Making go-to-market (GTM) as a startup is tough. But it is exceptionally difficult to establish GTM as an enterprise startup in a down market.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!During the market peak of 2020-2021, startups enjoyed excess capital and a “growth at all costs” mentality, while enterprises had the financial flexibility and budget to pivot to new vendors and technologies. However, in a post-ZIRP (zero-interest rate policy) world, 2023 has proven to be a long and difficult road.
With significant macroeconomic changes, enterprise budgets are now under intense scrutiny. Buyers are responsible for immediate ROI (return on investment) and require more stakeholder approval to proceed with a software purchase. These limited budgets have resulted in longer sales cycles and higher churn. Meanwhile, startups face an increasingly uphill battle to secure not only repeat commercial sales, but also expectations of efficiency.
As an enterprise software seed investor at Work-Bench, I’ve seen companies use some key GTM tips to help them (1) close deals and (2) avoid unnecessary losses that could potentially Puts deals at risk. Below are my three GTM strategies that every enterprise founder (and sales team) urgently needs to pursue to survive in today’s market.
Tie all messaging back to ROI
Discovery and demo calls with prospects are often the make-or-break touchpoints that determine the success of the rest of the sales process. However, the No. 1 trap that many founders and sales reps fall into is using this limited (and precious!) time by immediately diving into product demos and feature details. This isn’t surprising, considering how much effort goes into creating a product. However, it fails to demonstrate how the product will solve the potential customer’s business challenges.
Implementing a new SaaS product in a company often requires changes in workflow and behavior, and such change may be met with resistance.
How do you best understand a potential client’s business challenges? It is important to ask the right search questions to uncover the following:
- What are their challenges?
- Why do they suffer from these challenges?
- What have they already tried (if anything)? Why didn’t this work?
- What are the results? (Not features/capabilities/demo.)
- Who are the decision makers? What are the next steps? what is the time?
- What happens if they don’t solve this problem?
- What does success look like?
strategy
Source: techcrunch.com
