target audience in the
B2B space is based on various
firmographic, technographic, and
behavioral elements like the
propensity to spend, company size,
existing tech stack, and more.
 6

(Continued)

Generally, as you build your ICP (ideal customer profile), you should also
simultaneously identify the right buyer and user personas as they will be needed
in the subsequent stages. For example, if you are a B2B data vendor like
SalesIntel, a rudimentary structure of ICP and personas may look something like
as shown in the table below:

ICP User Persona Buyer Persona

Industry: Any Marketing Manager VP of Marketing

Size: >100 Sales Manager VP of Sales

Revenue: >10M Account Executive VP of Sales Ops

Tech Stack: Salesforce SDRs

/Zoho
 7

CHAPTER 3. ADDRESSABLE MARKET

After you identify your target audience, it’s time to get an approximation of their size.

1. Top-Down
How to Calculate Total Addressable Market
The TAM is identified utilizing industry
Bottoms-Up Approach Top-Down Approach
data, market surveys, and research
studies in a top-down manner. In this
Understanding of Macro Economy
strategy, you may utilize Gartner or
Addressability Competitiveness and
Penetration Forrester industry statistics to identify
Fundamental
Understanding of the which subsections of your market
Market Addressability
match your goals and offerings – and
Company Specifies and Known
Market Specifics how big those subsections are.

Source: zoominfo

However, there are certain limitations

here. Data from industry groups is not
There are three ways to calculate your business' total addressable market.
always up to date and may not
 8
(Continued)
accurately reflect the specific
characteristics of your market. You
could choose to hire a market
research consulting business to do a
fresh study targeted to your
unique needs.
2. Bottom-Up
TAM is calculated using the bottom-
up technique, which is based on past
sales and pricing data. Begin by
dividing your average sales price by
the number of existing customers.
This is your contract's yearly value.
After that, divide your ACV by the
number of clients. As a consequence,
your total addressable market will be
estimated. Let's have a look at an
illustration of this.
(Total # of Customers) X
(Annual Contract Value)
= TAM
Courtesy: HubSpot
Assume you offer swimming fins to diving
shops in California. You may sell an
average of 60 pairs of fins to diving shops
for $35 each pair. ACV is $2,100 when 60
is multiplied by $35. Then multiply your
ACV ($2,100) by the total number of dive
shops in California (125) to get a total
addressable market of $262,500.
Total Addressable Market can be
further narrowed down to Serviceable
Available Market (SAM) and Serviceable
Obtainable Market (SOM).
(Continue...)
 9

(Continued)

The serviceable addressable market is most important

TAM, SAM, SOM: for organizations in determining their objectives by
LOCAL RESTAURANT BUSINESS
objectively estimating the percentage of the market
TAM Total Addressable Market they can capture.
$500m
SAM Serviceable Available Market
$125m
SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market)
Serviceable Obtainable Market
SOM
$1.87m
Unless you have a monopoly, you are unlikely to be
able to capture 100% of your serviceable addressable
Source: The Power MBA
market. Even if you just had one competition,
convincing an entire market to buy only your goods or
SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market)
service would be incredibly challenging. That is why it
is critical to assess your viable available market to
The section of the TAM addressed by your products and
discover how many clients will profit practically from
services within your geographical reach is referred to as
purchasing your product or service.
the Serviceable Available Market. You will most likely be
The market for Serviceable Obtainable is particularly
unable to service your complete addressable market
valuable for organizations in determining short-term
due to the limits of your company strategy (such as
growth ambitions.
specialty or regional limitations).
 10

CHAPTER 4. PRICING MODEL

Choosing the appropriate pricing is a matter of balance. Your consumer will not purchase your
product if you overprice it. If you price it too low, they'll buy it, but your margins will suffer.

Correct pricing necessitates a grasp of undermine client trust and potentially

consumer psychology. What does
high or low pricing indicate to your
customer? High pricing may actually
increase the perceived worth of
something, especially if it is a luxury
buy connected with prestige
and desire.
While low costs are more accessible,
your consumer may notice a low price
tag and assume the goods to be of
poorer quality. Pricing too low may
diminish the value of your brand.
It isn't just about you and your
consumer. In today's crowded
markets, there's a third aspect to
consider: your competitors. When
determining pricing, it's critical to
compare them to what your rivals are
doing and what they're charging for
comparable items.
 11

(Continued)

Given that, here’s an image that shows a strategic way to decide the pricing of your product.

02 04 06
Determine the Use Google Consumer Surveys Arrive at the optimized
maximum price. to test 5 prices for your product. price for value.

PRICING STRATEGY
Price says a lot more about your brand
than just the cost. Price is how you
position yourself in the marketplace.
Price is the value of the product to
the consumer.

01 03 05
Determine minimum price you’re Determine 5 exact prices within the Input results from Google Consumer
willing to sell your product for. minimum and maximum price range. Surveys info Pricing Spreadsheet

One of the most enduring B2B trends for increasing sales is a smart pricing plan. Such a plan will differ for each
organization, and as your company expands, you will need to alter your approach.
 12

CHAPTER 5. MARKETING PLAN

A marketing strategy and a marketing plan are two different things.

The marketing strategy should The marketing plan is a blueprint for putting the marketing strategy into action. It
describe how the company is has a much more tactical nature to it. "Strategy without tacticsis the slowest way to
positioned, how its offerings are victory," Sun Tzu famously observed. Likewise, “tactics without strategy is the noise
segmented, who its target audience before the defeat.”
is, what its route to market is, and
how the company's basic mission,
vision, and values impact marketing
messaging. The overarching
objectives of the marketing activity
should also be included in the plan.
 13

(Continued)

Marketing has become

multidimensional, and so you need to
think of all ideal channels.
Here’s Green Harlow Marketing
Prioritize Objectives Establish Governance Automate Posting
Identify and understand Identify, purchase ideal
Choose ideal platform
target market interest tools for automated posting.
Create profile and brand visuals
and behaviors. Establish content calendar
and content review process,

..............
automate posting/sharing.
.... ..
Plan that best explains the approach .... ....
Define Activities ....
.... ....... Measure/Refine
....
... ......
....
associated with each marketing Share blog content? Must have a process in
Curate Content? Social place for reviewing
channel. What kind of content? ............................ ............................ activities, measuring
progress, identify
issues etc.

With the introduction of new tools and

Green
Formal strategy in Place?
technologies, marketing has gone Paid online ads?
Advertising
Harlow SEO Currently using YOAST on
Retargeting links? Marketing
wordpress, focusing on
increasingly analytical. Data has taken Solely organic growth? Plan
keywords.
Facebook and Instagram are
a front seat with buyer intent data and most viable platforms for paid Link-building Strategy?
advertising. Outreach, tap into a network
data enrichment being the most or create more pages.
Feature: New landing page
Content
looked-after tools/ features. Strategy with revised copy.

Audit existing content, identify top 5 performing posts, identify patterns to replicate
Repurpose old blog posts as social media visuals (infographics, posts, cover photos)
Consider the value of creating and sharing the videos. Feasible? Research required.

(Continue...)
 14
(Continued)
Use Buyer Intent Data to Enhance
Your Marketing Campaigns
Nowadays, customers increasingly
research heavily online before buying.
It’s no surprise that armed with
software and analytics to offer crucial
insights on prospects and potential,
marketers are expected to turn this
general web data into new leads
and revenue.
Adopt a system that puts the buyer's
intent data in one place with layers
that allow the marketing team insight
into client buying intentions. SalesIntel
makes intent data conveniently
accessible to the sales and marketing
departments, so they can power up
marketing campaigns using
personalization and target companies
already looking for a solution.
Use Data Enrichment to Increase
Form Submissions
A sign-up page on your website is the
best way to take the first step in the
sales process. However, the way you
set up your feedback form on your
site has a significant influence on
whether people want to submit it.
The number of details you ask for on
the form has a huge effect on the
conversion rate.
In most sign-up forms, advertisers ask
additional questions to learn more
about the lead. While these questions
may help the marketing and sales staff,
they may be a turn-off to the individual
trying to fill out the form.
 15
(Continued)
Data Enrichment helps you gain
additional information about your
leads without applying additional
fields to your form. This allows you to
offer a frictionless form submission
and increase conversions. SalesIntel
helps you only ask for the necessary
information to identify your prospects
and then auto-fills the missing
information in your CM which
provides better data validation than
asking prospects directly.
Using Technographics and
Firmographics to Build Targeted
Segments
Every marketer and sales manager
wants market segmentation to paint a
realistic image of their customer base.
When segmenting target accounts for
marketing campaigns or sales
activities, you have a lot to pick from.
Firmographic and Technographic data
help you narrow down your targets.
B2B marketers leverage demographics
in the same way B2C marketers use
demographic data. It groups
customers based on firmographic data
such as business size (either by the
number of employees or annual
revenue), company location, industry,
executive title, etc.
Also, many companies now rely on
their technology stack to drive growth.
Here’s where SaaS companies can take
advantage to segment based on
prospects’ technology stack using
technographic data. SalesIntel offers
you the human-verified firmographic
and technographic data to build more
targeted segments.
Now that you have got a fair idea of
how to plan and drive your marketing,
let’s move to sales strategy.
 16

CHAPTER 6. SALES STRATEGY

One of the most sophisticated and crucial strategies is a sales strategy. To successfully and
efficiently convert prospects to customers and loyalists, a high-performing sales staff needs the
backing of the majority of the business.

If your product is more sales-intensive,
you’ll want to spend more time
outlining how you expect that sales
process to work. Sales is by no means
easy. And you’ll want to make sure
that the people going out and
representing your product have all the
resources and knowledge they need
to be successful.
Here are a few things you should
include here:
Tools and resources: How are your
sales team going to find, engage
with, and sell to potential
customers? What tools are they
going to use for managing
relationships and demoing the
product? Are they in the loop with
the latest trends and other key
marketing channels your customers
are active on?
Client acquisition: What’s the right
approach for finding clients?Inbound
sales? Outbound sales? Cold calling?
Resellers and partners?
Training support: How are you
going to train the sales team, so
they’re knowledgeable enough and
confident in selling the product?
 17
(Continued)
Define Sales Sequences
You need to make sure that you
remove the guesswork from your sales
process and conversations. Sales
sequencing is an effective way of
allowing your SDRs to know exactly
what to do next to advance a prospect.
A sales sequence can be defined as a
series of different sales touchpoints
scheduled to be delivered over a
pre-defined time and at a set interval.
These touchpoints are not limited to
emails but can also include SMSs,
social messages, phone calls, and
other sales tasks.
The best sales sequences are the ones
that strike a perfect balance between
automation and personalization.
Sequencing helps sales teams scale
both their performance and execution
and stay top of mind with their
prospects.
Automate Your Sales Sequences
Adopting automated sales sequences
can be a powerful hack to reduce the
number of hours spent on repetitive
and manual sales work. Automated
lead nurturing could convert 15-20%
of potential customers—who aren’t
ready to buy—to sales. Moreover,
automation is used by 68% of
businesses in some way.
For most sales sequences,
customization is key to its
effectiveness. If they perform as
expected, customized sequences can
be added to your individual best sales
 18

(Continued)

6 Steps of the Solution Selling Process

practices and shared across your sales
department. This will improve the Prepare

performance of both your sales team

and your sales development
Identify client’s
Diagnose
game plan. pain points

Ask open-
To build customized sequences, you Research
ended Quality
client’s history
questions
need to have intel on what your
targeted prospects are up to, what Determine if
your client is
Educate
they are looking for, and whether they interested in
solution
are qualified or ready to purchase.
Determine if Show client
they are how you will
Solve
authorized to solve
make purchase their problem

Show client
Send similar
why you are Close
case studies
cost-effective
 19
(Continued)
To explain this with an example, let’s
say your business offers cloud storage.
Here’s what the above process of
solution selling would look like
for you:
Prepare – Research the prospect’s
pain points and the solutions they
have been trying.
Diagnose – Talk to the prospect
and ask open-ended questions to
understand their business, what
kind of data they want to store, how
much space they would need,
and more.
Qualify – Based on your
conversation, see if the prospect fits
your ideal customer persona and if
they are interested in moving their
data to the cloud. Find out who the
final decision maker is. See whether
they have the budget on hand and a
timeline in mind.
Educate – If the prospect qualifies
for the solution you offer, educate
them about how the cloud storage
you provide will help them
overcome their current pain points
and why you’re better than others
in the market.
Solve – Offer them a tailored
solution based on their needs, along
with case studies of how you helped
similar clients.
Close the deal – You have
convinced the prospect that they
need your solution and work
towards onboarding them on the
cloud. Negotiate the terms and
close the deal.
 20

CONCLUSION: YOUR PATH TO PROFITABILITY

One of the most challenging things to balance at a company is the narrow line between
producing profit and boosting expansion. While investing all your budget on growth can result
in more customers in a short amount of time, you may also be giving your product out for less
than people are ready to pay.

On the other side, focusing solely on Leverage the Power of Data for Your This includes:
profitability may harm market Business Growth
Having the Right Process & Tools
acceptance of your product and allow
Here are 3 simple steps: The first thing you need is to clearly
competitors to outpace. When
define your sales process and have
evaluating your company's strategy
1. The Groundwork the right tools to execute it.
and road to profitability, it is
Depending on the type of product/
frequently beneficial to return to the
Before using data to build pipelines, service, sales cycle, deal size, etc.,
basics, since great firms have existed
define touchpoints, and create more your sales funnel can have different
for centuries, and the one thing they
engagement, some groundwork is stages, and you might need to build
have always concentrated on was the
essential to achieve efficiency and territories for effective oversight.
transfer of value between them and
make the overall process
the client.
more effective.
 21
(Continued)
Preparing Your Database
The next step is to build your
database upon which all the
subsequent sales and marketing
efforts will rely. Only 33% of
marketers feel they can rely on
CRM data to make decisions. If the
data in your database is incorrect,
your emails will bounce, calls will
go unanswered and your whole
outreach strategy will fall apart.
2. Build your ICP
Once you have laid the foundation
with the right processes, data, and
tools, the next thing you need to do is
to define your ICP in as much depth as
possible to serve as the common
target for all your outreach programs.
If you aren’t sure how to zero in on
your ICP, you can read the details
here, but the basic process is to have
an in-depth analysis of all your target
accounts in the past and their data
points to come up with key
characteristics you need to use to
identify new high-quality targets.
Luckily, AI can help make this a quick
and more effective exercise.
3. Engage the Entire Buying Center
One of the key differences between
B2C and B2B buying is that while
people often buy impulsively on their
own, B2B purchases are driven by a
buying center of around 5-7
decision-makers.
For you to be able to close a deal, you
must convince all of them because
every decision-maker can potentially
block your proposal and be an
influencer for your competitors. So
 22

(Continued)

before you launch your outreach
program, you must pay close attention
to their organizational chart and figure
out the buying center who should all
be then reached out simultaneously.
Now, how exactly do you define the
buying center at scale? There are two
key factors: the hierarchy of many
companies is such that you may target
a company at multiple levels or across
several business units. You need to
have data on the buying center entity
for your solutions.
You also need to identify the personas
most likely to be part of that buying
committee. Job titles and functions
are sometimes helpful. But ideally,
you can look beyond to factors like
skills, expertise, technology, job level,
and more.

When data is at the center of your GTM strategy,

SalesIntel becomes your reliable data center with Le a rn Mo re
the most human-verified data in the industry.