- One of my most favorite
sayings in start-ups is the saying that Mike Tyson said when he was about to go into a fight. They were asking him about the fighting. He said, "Everyone's got a plan "until they get punched in the mouth." It's one of my most favorite
sayings because it's so true when it comes to building,
growing SaaS businesses. That saying is said to have been, actually been inspired by another saying, a much older saying. That saying is, "No plan survives "first contact with the enemy." That saying was by this gentleman named Helmuth von Moltke. It was from the 1800s. He was a Prussian military commander. And this saying resonated
with me even more. This is one of the reasons
why, on this channel, as I work with SaaS founders, I obsess over your go-to-market
plan and your strategy. Because it's not until you
actually start executing on your go-to-market plan and strategy do you really go out there
to compete in the market and have that first contact
with your competition. You have that first
contact with the customers. You have your first contact where you have to compete
against just general apathy from even adopting a software
solution for what you do. And so what sucks the most about this is that a lot of times, when you have a go-to-market
strategy and plan, and you start going through it, if you don't do it the right way, you can lose 12 to 18 months of runway only to realize that
we had the wrong plan. The go-to-market strategy
wasn't good; it didn't work. This is why I obsess about it, and this is why I constantly think about, well, how do you make sure you structure a plan and
a strategy the right way so that as you go into that first contact, you're able to actually tweak that plan and iterate on that plan. Now, you can only do this if you actually break down
a go-to-market strategy, which is a very big, broad
concept, to eight key components. And in this video, I'm
gonna walk you through those eight key essential elements of a killer and unstoppable
go-to-market strategy. I'm even gonna have a bonus one for you. And when you actually implement
your go-to-market strategy using these eight key
essential components, you'll actually ensure that not only does your strategy and your
plan survive the first contact, you can iterate on it to completely change how you compete in the marketplace. And when you do that, you'll be able to accelerate the growth of your SaaS business. Intro. (drum beats stomping)
(hand claps) What's up, everybody. Welcome to "Unstoppable." I'm TK, and on this channel,
I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses faster with an unstoppable strategy. Now, if you're new to
the channel, welcome. Be sure to hit the Subscribe
button and that bell icon, That way, you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode, it's usually every Sunday,
with actionable strategies on how to grow your SaaS
business with the TK energy. Now, if you're already
part of this channel, if you're part of this growing community of B2B SaaS founders, this
Unstoppable community, if you're part of my coaching programs, my people, welcome back. It's so awesome to see you over here. Now, one of the things
that's been happening that's been super-interesting for me is we're about 18-month
mark of me running this SaaS go-to-market coaching
program that I run. And one of the things that's
been super-interesting is I've met some founders like
12 months ago when we talked, and they were like, no, we're good. We have a go-to-market strategy. And they kind of did their own thing. And 12 months later, not all
of them, but a bunch of them came out, and it was like, Hey, listen, I thought we had a plan; it didn't work. Uh, we should work together. This sucks, because I've been there. I've had a year at ToutApp
where we thought we had a plan, but turns out that it didn't
survive that first contact. And we didn't realize it, we didn't know how to iterate
on it, and it was horrible, which is why I run a program like this. And so one of the things that sucks is you could think you have a
plan and go-to-market strategy, which is a very broad thing, but still not really have
one, and it may not work. And the worst part of it
is you may not even know that it's not working until 12 months. Because B2B SaaS is such
a slow marination process and it compounds over time, which is why I learned the hard way, and this is why I teach
this in this channel and in my coaching programs, that you gotta break down this concept of a go-to-market strategy to
the key essential components, and you've gotta make sure
you're operating and iterating and tweaking and
measuring those components to make sure you are successful. So in this episode, so that you don't lose 12 months of runway or 18 months of runway on the
wrong go-to-market strategy, so that you can actually have
the right components in place, I'm gonna walk you through
each of these components. I'm gonna give you a bonus component if you stay till the end. And when you follow this,
you'll be able to actually accelerate the growth
of your SaaS business. So if you're excited to dig
in to component number one, go ahead and smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm. It really likes it when you do that. And also, should we do green or blue? Let's do green. That'll work well with the blue. This is the tough
decisions I make sometimes when making these videos. Okay, so the first component
that you actually need to have in your go-to-market strategy is your ICP, your Ideal Customer Profile,
otherwise known as "the who." Now, one of the toughest things about ICP, Ideal Customer Profile, or even something like
go-to-market strategy is, everybody's like, oh,
yeah, we've got that. And it's like, there's a
difference between having that at a surface level and actually
doing the work around that to make sure you have an
effective version of it. Huge difference between the two. And the more work you put into
it, this foundational piece, the more effective everything
else is going to be. If you're not clear on your ICP, if you don't really get
well-defined around it on the specific way to define
an ICP and stress test it, then all this other stuff
will not work as well. And so I always start with this, the first component essential
element that you need for your go-to-market strategy, your unstoppable go-to-market strategy, is you actually need
to flesh out your ICP. Biggest mistake I see with founders, especially when I work closely with them, is they confuse the ICP with the TAM. The TAM is the Total Addressable Market. This is everyone in the world that will need your
software at some point, and that will be an evolving number and group of people as you grow. The ICP is the subset of your TAM that's gonna get you to
this next stage of growth, whatever your next revenue number is. A lot of times, founders will say, well, our TAM is a hundred-gazillion
dollars, so here's our ICP. And it's like, not quite. Let's figure out who's most
willing to buy now versus later. And so that's one example
of what the difference is between a surface level ICP and a much more well-defined ICP. So that's the first thing that
you really wanna flesh out as part of your go-to-market strategy. And once you have that, the
next thing you wanna dig into is your value prop. So your value prop is this
one-sentence definition of what your company does,
the value that you offer. A lot of times, founders have a tough time actually articulating that. Like, if I ask them,
hey, what do you guys do? It's like 10 sentences
later, and it's like, "And that's what we do," and I'm like, "That's not a value proposition." That is a sentence and a thesis on all the things you could do, but that's not a core value proposition. A value proposition is super-important. One example of that is, our
software helps who the ICP is actually blank, which is
the result that you get. Like, that's a simple way to craft a valid value proposition, right? For ToutApp, which was my
prior company that I started, we helped sales teams
generate more pipeline using outbound email;
like, that's what we did. And so super-simple, right? But it took awhile to get
to that value proposition and really understand it. Value prop also really
hones in on your positioning in some cases as well, positioning meaning exactly
where in the market that you sit compared to the competitors
that are in the market. When you actually craft your
value prop the right way, and you're trying to
think about your messaging and your positioning, what
you're essentially doing is crafting the value prop in a way so that when someone hears it,
they can start to understand how you differentiate from
your competition as well, and how you differentiate in the market. This is super-important, right? Because back then, no one else was providing an outbound email platform. Well, there were some competitors
that came very quickly, but then it got competitive. But it was still like not that crowded. And so at that time, right now there's 300
outbound email platforms. So right now, if you just
say, we help you do outbound, like, oh, kinda like these five companies? You have to have a much more defined value prop to differentiate. Back then, it was simple enough. And so you actually have to
develop this in a proper way on what's the value prop,
what's the positioning, and what's, I was gonna put this here, I have to cross it out, messaging. This is stuff that a lot
of people graze over. They just kinda jump into like, hey, let's send outbound
emails or run ads. And what they don't do is
the work around the ICP and the messaging to
really hone in on that. And that's like the core
fundamentals of marketing. The activities aren't the core
fundamentals of marketing. They matter, but they don't
matter as much as this work. And so that's component number
two, element number two, for your unstoppable
go-to-market strategy. You actually have to take some time to flesh out your
messaging, your value prop, and your positioning. Once you have that, these two things should go into crafting your manifesto. And if you have been following
my channel for awhile, you'll know the importance of a manifesto. Every company needs to have a manifesto, because software companies,
I believe, are changemakers. They're providing a transformation. They're going in and saying, hey, this is the new way of doing things and we're gonna help you
do it, and here's why. And you teach them on it. Others call this your strategic, here we go, strategic narrative. The idea here is that this is this eight to 10 slide document that really encapsulates who
we are solving the problem for, what the messaging and the value prop is, and what the transformation is, and why they should trust you. There's a very specific way
to craft these narratives and these stories around your
brand and around your company, and you have to do that. And the power in this is when
you actually define this, it pulls together the work
that you did here and here, and really brings it together
into this cohesive story. And from here, what you're
essentially gonna be able to do is power all this typical
activities that you jump to. Meaning this manifesto can
become your lead magnet. This manifesto can provide the
messaging for your website. This manifesto can actually
be your sales deck. So what you're essentially doing is doing the foundational work on exactly what our core thesis is on how we're gonna
go-to-market and differentiate, and you're encapsulating
into your manifesto. And you're using that to
turn into a lead magnet, turning it into your website copy, turning it into your sales deck, turning it into your pitch deck even. Clients in my program do that. And that's why this is super-important. And when you do these three
core essential components, this is essentially your strategy, right? Everything from here onward
is gonna be your execution. And the biggest problem that I see, especially with the founders that jump to just the execution, the ones that come back 12 months later, and they're like, no, we
lost 12 months of runway, didn't quite work, what do we do now? What they ended up doing
was they spent 12 months churning on the execution, but
didn't do the strategy work. And a lot of times we do this, I've been guilty of this as well, we skip over these things
because we're like, oh, we don't really need it. We got it; like, it's fine. And then you jump into
sending outbound emails, getting the Mark Zuckerberg
money and all those things, and you don't quite get the results. Why? Because you didn't do
the foundational pieces of your go-to-market strategy. And when you go out to market
and you start competing, and the first contact with the
enemy who has done the work, you get obliterated. Except with B2B SaaS, you
don't know right away. It takes some time and
there's slow marination. So you're getting obliterated, but you don't quite know
until 12 months later, and you're like, oh, we got obliterated because we really didn't have a differentiated go-to-market strategy. And that's why this is super-important. So these first three
things, if done right, really sets up your strategy. And then you're able to leverage all this as the foundational pieces, and drive that into actually
driving your execution. And that's when you get
to the next set of things. So the big next thing, the
big essential component is your, what I call a Broadway show. And the best way to define Broadway show is essentially what your
sales and marketing activities are gonna be. Now what's the difference? So one of the things that rookies make, or not as-seasoned teams make, is they get all scatterbrained on what their sales and marketing
activities are gonna be. They'll go out and they're like, oh, we should do a block post. Oh, we should do TikTok,
that's kinda cool. We should do Instagram,
we should do LinkedIn. Maybe we do Facebook ads. And you do all these things
and it's very scatterbrained. And what you're trying to
do is run this big-time show in all these different channels. And that rarely works because
it's really hard to do. It takes a lot of capital to do. It takes a lot of expertise to do. It doesn't work. You end up being scatterbrained. Instead, what you wanna do is create this one
beautiful Broadway show, this one show that you run every week. And you strategically run
that every single week. And instead of being scatterbrained, you're running a consistent
set of messaging every week, and you're iterating on
it based on the data, and you're making it better
and better and better and better and better, and
that's a Broadway show. The analogy is like you
have one Broadway show, that you make it perfect,
and then they move, go all over the country
and show it to new people. And that's what you wanna be doing with your sales and marketing, too, is instead of creating a
brand new Broadway show every single week, a
whole different thing, and none of them are good, right? They all suck. And so that's the fourth component on what is your Broadway show gonna be like? Is it your manifesto that
you run on a certain channel? Is it gonna be LinkedIn, or
is it gonna be on outbound? You're gonna have to
pick one or two of those and really hone in on the manifesto, and then run that over and over and over. And when you do that effectively, then you're gonna be successful in actually generating the
pipeline, getting the users, and then you're gonna get the
data to really iterate on it and make it better and better. Otherwise, you're gonna
be trying a new idea every single week, it's
gonna be all over the place. You won't have the data,
there's nothing to iterate on, and nothing will get good and you'll lose 12 months of runway. So that's why this component
is super-important. And that's the first piece
of as you start to execute. The next one that you do after you've started go
doing the Broadway show, you have the strategy,
you start to execute, is start to think about channel mastery. And channel mastery is
something that is often ignored. Here's the thing. When it comes to B2B SaaS, there's different ways to get attention from your ideal customers, right? What you're really trying
to do is take your message and your manifesto, and you're trying to run a Broadway show, on specific channels to get
the attention of your ICP. That's literally what's
going on here, right? Now, the problem is, you know, there's certain ways to get attention. Like you can do cold outbound. You can run LinkedIn posts. You can run Facebook ads. You can run Google ads. You can do joint webinars, like
any number of these things. But the problem is each one of
these things require mastery. For each of these channels,
let's just say, LinkedIn, right, you have to know how
to structure the posts. You have to know how
to grow your following. You have to know how to make
sure that it's not just a post that makes people feel good, but a post where people take
action and become a lead. You have to do all these things. That requires a few things. One, you have to know
how that channel works. You have to know what the strategy is to win in that channel. You have to know what
your cadence is gonna be, how often you do it, and you have to know what
your messaging should be. So that, together, when
you learn to do that, that's your channel mastery. Now, what ends up happening
is a lot of companies or a lot of marketers
or founders that are, it's fun; we'll let Sales and Marketing, what they'll do is they'll try to spin up a bunch of channels and it becomes impossible for them to master any one single channel. And so kinda like the Broadway show, they become scattered on the
channels and on the message. And that becomes terrible. So another core essential
element and component is to take the Broadway show, which is your consistent
show you're gonna run, and start to turn on
one channel at a time, so you achieve channel mastery. And you also have a playbook
on how to win in that channel. If you're gonna do outbound,
have a playbook on it. If you're gonna do LinkedIn,
have a playbook on it. If you're gonna do Facebook
ads, have a playbook on it. So for example, in my SaaS
go-to-market coaching program, we actually give you
specific best practices on each of the channels, and we teach you how to actually turn on one channel at a time,
what data to measure, based off of the work
you did in the program to craft your manifesto or
your value prop and your ICP. So this all connects together. So what you wanna be doing is make sure you have
a framework to follow to do these core pieces. Okay, so I covered the first five. And then before I go to number
six and get to the bonus one, let me just pause here for a second. Are you starting to see the power in this? So there's this broad concept
of go-to-market strategy or go-to-market plan. But then when you really break it down, you start to see what
these core components are and how each of them are so important. You also start to see that
they're not random things. They all build off of each other. If your ICP is great, then your Broadway show
is gonna be phenomenal. If your ICP is terrible,
and too big and too wide, then your messaging is gonna suck, your manifesto's gonna suck, and your Broadway show won't work, 'cause it won't resonate with anyone. You can't get enough reach. So you can start to understand
how each of these components build on each other. And when you actually have
all these core components, then, as you face the enemy
and the first contact, you may not get it right, but you'll at least know
which areas to tweak to get better and better and
better, and to be effective. Are you starting to see the power in this? Are you starting to see the
different way to approach this? If you are, can I just get
a yes in the comments below? Also, smash that Like button
for the YouTube algorithm. It really likes it when you do that. Also, if you wanna work
with me to build out your go-to-market strategy
and execute on it, based on my 15 years of experience
and the 85-plus founders that are in my SaaS go-to-market program, check out my coaching program. And the link is below in the video. You don't have to go right now. Let's go to number six, but smash that Like button
for the YouTube algorithm as we go to number six. It really likes it when you do that. And let's dig right into it. Okay, number six is success stories. It's so crazy to me how often
founders just ignore this. Because when you have success stories, as you start to get early success
from customers, right now, let's just say version
one of your Broadway show is just you talking
about your own experience and what the platform is, and
the vision and the promise. As you start to get customers
and as you're scaling, and even if you are at later stages, a lot of companies don't do
enough customer success stories. But if you can capture
these success stories and you can put them
into your Broadway show, into your manifesto, and
you start to mobilize that through the channels you're doing, you can drive 10x impact in
your go-to-market machine. Why? Because people trust people. So your ICP is gonna trust
the voice and the success of a fellow member of that ICP, then you. This is normal human behavior. And so the more work you do to constantly capture
these success stories and incorporate that into
your go-to-market machine, the more successful your
go-to-market machine is going to be because it's
gonna be more believable. It's gonna be more trustworthy, and that's super, super-powerful. So that's component number six. You can never do this early enough, even if it's your first customer. Get 'em to successful,
capture a success story, start mobilizing it. If you are a $100 million ARR company, and there are companies that I coach that are upwards of 100 million ARR, then you should still put more
attention on success stories. I bet you're not doing it right now. So that's the power of
these success stories. And there's so many
different ways to do them. It doesn't matter; just capture it. Capture it in an effective
way and put it into play. As you start to do these things, so you have this strategy and then you have these execution pieces, what ends up happening is you
start to generate pipeline. Now, if your product-led pipeline
tends to be product leads, right, they're signing up for the product, they're doing a trial, whatever it may be. If you're a sales-led, then
there're actual opportunities, demo requests or discovery calls. And this is where a lot
of companies get lost. Because what's just as
important as pipeline-building, which is what these
things are gonna be doing, is just as important as also conversion. And a lot of companies kind of
keep that as an afterthought. Whereas one of the biggest components to your killer and unstoppable
go-to-market strategy and machine is actually fleshing
out your sales methodology. What's also important to flesh out is your marketing methodology, right, and also your customer
success methodology. All three of these are super-important. Now, what do I mean by methodology? Well, let me give you an example. So let's just say you're product-led. If a trial starts, what is your process to actually nurture that trial, to make sure they get a great
experience, to educate them? Do you onboard them with a person? Do you actually identify if
they are a high-value account, and then that way, you bubble
that up to a salesperson, how do you manage that so that they actually have
a great and successful trial so they're more likely to
convert their credit card? That's part of your sales
methodology if you're product-led. If you're sales-led, then
the question becomes, well, how do they request a demo? How do you qualify those leads? How do you make sure
that the quality is good? How do you actually
structure that discovery call or that strategy call? What do you call that call? How do you follow up with those people? That's also your sales methodology. What's the sales deck, right? Is it your manifesto? Do you tweak it? What do you add to it? Now, we are also running SaaS businesses, so recurring revenue is super-important, which means that our customers,
after the first sale, need to be successful. So what's your success methodology? Meaning, once someone becomes a customer, how do you set them up for success? How do you check in with them? How do you run QBRs? You need a methodology for
each of these three areas. And if it's an afterthought, what will end up happening
is you'll get a lot of leads, and Marketing will be like,
"Oh, my God, we're doing great. "So many leads!" But there won't be any revenue close. And you'll be like, I don't know, maybe our salespeople are terrible. But sometimes the salespeople
are not the problem. What's really the problem is that you don't have
a sales methodology, or you don't have a marketing methodology on defining what's a quality lead. Or you don't have a success methodology to retain that revenue. And this is one of the key components that often gets forgotten
or is an afterthought because this stuff is just
so much more exciting. We did this blog post; great. How many leads did you get? No one knows. How much revenue did that create? No one knows. But if you can measure these
things in the right way and actually define what
your methodology is gonna be, then that's super-powerful. This is also something we cover inside of the go-to-market program. I dig into like, cool, here's how you define a sales methodology. Here's how you actually
measure the right data on what should be a
qualified lead versus not. Here's how you think about your customer success methodology. These are all super-important. And you know, you don't have to reinvent the wheel in these, right? Don't get overwhelmed. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are ways to actually
hook into frameworks. And if you have someone that you can go to that can give you a framework,
you should go do that. If you know someone that's
in Sales or Marketing or customer success, and they'll
give you their framework, or you can interview them, go do that. If you wanna work with me and
I'll give you my framework, that's fine, too. But make sure that you have a methodology. That's super-important. Because if you don't do that, all of this will be for nothing. You'll do all this work,
but none of it will convert and it won't matter. And you won't know. The worst part is you won't
know what was the problem. Was it the people? Like, the market's messed up and your product's not solving a problem? Or your methodology is terrible. You're just not handling
these people in the right way. And that's why you actually
need to flesh this out and be thoughtful about it. Now, the eighth component,
this is the thing, if the ICP is the most important, this is the second most important. And I know there's a whole lot in between, and they're all really important, but number one and number eight are the most important for your success. And, in fact, the founders
that actually lose 12 months of runway on a
poor go-to-market strategy, meaning the plan didn't survive and they didn't know it didn't survive, are the people that
either screw up on the ICP or the people that actually
screw up on this one. That's how important this is. Now, all of these are important. If I were to pick a third important one, it would be number three, manifesto. Hands-down, manifesto. If you don't get that
right based off of this, and the reason I put this here is because you won't
know if this is any good until you establish these
two and run through this. Members in my program,
we build manifestos, but it's usually the second
or third version that nail it. The first one's like okay
and we rush that out, just so we can start collecting data. And then the third version
just like nails it, (finger snaps) and just does so well. And that's the process we go through. That's why it's so important. But you'll never get to this if you don't have these two things. So what is this thing? You're gonna laugh. It's math, okay? And you know, I could have
called this something else. I could've called it data. I could've called it
metrics, but it's not that. Those are important, but the
math is really important. Let me explain why. There's a real math that exists in your go-to-market machine. It's just math. It's not hope, wish or
a prayer; it's math. What is that math? Let's just say you wanna
generate a million dollars of new business over the
next 12 months, right? You want your go-to-market machine to generate a million
dollars in new business. Okay, so let's just say your average contract value is 100k. This means that in order to
generate that million dollars, you need 10 customers
that are paying 100k each. Okay, now, in your sales methodology, you know that you have a 20% win rate, your average win rate. That's most SaaS teams,
some of them are better, world-class, but 20% is average. Kinda weird in sales,
but that's what it is. If you only win 20% of deals, in order to get that 10
customers paying you 100k, to get a million dollars of new business, then you need 50 opportunities. In order to get those 50 opportunities, not every lead that gets generated turns into a real opportunity,
a qualified opportunity. Let's just say 10% of
any lead that comes in actually is a real opportunity, which is also not a terrible benchmark. To get those 50 opportunities, you need a certain number of leads, and only 10% of leads
turn into an opportunity, then you're gonna need 500 leads. So now there's real math here. You need 500 leads that
turns into 50 opportunities. You close 20% of them;
that becomes 10 customers at paying 100k each, and then
you get a million dollars. That is the math behind every
single go-to-market machine. Whether you're product-led or
sales-led, that math exists. And so often we get
caught up on the metrics. It was like, oh, what's
our MQL and what's our SQL. Those are important, those
are things you tweak, but the math is what matters. Sometimes we get caught up on like, well, what's the cost of acquiring a customer? Like, we gotta bring that down. It's like, well, I don't know. How much does it cost? Let's figure how much it
costs and let's figure out how to make up the difference on the LTV. Math is what really tells you
what's working and what's not. And if you don't do the math
on your go-to-market machine, just to even figure out like, look, in order to reach this growth target, we need this many leads, in order to generate this many leads is how much activity
we're gonna have to do, if you don't do that math,
none of this will work. And this is usually when
founders really go wrong. And so figuring out
your go-to-market math, figuring out your marketing math, figuring out your sales math,
and looking at that equation and then figuring out, well,
how much do we have to do on our Broadway show, which
channels do we have to do? Is it working? What are those conversions
across those inflection points? That's what's gonna
really make the difference between those who actually
succeed and those who, 12 months later, have
burnt a bunch of cash and they don't know what happened. They're like, I don't know,
no one wants the product. And you'll never know. And so this is the eighth component, and pretty much the most
important between ICP and math. In fact, they're almost tied. You gotta do both. That's something that you
actually have to own and measure on a consistent basis, and
make decisions based off of it. And when you do it this way, you don't just have this
hope and a wish and a prayer that your go-to-market works; you have a go-to-market machine. It's a machine that you can measure. And then you have these components, and you can see how each of
these components are doing. And based on that, you know what to tweak. And that way, you get
better and better and better and better and better. And because you're
running a Broadway show, you're actually gonna be controlled in which channels you're going after. And as you master each channel, you're gonna get more success. And as you get more success, you're gonna get more success stories. As you get more success stories, and as you improve your sales methodology, and you tweak your math, you're
gonna actually be able to invest more into that
machine and raise more money. And then you're gonna be able to scale. And that's how it all comes together. And that's the power of breaking down this broad concept of
go-to-market strategy to, okay, here are the
eight essential elements to a killer and unstoppable
go-to-market strategy. Now, I do have a bonus one for you. And since you're here
still, which is awesome, I wanna give that to you. Before I do that, if you're
getting value from this video, please smash that Like button
for the YouTube algorithm. It just loves it when you do
that, if you haven't already. Also, if you have thoughts on this or you just got value from
this, put it in the comments. I just love hearing from all you guys. So the bonus one that
you wanna think about is actually not an execution
thing, but a strategy thing. But so many founders don't think about it as a strategy thing. And that's essentially
your pricing strategy. How much do you charge for your product? I remember this one time
ToutApp, my last company, was in trouble, and so I met
with two of our investors, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. And we sat down, we talked through where we are in the
business, what's going on, what's working, what's not. And they were like, you just
need to raise your prices. You raise your prices,
everything becomes way better. You're clearly in the
market that people want it. And it was so simplistic. But then I went back and I
thought about it, and I'm like, we can totally raise our prices. And instead of just doing a per-user fee, we added a platform fee
and then we added upsells. And that totally changed the
trajectory of the business, which was incredible. And that's something a
lot of founders don't do. In fact, inside of my
go-to-market program, I've worked with founders where we have nearly
doubled their pricing. And this was so scary,
like we're doubling it. And yet their win rates went up. And one of the things that's
interesting about pricing is, price communicates value, right? And so when you charge higher
prices and premium prices, that's one way of differentiating. That's also communicating
the value of your product and the ROI they can get. If you charge too low,
people may not trust you. So that's like a huge
opportunity that's missed in a lot of SaaS companies. And you wanna actually think about your pricing strategy holistically. And I have a specific process for this, but I'll give you some pointers. You wanna think about, how do you charge? It's not obvious that you
charge on a per-user basis. ToutApp, when we sold to sales teams, and we knew that sales teams are huge, so we charged on a per-user basis. And then we had other things. Marketo actually bought ToutApp, and then Marketo was acquired by Adobe, and I watched through
that whole experience, Marketo sold to marketing teams. And marketing teams don't get that big, and so they charge based
on number of contacts, which get huge. So it's not obvious always
on how to price these things, how to package these things,
and how to have the upsells, and how do you drive dollar retention rate for your customers. This all stems down to pricing strategy. The more you charge, the more you upsell, the more your LTV goes up. And the more you can spend on your customer acquisition costs and the more you can grow faster, and the more you can put in
your go-to-market machine. So pricing strategy is one of
the key strategy components, not even on an execution component, for your unstoppable
go-to-market strategy. And the beauty of this is all of this builds
on each other, right? The better the ICP is, the better your messaging is gonna be, because it's more specific. The better your messaging, the better your manifest's gonna be because it's focused on ICP
with differentiated messaging. The better your manifesto is, the better your Broadway show is gonna be, because you're gonna be
more focused and targeted, and it's gonna resonate more. The better that is, the quicker you're gonna be
able to master the channel, and get better and better, and
turn on additional channels. The better you do that,
the more customers you get, the more success stories you get. And when you have more success stories, all of this stuff gets better, right? You updated a new manifesto,
you show it in your messaging. You tweak your ICP based on who your successful customers
are, so you get more of them. And as you do that,
you actually get better in your sales and marketing process, and you're using the data. And if you look at all of this
holistically and do the math, then you're gonna be able to
tweak this and this and this. All of these things get
tweaked based on the math, and it turns into a real
machine that you can scale. And on top of that, you put in something like a proper pricing
strategy exercise, oh, my God, it changes the game completely. It can 10x your overall machine, because you can change
nothing in over here, but if you make two
times more on every deal that you're already closing, you're already changing the trajectory of the growth of your SaaS company. This is why, this is why I am obsessed with go-to-market strategy. Because this is it. This is the thing. Like, when you go out into the market and you have that first
contact with the enemy, the enemy being maybe a direct competitor or well-entrenched players,
or your customers' attention, or just general apathy, this is the thing that helps you win. If you don't have this, you're gonna lose 12 months of runway, you're not even gonna know what happened, and you're not even gonna know how you're gonna raise that
next round if you're funded, or you're gonna go out of
business if you're bootstrapped, 'cause you're like, I can't
keep funding this thing. This is not working. And so this is the most important thing. This is why I obsess so much
about go-to-market strategy. And I finally had to do a video where I walked through the
core components and elements that make for a successful killer unstoppable go-to-market strategy. Now you know what those components are. But what you may not know is
how do you build out an ICP, how do you craft your value prop? How do you build a manifesto? How do you run a Broadway
show across the key channels? What are the key channels? How do you master each of those channels? How do you collect success stories? What should your sales methodology be? What should your marketing methodology, what should your customer
success methodology be? How do you do the math? What do you track, how do you
measure, what is the math? And how do you actually
raise up your pricing? You may not know these pieces. And this is why I run my SaaS
go-to-market coaching program. I have over 85 companies
inside of the program that I personally work with. You work with me. That's how the program works. I work with you inside of the program. And I've structured it in a way where you get the most success. I recently interviewed some
companies in the program. One group, 330% in the last
12 months of working with me; another 5x, their MRR. Another one is actually growing
200% quarter-over-quarter. Countless companies have gone
on to raise their Series A. I've worked with a lot
of seed stage companies and they raised their Series A because of the go-to-market
machine they built. I've had companies that
have raised seed-plus rounds based on the growth of their go-to-market. Bootstrap companies, I have a
number of bootstrap companies in the program and they have
kickstarted profitability. This is why I run this program. So if you're interested in working with me to actually flesh these pieces out, you want a framework to follow, and you don't wanna reinvent the wheel, you wanna reduce execution risk, you want my 15 years of
experience sitting beside you to make sure that you can
actually do this effectively, I'll be your coach, I'll
walk you through it. I'll give it to you step-by-step on how to implement these pieces, and I'll coach you
through the whole thing. Just go to TKKADER.com/gtm for all the information
you'll need about the program. It's an incredible program, and we'd love to have you in it. If you are a B2B SaaS company,
that's all I specialize in. Also, if you got a value from this video, just go ahead and smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm. The YouTube algorithm really likes it, and we just love it, too. Also, if you haven't subscribed yet, I bring you actionable, actual strategies to grow your SaaS business. From me being a founder,
growing a company, exiting a company, and
then help exit the company that bought my company for
$4.75 billion, I did all that. And now I teach you these principles that I learned from the trenches. So be sure to hit the Subscribe
button and that bell icon, and you'll get notified every
single time I drop an episode. If you're part of a Slack
group of fellow founders or a community, please share this video, If others will get value, if
you feel others will get value, please share it. It'll just mean the world to us. We put a lot of love in these videos. And also, if you're interested in my help in actually building a
go-to-market strategy, you don't wanna lose 12 months of runway, go check out the coaching
program, TKKADER.com/gtm. I'll link to it below as well. And last thing to remember,
everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business. When you are with us, yours
is gonna be unstoppable. I'm TK, I'll see you in the next episode. (dramatic classical music outro) - [Robotic Announcer]
That would be 1 million. - Yeah, we got it right. Okay, you ready? You ready? Don't put this in. (laughs)
