If you’re a technical founder, you probably hate selling and marketing. Unfortunately only you can figure out your GTM motion.
That doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. As a fellow product founder, I’ve been in your shoes and have had to learn how to generate pipeline, iterate product based on prospect interest, close deals (from $10K to $300K), hire and fire people in GTM, and drive accountability. I’ve used sales and marketing consultants and it’s been a waste of money. Most of them haven’t sold or marketed anything for real in a decade. The landscape has simply evolved too much for their insights to be relevant. They also don’t get product. Early GTM is as much about Product-Market-Fit as it is about sales and marketing.
It’s my sincerest hope that you avoid the mistakes I made and benefit from the wisdom that’s come from many hard knocks and victories over the last decade. If you think this would be helpful, get in touch.
GTM & PRODUCT STRATEGY
Early GTM is all about refining product, messaging, business model, and sales motion. Which lever to pull when…that’s the tricky bit. You can partner with me to explore options and do this in a disciplined way so you don’t end up with a different product for every customer, or a product no one wants, or a killer product that suffered from bad selling.
GTM PLAYBOOKS
You can read a book on MEDDIC or positioning framework, or hire a GTM consultant who’ll essentially regurgitate the same stuff. It’s too generic. Figuring out the highly personalized version that’s right for your company requires maniacal testing, bottoms up and top down research, combing through prospect calls, creating feedback loops between sales, marketing, and product. And so much more…
VENTING & MANAGING
I had never managed sales or marketing teams prior to 5 years ago – it’s a completely different ballgame from engineering, product, science teams. There needs to be a safe place for you to vent, figure out what’s coachable vs fireable, how to do either.
PERFORMANCE RITUALS
A big part of scaling is figuring out rituals and rhythms of the business that help you stay close to the details without doing every job, drive accountability, helps sales, marketing and product collaborate effectively and on a daily basis. Sorry to say but OKRs just don’t do it for startups. There are more effective ways 🙂
Regardless, I salute you for your entrepreneurial spirit – it’s not for the faint of heart. You have all the ingredients to be a great marketer and seller, and to figure your GTM motion. Don’t take the easy path by outsourcing it. The future of your company depends on it.
Product. Sales. Marketing. 