Many businesses are oblivious to how out of whack their Go-To-Market strategy is. 

In this solocast, Jim Barnish explores three critical opportunities for businesses that are out of alignment with their GTM strategy. 

Some of what Jim gets into: 

• Trust Your Product Leads: Both CEOs and product leads understand customer pain points and the market. Yet sometimes a CEO makes decisions based on their gut, not data, while a product lead often has more direct access to customers and data, and thus a more in-depth understanding. Don’t overlook the knowledge of your product leads! 
• Build a SINGLE Revenue Team: If your sales and marketing teams are not on the same page, you’re going to run into roadblocks. You need one one revenue team. Yes, they’ll have different functional objectives, but they’ll have the same overall goal—creating revenue and meaningful value for customers. 
• Third opportunity? You’ll have to listen to the podcast! 

About The Dirt Podcast 

The Dirt is about getting real with businesses about the true state of their companies and going clear down to the dirt in solving their core needs as a business. Dive deep with your host Jim Barnish as we uncover The Dirt with some of the world's leading brands.

If you love what you are getting out of our show please subscribe.

For more information on how we dig into the dirt check out our other episodes here: https://www.orchid.black/podcast

About Our Company

Orchid Black is a new kind of growth services firm. We partner with tech-forward companies to build smarter, better, game-changing businesses. 

Website: https://www.orchid.black 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orchidblack/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OrchidBlack 

All contents of this show are rights of Orchid Black©️ and are not to be used unless authorized by written consent.

Jim Barnish

What is up listeners? Welcome back to the dirt where we discuss actionable strategies to grow and maximize the value of your business. Today's solo cast is all about alignment, more specifically, alignment around your go to market or GTM strategy. alignment when entering a market is paramount when going after businesses or really anyone and and missteps can cost not just revenue, but also long term value. And long term value is what we talked about. The larger you get as a business, the harder it is to maximize and make sure that your go to market strategy. And your business as a whole is aligned on common objectives. If you found yourself stuck at this place as a CEO or business owner, and are unsure on how to master alignment around your go to market strategy, and around your business, lean in and listen. And if you feel you are already incredibly aligned as a business stay with us as you might just get a tip or two on how to improve your go to market alignment in even more aligned manner. Okay, so I'm going to share with you three critical opportunities that I see for businesses all the time, that are often out of alignment out of whack within their go to market strategy, and don't even know what those three things are.

number one, trust your product leads. Number two, align sales and marketing in a real, real manner, not just pretend to line real line and number three, commit truly commit to customer success. Okay, so let's dig into the first one. Number one, trust your product leads. In the b2b world products are often complex, especially as you scale and create new ones, add ons, etc. And no one understands them better than the product team. So when was the last time you actually truly listened to your product lead?

One example that has always resonated with me was when I was working with a client a while back at $25 million dollar or so FinTech company. And we'll just CLI a call the client or the CEO, Tom, right. When we started working with Tom, realize that the team was incredibly misaligned and the relevant stakeholders were not being appropriately utilized. We very quickly came to the realization that throughout the go to market process, the CEO, Tom was the leading voice in terms of what was needed. And the kicker that was Tom was leading with his gut, not data, not his product team, not a sales team. Not anything, right? Just what Tom thought it was Tom, talking to customers, some but not regularly, not like others in the organization. So Does this sound familiar? You know what, I see it all the time, like all the time. And what Tom seem to forget is that the product lead had taken time to gather feedback from existing clients understand pain points, and knew the potential of the market, and then even cross examine that with sales, Team information and marketing team information and others within the organization that were talking to customers and different stakeholders within the customers. So if he had integrated these insights into the go to market strategy, the company would have been able to improve its position and satisfy a higher demand in the market. But no, instead, Tom went with his gut initially. And so many organizations overlook the product lead, but these individuals are usually the most in tune with the market due to their customer interaction, and the interaction with lots of different stakeholders within the organization and get shed light on what the market wants and what the market needs. So trust me, utilize your product leads.

Number two, align sales and marketing truly align sales and marketing. We're talking turn it into one revenue team, right? different objectives, but same goal. I know that sounds crazy, different objectives, functionally same end goal, revenue and meaningful value. So your company is might be now taking feedback from customers and incorporating it into the product. Right? That's fantastic. But a company isn't just about its product. It's about the interaction of that product with customers. And that process begins when marketing and sales interact with prospects and making marketing and sales sing to the same tune is of paramount importance. Because so often in growth stage businesses due to lack of time and wearing different hats and all sorts of things. There is a disconnect. And does this sound like anything in your business?

Let's just talk about one example. Right? So CMO, sales isn't doing anything with the leads, we hand over to them. They're just falling right through the cracks. Have you heard that? And then maybe the VP of Sales says marketing is giving us lousy leads. They're not even worth following up on so we don't. Okay, so how do you You get them from operating in silos if not opposition in worst case scenarios to integrating their efforts and becoming a powerhouse together a revenue team. Like many problems, the solution is usually in the data. And specifically in this case getting buy in on definitions of certain key metrics and the data within marketing has their MQL for marketing qualified leads, and sales has their SQL or sales qualified leads, but one that often times gets overlooked due to the detriment of the organization and operating in the silos is the SAL the sales accepted lead that ties MQL to SQL right, because sales is accepting them. And this constitutes the affirmation that the lead marketing produced is worthy of sales time and attention, because now the leads are validated and accepted. And this ensures that the unified approach that the leads generated are not only high in quantity, but also in quality. Companies need to determine what the factors are that need to be met for a sales accepted lead. But it typically includes some combination of company size, company industry, stakeholder position, decision making authority, and of course, buy in from the lead to attend a meeting with the sales rep, and actually be interested in what they are offering. So once you get marketing and sales aligned on this metric, you shall be off to the races with a high performing revenue engine.

One orky Black client actually had this exact problem. A few years ago, a martec business that we ran into was just under 3 million in ARR, annual recurring revenue and stagnant largely due to sales and marketing acting in silos thickening thing with the crazy high customer acquisition costs or CAC, Ding ding ding. Well, both the head of marketing and sales leader were adamant that they were carrying the water for revenue in the organization. While working in spite of rather than alongside the other function. Marketing would point to marketing qualified leads of these MQL to which they thought were there were many sales would point to the SQL or sales qualified lead to which there were many but few that came from marketing. And to get the sales and marketing team singing to the same tune, these key things had to happen. Number one, the sales team had to be reorganized from all end to end salespeople. So instead of having a clear that instead, they had a clear delineation of responsibility and goals as a BDR, Business Development representative and account executive team, we combine the mindset with that of the marketing to form one holistic revenue team. So roles and responsibilities figured out much more production, much better metrics, much better alignment, after all, revenue is the goal.

Okay, so number two, the leadership of each function had to truly get on the same page. And while that's not always an easy pill to swallow, teamwork is a necessary ingredient to any organizational success story. And that's exactly what happened at the client, after an organization wide strategic planning exercise that brought sales and marketing goals into the broader picture to how those connected with the rest of the organization. So now sales and marketing and the alignment between them, the revenue team was being held responsible and accountable by the rest of the executive team, because now it was understood in a much more meaningful way what the issues were and how to work past them. And so this leads then to three specific marketing and sales metrics that were realigned on, defined and tracked in a way that all parties agreed with which metrics were most important you may ask. Well, you probably also guessed it, given that we just talked about it, new definitions and actual accountability to MQL. SQL is and of course, and sales, which helps tie the MQL and SQL together. So where did all this lead? Well, today, the company is actually on track to hit 10 million ARR at the end of this year, and a $50 million valuation. So what does that mean? That means for X revenue, and about six and a half x value, and it all started with a recommitment to aligning sales and marketing that can happen to you too, in just a matter of a couple years. So that's number two.

Number three, commit to customer success. We all know that customer success is a key driver for a smooth customer journey. But we may often overlook how easy it is to get this part of the go to market equation wrong. Let's take Salesforce, the larger company that we've all heard of, for example, a sale isn't just the end, it's the beginning, right? Because they're focused on customer success is legendary in the b2b space actually. They understand that in the world of long term contracts and partnerships posted No support can actually make or break a long term relationship. And the success of these relationships and longevity of the contracts often dictates the success of a go to market strategy. Have you ever heard of lifetime customer value for example, right? After all, a complete go to market strategy doesn't conclude when a product hits the market, a proper strategy will focus on the complete end to end customer journey, including customer success, which focuses on both renewals and expansion revenue, and you guessed it, making the customer happy. When they launched their commerce cloud, Salesforce anticipated the challenges businesses might face integrating it, so they proactively set up dedicated customer success teams to guide clients through the process. This not only ensured smooth onboarding, but also foster trust and loyalty among their clients.

By having a structure where customer success, sales and marketing were aligned under a unified vision, they were able to swiftly adapt to feedback and ensure long term client satisfaction. Now we know this is an important topic that is impossible to cover briefly. So we actually wrote a longer article just for customer success. And if you want to learn more, go check out that article on the orchid black website. It's called Customer Success playbook for growth stage businesses. We also did a recent solo cast for all sorts of businesses. That's all around building your ideal customer success team. So check those out. Now let's circle back. All right, alignment is the cornerstone of a successful go to market strategy, especially for b2b companies. It's not just about launching a product, it's about ensuring every department from product marketing to sales to customer success is synchronized in their mission.

So just to recap, successfully aligning your go to market strategy when targeting businesses must utilize these three strategies. Number one, leverage the valuable customer insights of product leads and trust the feedback that they're giving you. Number two, make sure that sales and marketing are in alignment think Sal is and number three, commit to customer success to grow your current customer base. Together, these elements form the foundation of a robust, go to market strategy and will have your team moving in the right direction. That's up. So that's a wrap listeners. If today's insights resonated with you do share this episode with friends and colleagues. And if you haven't subscribed yet, now is the time for deeper insights go to orchid dot black. And until next time, keep aiming for alignment and six sets Jeb out. I hope you all enjoyed this episode of the dirt. I want to invite you to listen to our other episodes where every week I am interviewing business leaders who are crushing it in their field and finding out exactly what makes them successful. We will see you next time on the dirt