Here’s a scenario…
- You are the VP of marketing at a B2B company
- The company is hoping to IPO in 2 years, but revenue has stalled.
- When you started at the company you were essentially handed a go-to-market strategy and asked to implement it.
- You know the reason revenue has stalled isn’t because the leads are bad or that sales doesn’t have the tools to sell. It’s because the product hasn’t continued to evolve as the market grows and better understand the technology and possible uses.
- But you don’t own-or have any control over-what Product does.
- Heck, you don’t even have a clear vision of the roadmap.
- What you do know is that without changes, revenue will continue to slump, the IPO will be put off (or maybe the company will have to settle for an acquisition), and your marketing team and sales will get blamed.
Here’s what I would do.
Own the go-to-market strategy.
That’s right. Step one, go find it. Step two, take control of it.
The go-to-market strategy is everything to the company. It is the strategy developed to bring a company’s product or solution to market. But having a clearly define GTM strategy is often an afterthought. And if one does exist, marketing is rarely part of the development process. Go-to-market strategies (as they typically exist) fall short in many ways. The strategy itself usually starts with the sales cycle, skipping over marketing altogether, and focuses on the tactical components of bringing a product to market after the product has been defined and built. The strategy ends up being more of a product-launch recipe for marketing to follow.
So let’s be clear, chances are, there isn’t a true go-to-market strategy, and even if there is one, marketing was not involved in its creation, AND no one wants to own it. In order to help your company succeed, and meet its revenue targets, you (marketing) need to own that bad boy.
Ah, now you want to know how to actually do this? We’ll be sharing some thoughts on this over the next few months.
So there you have it – what Christina would do to save the company.
Own the go-to-market strategy.
