Do you create a risk and mitigation plan for the gtm strategy right out of the gate? If not, how do you predict and reduce foreseen risk?

There are approximately 1,001 things that can go wrong with any launch. It's impossible to prepare for all of those!

You've got 2 categories of risks - internal and external.

• Internal risks - these are execution risks in terms of product readiness, marketing readiness, etc. To mitigate that, you can build in hurdle criteria leading up to launches. Proactive monitoring is the best mitigation strategy here. Examples:

  • Product readiness. What are early indicators that the product might not be ready? Are there results from beta programs that you can monitor (e.g. customer don't seem to be adopting the features at the rate that you expect, which could indicate lack of value?).

  • Sales readiness. Are sales ready and willing to sell the product? What needs to be in place for that to happen? Do they need to be certified on the pitch? Do they need to have certain incentive structures in place? If those aren't in place, then perhaps that becomes your hurdle criteria for readiness to launch.

• External risks - market, competitive, and sometimes regulatory forces threaten your launch. It's (nearly) impossible to prepare for those, so you just have to be willing to tackle them as they come. The one exception is if you've got a great competitive intel program -- you can track the competition and be prepared with a play in anticipation of whatever move they make.

tl;dr -- it's impossible to account for ALL the risks. I would invest instead in creating metrics that help you monitor risks, so that when something starts going off, you know how to react.

It depends on the size of the GTM and its impact on the organization, both positively and in terms of its potential negative risk impact.

• In the case of a major, value proposition shifting, launch with significant revenue impact, this generally warrants a thorough risk & mitigation plan as there will inevitably be possibility for risk of customer confusion, backlash, and churn.

• You'll want to develop this plan methodically, based on a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive set of risks (see my answer to an earlier question around common areas of risks).

The truth is, every launch is going to come with risks, and these vary from business to business. Of course, the longer you have been with a business, the easier it is to know the common pitfalls when it comes to launching and delivering a GTM plan.

If you’re new to a business, or the PM function it's worth following a couple of steps to mitigate risk:

• What are our lessons learnt from our last launch

• What could we have done better during our last GTM

• Who do we need to engage now to ensure this GTM goes smoothly

• What internal factors could impact our GTM (an acquisition, lack of resource etc.)

And most importantly ensure these are covered in your kick-off and all stakeholders are aware of these risks from the start.

Your GTM plans are going to require heavy coordination, and you’ll be engaging with stakeholder across the business. It sounds obvious, but risks can be reduced through regularly check-ins with your various different stakeholders. Clear and concise communication on deadlines is essential.

One of the biggest challenges when preparing for a launch is identifying the “unknown unknowns”—risks that can cause a launch to fail but aren’t immediately obvious or intuitive.

Before a significant launch, I definitely recommend investing time to identify potential issues in order to give the product the best chance at succeeding. Here’s a high-level outline of the four-phased approach we use at ZipRecruiter:

1. Outline the product flow: the first step is to visualize the end-to-end product experience, including interactions the user has before/after using the product (e.g., in a recent launch, the user received CS/sales outreach before using the product and a survey after using the product). Creating a simple flow chart of these interactions helps unearth where issues may occur and is an incredibly helpful “living” artifact for cross functional teams to understand the product experience.

2. Stakeholder risk brainstorm: the next step is to brainstorm potential risks that may impact the end-user experience. During the brainstorm, I show the product flow in Figma and have everyone add sticky notes to areas where users will likely experience issues (60min is sufficient). I like to include the product core team (e.g., PM, design, UXR) and GTM (e.g., CS, sales enablement) to get diverse perspectives and encourage quantity over quality of ideas (editing down happens later).

3. Prioritize risks: the goal for this step is to develop a short-list of high-priority, open risks. To start, take all of the risks identified during the brainstorm and cluster them into categories (e.g., “sales risks,” “product performance risks,” etc.). Cross-out the risks that are already being addressed, and prioritize the open risks (P0: blockers that need to be addressed before launch; P1: need to be addressed immediately post-launch; P2: Need to be addressed long-term; P3: Backlog).

4. Align on a mitigation plan: Finally, it’s time to pull in leadership and align on a risk mitigation plan. You’ll already have an initial list of open high-priority risks from the prior step. I recommend scheduling a leadership review (30-45mins), walk through the open P0s, then go down the list, taking input from leadership to reprioritize/add new risks. Once prioritization is aligned, assign an owner for each P0 to develop a mitigation strategy and communicate with the group on progress.

While it sounds like a lot of work, this can all be accomplished in just a few days and is an excellent way to find risks that otherwise could impact a launch's success.