Jesse Lopez

Start any GTM strategy by anchoring on the four critical components of any go-to-market initiative. 1. What: What software or offering are you selling? What problems does it help solve? What makes your product unique vs. alternatives? 2. Who: Who is your ideal customer profile, and why? What are their pain points, and how does your product help them solve them? Why should these customers choose your product over alternatives? 3. Where: Where do customers learn about products in your category? What channels are most effective at each stage of the buying journey based on historical data or competitive offerings? 4. How: How do customers typically buy products in your product category? What factors and/or criteria help drive their buying journey? How can you help educate customers on your product along the journey? Net-net: There is no magic formula to starting a GTM strategy, but rather a set of questions you should continually use to guide your GTM decisions. Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach, I encourage you to craft a GTM strategy with your x-functional partners (Sales, Product, Marketing) that anchors on the what, who, where, and how aspects of your GTM iniatitive.

Both - pricing is a team effort. PMM and PM should be in lock-step when building, executing, and optimizing a pricing strategy. Some considerations on critical phases of pricing strategy development: * Competitive differentiation: Both teams should proactively build a comprehensive understanding of the competitive landscape (e.g., how competitors price, what pricing/packaging models they offer, what makes their offering different or valuable, etc.) and form a joint POV on what makes the most sense for their product. * Customer research: Equally as important is conducting interviews and fielding surveys that help frame how customers value a given product and what features are most important to them. Joint research among PMM and PM teams helps build pricing and product strategies that help explain the value your product delivers to your customer base and * Feasibility assessment: As pricing and packaging plans are being developed, PM and PMM should have feasibility discussions with engineering and GTM teams into what features and capabilities are "must-ship" vs. "nice-to-haves" before launching a pricing model or change. Feasibility discussions range from how to gate certain features or experiences for paid customers to how to collect payment from new subscribers. * Launch strategy: Messaging and launch communications will be critical to the success of any pricing model launch. PM and PMM should align on who will lead customer research and messaging development - typically, PMM takes the lead. Still, the PM team needs to be brought into the process as messaging will need to be consistent across product experience. * Adoption tactics: Product adoption is a core goal for PM and PMM teams, so both teams should set up feedback cycles and track adoption/usage product metrics together to assess the effectiveness of a pricing launch. Joint reviews of feedback and metrics can help identify and connect solutions across a customer journey, which leads to better outcomes for the product team.

Many methods exist to identify ideal customer profiles (ICP) for your product. The simple approach is to look inwards to understand product-market fit among your existing users. 1) Power Users: Identify your power users and understand why they love you. Typically, these cohorts help inform ideal targets for your ICP and how you go-to-market to acquire more customers that fit your ICP profiles. Analyze what quantitative and qualitative commonalities these cohorts share to inform your ICP profiles (e.g., industry, geographic footprint, annual revenue, use cases, pain points, key features used, etc.). Key things to learn from your power users include: * What pain points were they looking to solve with your product? * Where did they hear about your product? * What factors and/or criteria drove their decision to choose your product? * How effective has your product been at solving their pain points? * What aspects of your product do they enjoy the most? * What outcomes or impact have they achieved with your product? * Note: The "power user" criteria can vary by company - for example, you can define them by most loyal to your product, most profitable for your company, most active in your product, etc. Work with your Sales and Product teams to define the key metric(s) you want to optimize for your GTM efforts. 2) Emerging Promoters: Identify sizeable and attractive audiences for expansion. In addition to power users, you want to identify other highly satisfied audiences that may not represent a sizeable share of your existing user base. Typically, these are incremental industry verticals or use cases your product is well equipped to serve based on functionality. * Tip: Leverage product usage data and surveys to identify these opportunities. NPS and CSAT surveys are great tools to identify promoters of your product. Pack these surveys with firmographic, demographic, product usage, and attitudinal questions to fully understand these audiences. 3) Churners: Research your churners to understand why customers leave you. Typically, this will help you flag key audiences that may prove difficult to acquire and may be challenging to be candidates for your ICP (e.g., industry vertical, company size, use case). Understanding their key challenges with your product will inform when they can become candidates to be included in your ICP (e.g., once a specific feature or capability becomes available). Summary Understanding these three audiences (power users, emerging promoters, and churners) will help shape your ICP profiles and inform how you go to market. Net-net, you want to attract, acquire, and retain customer profiles that have proven fit for your product vs. depleting your resources on audiences that churn due to a weak product-market fit.

Cross-functional collaboration, alignment, and execution are the most challenging aspects of operationalizing a GTM plan. Challenge: X-functional collaboration Solution: PMMs must ensure that a cross-functional team with clear roles and responsibilities supports every major GTM plan vs. chasing for support for every plan. A RACI framework will ensure your GTM plan is cohesive and connected across teams (e.g., your campaign will seamlessly drive traffic to your landing page, and leads captured through your page will flow to sales teams). Challenge: X-functional alignment Solution: PMMs should leverage DACI frameworks (driver, approver, contributor, informed) to help drive decision-making across cross-functional teams. An established DACI for large GTM plans will ensure the "why" behind big decisions is well documented, and x-functional partners can use the logic behind the decision to inform their respective efforts. Challenge: X-functional execution Solution: PMMs should leverage GTM checklists or project management software to keep track of the progress of GTM plan execution. I typically have a stand-in meeting booked with my x-functional partners on a regular cadence to keep track of the progress of any GTM plan. Meetings are an effective tool to keep teams focused on deliverables and troubleshoot emerging issues as a team.

Your pricing and packaging are components of your competitive positioning - the way you group features or the value metric you use to charge a SaaS fee helps frame your offering to your target audiences. For example, suppose your packages serve different audiences with differentiated needs. In that case, your competitive positioning requires packaging that clearly states the positioning, benefits, and features each audience desires from your product category. Pricing is equally essential to positioning your offering competitively, as your value metric and pricing tiers will help set your position in the market. For example, an enterprise package typically has yearly vs. monthly subscription options. Knowing how your target customers buy your product category and how competitors price and package their products can help frame your pricing strategy. If your company chooses to create an alternative model to the rest of the industry, assess the incremental costs and resources required to train your GTM teams and educate prospects and customers on your pricing model.

Three types of research should inform any competitive and market intelligence program: * Internal resources and intelligence, such as sales calls and win-loss analysis, are great for identifying high-level competitive and market insights. I typically use these resources to identify areas for further research (e.g., we usually lose deals to competitor X due to a specific capability gap) and differentiators to showcase in our marketing and selling motions. * Publicly available resources, such as competitor websites, news articles, analyst reports (e.g., Gartner, Forrester, IDC), and review sites (e.g., G2, TrustRadius, Capterra) should be the foundation of any competitive or market intelligence initiative as they help you identify "what" makes you different or better than your competitors. You should sign up for competitive and market newsletters to keep a pulse of your industry. * Complement your research with primary research when necessary to identify the "how" you are different and "why" that matters to customers. I recommend that you interview competitive switchers (customers switched from a competitive solution) or prospects who use a competitive solution to understand Tip: My advice would be to develop a comprehensive framework that you can use every time you profile a competitor or market to ensure consistency of comparison (e.g., positioning, value props, capabilities, features, claims, target audiences, etc.).

Customer interviews are the most beneficial resource to land "how" you are different vs. competitors and "why" it matters to your customers. Instead of focusing on three research methods, I will recommend three types of interviews you should consider when researching a competitor: * Switcher interviews: Interview customers who recently switched from a competitive solution to yours to understand what attracted them to your company and the key reasons for choosing your solution over the competition. * Churners who left to competitor interviews: Interview customers who recently churned from your company onto a competitor (typically, CSM teams collect this information) to understand what capabilities and/or benefits they sought with the switch. Understand what they consider your greatest strengths and weaknesses as a solution and the importance of those to their decision to churn. * Prospects interviews: Interview unbiased prospects who use a competitive solution to understand their perceptions about your company/product and what they consider the critical differentiators of their existing solution to others available in the market.

Rolling out pricing and packaging for a new product launch requires a well-planned execution plan that informs multiple audiences as to "what you are selling," "how you deliver value," and "why you are better than alternatives" in your product launch. The plan should include critical phases for enabling internal audiences, educating customers and partners, and collecting feedback from internal and external sources to optimize the rollout process. Key audiences to consider in your planning: 1. Internal stakeholders 2. Existing customers and prospects 3. Channel partners 4. Marketplace (e.g., website, app listings, review sites, PR, etc.)

With limited context into your exact situation, I can share some initiatives/tactics I have employed in the past to execute price increases or restrictions to features: 1. Understand your customer base, assess the impact of pricing or feature changes for different customer audiences, and build communications based on those insights. There may be some customers that recommended changes may disproportionately impact, so preparing tailored communications by key audiences can help soften the pricing news across your base and help address critical questions your customers may have. For example, in a past role, our team decided to delay pricing changes by six months for a select group of customers who a separate pricing change had recently impacted. 2. Be ready to justify pricing changes beyond macroeconomic or cost of doing business rationale. Ensure your announcement and related messaging anchor on the value your product offers to your customers vs. just informing them of the changes. Educate your internal stakeholders on the "why" behind the pricing/packaging changes (e.g., research conducted, options explored during pricing discussions, and the reasons for pricing) and the "how" to explain differences to customers. 3. Be transparent about your intentions as you release features by crafting messaging that communicates the incremental value that each feature or capability delivers to your customers. Many companies build features over multiple quarters to justify future-state pricing, so it is essential to communicate your vision to customers and build trust with

Three core elements of a strong, repeatable GTM framework are: A formal model to tier launches based on importance and market potential. Rather than depleting resources to make every feature or product release a big deal in a crowded marketplace, it is essential to prioritize your launches based on the importance of establishing or differentiating your positioning in the market and the market potential of any given announcement. By tiering your launches, you can ensure your teams have focus and invest the most resources in the most critical launches. A modular system of creative templates and frameworks to make the launch process scalable. Only some launches should require custom work. PMMs should work with creative teams to develop templates and frameworks for standard assets (e.g., one-pagers, landing pages, paid ads) to maximize resources across priorities and teams. A clear RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed) framework that establishes roles and responsibilities across Product, Marketing, and Sales teams. The cross-functional nature of GTM initiatives makes this a particularly challenging job for PMMs. Having a clear RACI across your org that establishes who is responsible for leading or supporting any GTM-related activity is critical to flawless execution. A RACI will ensure x-functional partners are accountable for the success of any GTM-related initiative and work as a team to deliver a cohesive and well-orchestrated GTM plan.