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Mastering Go-to-Market Strategies for Business Growth Success

• Taylor Shanklin

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About the Guest(s):

Jeanette Russell is a seasoned professional in the nonprofit tech space with over 17 years of experience. Her career started as a grassroots organizer on public land issues, transitioning into nonprofit tech when she joined Democracy in Action in 2007. Jeanette has held various roles in significant organizations, including Blackbaud and Neon One, focusing primarily on product marketing and go-to-market strategies. Her passion lies in providing the best solutions through well-structured GTM processes for companies aiming at social impact.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Talking Shizzle, our host Taylor Wilson talks about the intricacies of go-to-market strategies with Jeanette Russell, a veteran in product marketing within the nonprofit tech sector. The episode unravels the complex layers of GTM tactics, revealing how companies can effectively target their ideal customer profiles, improve pipeline velocity, and ensure optimal go-to-market processes. Jeanette shares her extensive experience across various companies, offering listeners invaluable strategies focusing on social impact.

The conversation explores the world of GTM, breaking down what it truly means beyond the buzzword. As Jeanette emphasizes, understanding GTM is vital—it's about integrating processes across departments to align on launching a product or driving growth. The episode also sheds light on the significance of sales and marketing alignment, examining why many CMOs face short tenures. Jeanette offers practical insights on identifying and addressing GTM challenges, ensuring businesses can confidently strive toward their revenue goals.

Key Takeaways:

  • Understand GTM Processes: Learn how go-to-market strategies involve cross-departmental collaboration in identifying target markets, launching products, and achieving sales goals.
  • Navigate GTM Buzz: Gain clarity on what go-to-market truly entails, debunking misconceptions and recognizing it as an iterative, multidisciplinary function.
  • Enhance Sales-Marketing Alignment: Explore how GTM processes aid in aligning sales and marketing teams to effectively target ideal customer profiles (ICP) and eliminate internal friction.
  • Avoid Common Pitfalls: Discover typical GTM challenges such as misdefining ICPs and the impact of heavy discounting, and learn strategies to prevent these issues.
  • Focus on Business Maturity: Delve into different GTM tactics suitable for various organizational maturity stages and understand how to leverage them to drive business growth.

Resources:

For more comprehensive insights and to delve into the full conversation, listen to this enlightening episode of Talking Shizzle. Stay updated with the latest strategies and thought leadership by subscribing and exploring more episodes where industry experts bring you innovative business growth shizzle.

0:00:03 Taylor Shanklin: Hey, hey, hey, all you lovely people out there.

0:00:07 Taylor Shanklin: I know you’ve got a lot going on in your day and you have big dreams for your brand.

0:00:12 Taylor Shanklin: Are you ready to talk some shizzle and learn some shizzle from entrepreneurs, leaders, change makers, and overall interesting people who like to shake things up? I’m your host, Taylor Wilson, founder of Creative Shizzle, and I’m stoked to bring.

0:00:29 Taylor Shanklin: You a fresh episode of Talking Shizzle today. This show is all about helping you think differently so that you could grow your business or your cause.

0:00:42 Taylor Shanklin: Check us out on the web@creativeshizzle.com now let’s get into it and talk some shizzle.

0:00:52 Taylor Shanklin: All right. Hello, folks. We’re here with a fresh episode of the Talking Shizzle podcast where we are going to solve your problems today on Go to Market. Gtm. I’m here with Jeanette Russell. What’s up, Jeanette?

0:01:07 Jeanette Russell: Hey, hey, hey. It is a beautiful sunny day here in Missoula, Montana.

0:01:11 Taylor Shanklin: Awesome. Well, it’s good to see you. You and I go way back in product marketing land at a software company called blackbaud, and you are now doing your own thing with helping people with product marketing and go to market strategies. So tell us a little bit about who you are, what you’re about, and then we’ll get into some specifics on Go to Market.

0:01:32 Jeanette Russell: You got it. Well, I’ve been in the, I call it the nonprofit tech space, but it’s really, you know, broader social impact. But I’ve been in the space for 17 years, and before that, I was actually a grassroots organizer on public lands issue for another 10. Let’s back into, like, how I got here. So as an organizer, this was kind of like, I don’t know, pre Internet. It was a long time ago, so I could really, at the time, once online tools came on, really saw the value in the scalability that digital could provide and was just fired up about the opportunity and got my first job with Democracy in Action, which was just my dream job at the time, especially because this is 2007 and I’m in Montana and they hired me back then.

0:02:17 Jeanette Russell: I was one of their top sellers for five years and was just an awesome experience and since then have worked for blackbaud, as you said, in a marketing capacity. Neon one phone action quorum attentively. So I’ve really seen kind of a breadth of how different companies go to market with very much focused on that social impact nonprofit tech space. So I’m just, I’m really passionate about keeping that focus and, you know, doing what we can as companies to ensure that we are providing the best solutions to nonprofits or companies who are in the space through the best product.

0:03:00 Jeanette Russell: And how we do that, in my opinion, is through go to market processes.

0:03:05 Taylor Shanklin: So let’s talk about that because I mean, honestly, like, it could be kind of a buzzword for people listening and even sometimes, I mean, I’ve been in marketing for a long time. Sometimes I’m like, okay, what exactly does go to market mean? So what is go to market really? Like, what does it mean to you?

0:03:24 Jeanette Russell: Right. Well, I’m grounded in my own experience with go to market and the advantages of that. But I have to say before as I was prepping, I noticed and I did some research that the definitions really right now are all over the map. And I think especially if you ask a product marketer what a go to market is, it’s essentially that product launch. It is getting that product ready to release into the public and all the things you do to ensure that success.

0:03:57 Jeanette Russell: So your audience value, channels, positioning, pricing, all those pieces. And that, that is true, that is a GTM for a product launch. But the way I’ve seen it is not my experience, is not that definition. And I have to say I got really excited when I saw my experience reflected in a, in a framework that I found from. It’s called GTM Partners. Check them out, they’re a groovy boutique. I think they focus on enterprise companies.

0:04:30 Jeanette Russell: But I really love their approach to go to market. And they explain it in terms of really more like processes that you have baked into different functions. So let me just pause there and also talk about kind of a good way to understand what it is is to also understand kind of what it’s not. So three kind of pieces of what GM kind of is not anymore because there’s a broader approach. 1. So it’s not just a product launch.

0:05:02 Jeanette Russell: So product launches, yes, they have their own plans, but each product also needs its own go to market. A go to market cannot be solved in an executive off site recession. And this is because of changing markets. It’s dynamic. Everything’s dynamic right now. And it’s very much this iterative process and not this static plan. And most importantly is like one person cannot figure out your go to market.

0:05:29 Jeanette Russell: And if you notice on the marketing side, the average tenure of A CMOS like 2 years, I think this is one area where it’s like, this is just like a totally unrealistic expectation for any one person to have to figure out this go to market function.

0:05:45 Taylor Shanklin: Let’s dish a little bit about that. I think so many companies do the thing where it’s like a couple people in the boardroom decide to go to market. And I’ve also seen this. I know this is a little off topic, but I’m curious to get your thoughts. And I think it’s juicy. But I’ve also noticed that CMOs really do kind of last about two years in a specific place.

0:06:08 Jeanette Russell: Enrolled.

0:06:09 Taylor Shanklin: Do you think part of it is because they’re struggling with these like push and pull around go to market and sales and their role as the marketing leader?

0:06:21 Jeanette Russell: In my opinion, that’s a big piece of it because that is just kind of this impossible task. And then you just do what you can to show growth and revenue. But without the go to market functions in place, you’re not really clear. Like, do I have all the dependencies in place? Do I have. I think a lot of marketers, we know what needs to be in place for success. But sometimes that piece can be hard to validate, quantify and to explain to, let’s say the CEO or the GM or whoever.

0:06:58 Jeanette Russell: And it creates this, I think, unnecessary tension. I see that especially with kind of the. The company’s less mature in their maturity level of where they are in their companies. I think as companies mature there’s less of that friction. Perhaps CMOs stay on a little longer because you now have this process in place where it’s clear if you don’t hit your. You can make a sound argument why When a goal was set, like why or why not? We can hit that goal and it’s this more of this. I kind of like a mature process.

0:07:32 Jeanette Russell: That said, it’s just, I think that, I mean even sales C level, like people are just not sticking around very long. So I think it’s dynamic. But I do think it’s a problem just because it takes you a year alone to really understand what’s happening. And if you’re gone in another year, also what happens to all the institutional knowledge? Right.

0:07:58 Taylor Shanklin: So those are some things that go to market is not what is it like, let’s define it here.

0:08:04 Jeanette Russell: This is where I’m going to lean on GTM partners and explain kind of their process, which probably sounds familiar, but I think they mix it up slightly. There’s a swipe, there’s a tweak to it, which makes it, I think actually pretty achievable for a lot of organizations to least move towards. So let’s look at processes. Okay, so example of a processee would be a function that Deals with just your icp.

0:08:34 Jeanette Russell: Okay. There’s a function that deals with customer expansion and let’s say a function that deals with pipeline velocity. So from the top. So instead of asking marketing to figure out how to hit this growth goal, a GTM process in your icp, they like to call it total relevant market. I love that term because it is about let’s just hit the relevant accounts. So within that there would be a process to find the best green space.

0:09:03 Jeanette Russell: Like where is the segment that we think we should grow. And so part of this process, while let’s say marketing might lead, that might head it, they’re going to have other stakeholders as part of that process. Second example is customer expansion. So that again would be its own process. So instead of having one person determine that expansion play, a customer expansion process would be in place to answer questions like how else can we upsell customers?

0:09:35 Jeanette Russell: Right. Because I’ve seen in my experience it’s given to a sales leader, they’re just kind of figuring out what they think we should do. But really this is how we engage customers is kind of a company wide. It’s something we need input from quite a few stakeholders including you know, products, CS sales and marketing. And then in the last example, if you had a process in place around pipeline velocity that would answer which of your go to market motions, kind of like inbound and outbound would get you to revenue fastest with whatever segments you’re targeting.

0:10:13 Jeanette Russell: Doesn’t that make sense?

0:10:14 Taylor Shanklin: Yeah, it does. And I also really like the term relevant target market. I love it’s way. Yeah, be all thanks to all people. Nobody is.

0:10:27 Jeanette Russell: It’s all about icp. I mean it’s one of the most. I’m very excited about ICP because if we go back to what is marketing really Our foundational principle is you send the right message at the right time to the right person. While that sounds cliche, that really is what marketing. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s the name of the game and especially as we grow towards that personalization, it just keeps refining and refining and refining itself. So I feel like that your ICP is so foundational.

0:11:02 Taylor Shanklin: So I like that total relevant market. I’m also familiar with the GTM operating system. GDM partner Singer over there is one of the founders over there. He is just a really fantastic marketer. So we’ll post a link to show notes to go like find this and find them if you want to learn more. Let’s talk about something that you’ve brought up with me and that is this concept of go to market motions. What do you mean by that? What are go to market motions?

0:11:34 Jeanette Russell: Yeah, so this is going to be kind of your strategy for how you engage the right buyer. It’s going to be informed by the cost of the product. So enterprise versus SMB and then also your internal readiness. So this is all going to. These are like the six motions. They’re going to sound very familiar. Inbound, outbound, product led, plg, partner led, community led, and event led. So if you’re listening, you’re probably like, oh yeah, I’ve actually done all of these. But here’s the deal.

0:12:10 Jeanette Russell: Each of these motions, and if you’re a practitioner, you know this, this is in fact a program. And programs, if you want them to succeed, require a sizable investment. So this is where a go to market process can help you determine if you really do have the resources to pursue an additional go to market motion. And also in what combination for that buyer should you use them. So that’s kind of basic. So everyone probably you know about these motions.

0:12:43 Jeanette Russell: So where it gets complicated is you have multiple motions. So for example, if you’re selling to small nonprofits, you might have just like one inbound go to market motion. And let’s say you just sell them one product. So let’s just say it’s grassroots. However, if you’re selling to an enterprise nonprofit, your go to market motion might be partner led or abm. And perhaps the product you sell them is a platform within that.

0:13:15 Jeanette Russell: You need campaigns, messaging, and quite a lot of support to ensure those go to market motions are successful. And again, using the GTM processes is going to help you in short order answer those questions. So you can feel confident that you have a strategy that works or it’s really clear like what you need to have a better strategy.

0:13:39 Taylor Shanklin: Okay, those determine they’re product led and plg. I want to break down a couple of these like acronyms. Okay. We talked about icp, that’s ideal customer profile. Talked about things like SMB, that small business. We also are hearing, and I’m hearing people use this term a lot more plg, and that’s one of the motions you mentioned. Yeah, let’s talk a little bit more about that piece of it because I do feel like people are starting.

0:14:09 Taylor Shanklin: Maybe it’s the same old same old that people have been doing for a while, but I feel like people are calling it something new now. At least I’m hearing people call it something new now. Let’s talk about that aspect of it. Product led growth.

0:14:22 Jeanette Russell: Yeah. So product LED growth is something. Honestly, I haven’t seen a ton in our space and I personally just have limited experience with this. Where you see it most often is consumer products like a canva, right. Where you don’t interact with the salesperson and you do everything through the platform. So that’s kind of like a classic look at plg. But where I think our space plays with PLG are the free trials.

0:14:52 Jeanette Russell: Right. And so that’s fairly common. That’s not a new idea. And B2B SaaS, we typically do require a salesperson to close that deal. So I think with your B to C plg, right. That it’s not, it’s not a sales LED motion like that. And way to go to market.

0:15:16 Taylor Shanklin: I know this is, this is like the, the acronym soup episode, GTM, SMB.

0:15:23 Jeanette Russell: PLG’s much lower with PLG, I’ll tell you that.

0:15:28 Taylor Shanklin: ICP, I think it’s good to be able to give people examples and stuff when we’re talking about these things. Now let’s talk about the money. You know, Jerry Maguire, show me the money. How do we use a go to market process to actually hit our revenue goals? Because at the end of the day, all of our clients and my history of marketing has always been like, okay, yeah, but what’s the money look like?

0:15:53 Jeanette Russell: Right? Yeah. So the way to use your GTM process to hit a revenue goal is first. It should be first and foremost. It should be informed and set by your process. So I think in my experience, what’s happened, oh, a few times is you’re told that your new revenue goal is 30% higher than it was last year. Okay. And if you’re the marketing leader, I’ll guarantee you’re having a mild heart attack. You’re crunching the numbers. You’re seeing like how many leads do you need, how many salespeople, what’s the budget?

0:16:28 Jeanette Russell: But advantage about a process is, it’s just, it’s not, it’s not a math problem. Okay. It’s a resource and processing really solution. So if your goal is you want to hit 30% and this is pretty, you know, in my experience has been fairly typical. So you might break that down and say, okay, we’re going to get as a company, you’re going to break it down 10% or going to come from new customers, 20% from existing customers. So from, let’s go to the 10% of net new customers using your total relevant market or your ICP function, right? You got this function.

0:17:09 Jeanette Russell: That function can answer, okay, what segments can we grow the most, who should we target? Because it needs to be a targeted segment. And once we find them, are there enough accounts and do we have contact information for those accounts? And that’s where ops is really important. And that’s harder than it sounds. You also want to make sure. And this requires more sophistication, but kind of name the game is can you identify high fit, high intent accounts and prioritize them for targeted engagement? Because the problem I have seen time and time again is the icp.

0:17:52 Jeanette Russell: It’s kind of too big and you just don’t have enough resources to go after all of them. So how do you focus your time on those strategic segments? So that’s something that that ICP process can help you figure out. How do you get that 10% from new customers?

0:18:12 Taylor Shanklin: Yeah, I’ve seen that story play over and over again as well. And I’ve had those marketing moments, you know, where you’re just like, it’s what? So then, okay, let’s sort of round this out with, I want to talk a little bit about, you know, segue that into how there’s different kind of plays you can do and go to market around different maturity phases of a customer or an audience.

0:18:40 Jeanette Russell: Yeah.

0:18:41 Taylor Shanklin: And then I want to kind of wrap it up with just like give us your quick tips on when do you know it’s time that you need to do this kind of stuff. What are some of the signals where it’s like, okay, we need to do some work on our go to market.

0:18:57 Jeanette Russell: Well, let’s start with the maturity stages I’m talking about of a company. And so there’s kind of three basic stages. Your ideation stage, your product market fit stage, and then finally the enterprise platform stage. And that final stage three, you’re really, it’s more of a selling to your customers. So let’s use the middle example. So let’s take, let’s say your company in that product market fit stage.

0:19:25 Jeanette Russell: And you would know this because you have a solid base of happy customers. You have sales and marketing teams working in sync to target ideal customer segments. And you have processes that are repeatable to help stay aligned. So if you’re thinking, well, you know what, I have a happy customer base, but I don’t have the rest, well, those are the things that you might want to focus on. And if you have those elements in place that I just described, let’s talk about where you could focus, how you could kind of up level your go to market.

0:20:00 Jeanette Russell: One is just that ICP you want quality acquisition of the best fitness named accounts. You want prescriptive plays rather than relying on your start salespeople to do their thing. So these prescriptive plays, so you’re giving sales like here’s what you do to cross sell, here’s what you do to upsell and marketing. Sales are working hand in hand on this. Your department ops, your rev ops are aligned. It’s probably not one team, it’s not centralized. That’s, that’s pretty sophisticated move.

0:20:34 Jeanette Russell: But your marketing operations, your sales operations, you’re talking to each other like you’re aligned. And then your KPIs are by segment, my favorite by segment. So you’re not just saying all right, here’s how we did, but you’re saying here’s how enterprise nonprofits did with engagement, pipeline coverage, do velocity, average deal size. Like those are some KPI examples. But you understand how your very segments are performing against those KPIs.

0:21:09 Jeanette Russell: Again, it’s kind of, it’s hard to do, but it is, it’s required for that next level of maturity and growth. Let me just talk about one thing about icps again and why it’s so important. And also, you know, a reason that I’m, I’m excited to work with companies is because I’m talking every time I’ve worked with a company, the ICP is, is off. And here’s what happens when your ICP is off even by 15%. So marketing is you’re going to guide the wrong buyer through the right funnel and then sales is going to gum up the pipeline and then sales is going to invest extra time nurturing them and then they’re going to think it’s their fault.

0:21:53 Jeanette Russell: Then customer success is going to struggle to keep them happy. What am I doing wrong? And where it really gets scary is when product starts influenced by a bad fit customer. And now your roadmap is influenced by customers who you shouldn’t be selling to in the first place. Churn happens. And then you spend all this time figuring out what went wrong. That’s what can happen when you sell to the wrong buyer.

0:22:19 Jeanette Russell: So it’s a great the segmentation, the icp. That is a process that is definitely worth investing in.

0:22:26 Taylor Shanklin: Anything else you feel like are like signals for people. When you know you’re kind of sitting there, you’re like something’s not quite right. What’s that something’s not quite right moment where you’re like, this is a go to market problem.

0:22:43 Jeanette Russell: So one is sales, marketing, CS or out of sync. And to some degree there’s always, especially with sales and marketing, there will, in my experience, there will be tension and that’s fine. But here’s where, you know, we actually have a problem. So this is when like marketing throws the lead ball at sales and sales doesn’t catch it. Again, that’s pretty common and hard to get right. But that can be a result of bad lead quality.

0:23:13 Jeanette Russell: Again, that icp, you’re not, we’re not targeting the right people. We’re not prioritizing accounts for the reps to go after. Marketing might be sending them just a bunch of leads that aren’t great. And so sales is trying to figure out like, I’ve got limited time, who do I target? And then sales may not have visibility into campaigns. So they’re not aware of how this account has been responding in real time to campaigns.

0:23:43 Jeanette Russell: And so some of that is a tech and budget issue. I mean, what I just described really does take some tools and some, you know, some data quality to figure out. But that is a classic. But that really is a GTM process. The second piece, it’s a struggle to prioritize or say no to new initiatives. This is pretty common, especially with smaller companies. And I was in this position where I had to say no to the CEO and a no, no.

0:24:17 Jeanette Russell: And at the retreat we got the idea that we should just start pursuing a vertical that we knew nothing about because we landed a whale customer. And so we saw the dollar signs and so there was a decision made to, all right, we’re going to shift from mid market nonprofit to this vertical, like a commercial vertical that none of us knew anything about. And as the marketing director, I knew that we just flat out, we didn’t have the budget, we didn’t have the resources, we had zero contacts.

0:24:49 Jeanette Russell: So I mean, I was outvoted. But within a few months, you know, unfortunately, the numbers tanked, which I kept abreast on. And then we resumed to going back to the mid market nonprofits and we stabilized. But that’s an example when you’re not ready to pursue a vertical or emotion, how it can be especially detrimental if you’re more of a startup.

0:25:14 Taylor Shanklin: Maybe it’s just hits home what you’re saying, you know, where. Yeah. Those situations, I think it’s such good advice. And I think people listening who’ve been sitting in this kind of a seat before, in this kind of a role before, they probably all dealt with that moment of like, well, we got this big whale. And then you’re like, but that’s really not like ideal.

0:25:38 Jeanette Russell: Yeah. Is that our best fit customer, probably not. I’m going to say no. So the last example, and this happens a lot is when we run in heavy discounting and you run into these feature words against your competition. And so this is where again your icp, your best friend as a marketer. So I started this new company and one of the first meeting sales and meeting with everyone, a lot of folks were saying like, hey, you need to cut prices. We need steep discounts because we keep losing to our top competitor.

0:26:17 Jeanette Russell: So what I did is I looked into the segment that we were losing to and because I one reason I know the space really well who we were selling to and it wasn’t our budget sales was confused. These people were in our budget icp. They appeared to have money. But when you looked at their website, to me it was pretty clear that their program maturity was not where it needed to be because we sold a really sophisticated platform and you needed a program just starting out with this.

0:26:58 Jeanette Russell: And so we’re losing to the right people. We should be losing to this audience. The poor sales, they were never coding on this. But that’s an example of where that segmentation specifically tricky because it’s not like maturity level is something that’s qualitative and that’s where really does have to like be trained on what to look for so they can I don’t know if they want to disqualify. Don’t spend a lot of time closing this deal.

0:27:31 Taylor Shanklin: All right, well, Jeanette, if you could kind of close us out with one final thought, one piece of advice you’d tell your younger self, what would that be?

0:27:41 Jeanette Russell: My younger self? That you’re on the right track. And I’ll tell you this, despite what everyone says, use your intuition, friends.

0:27:51 Taylor Shanklin: Yes, totally.

0:27:54 Jeanette Russell: And on that note, if you’ve listened this far, your intuition is telling you that there’s something here that I need to listen, I need to hear. And if you think of all the things you could be doing right now, all the podcasts you could be listening to, you’re listening to this one. Why is that? I think the universe brought us together.

0:28:14 Taylor Shanklin: All right, if people want to get in touch with you, find out if they need to hire you to help them with their go to market, what’s the best way to find you get in touch, all that good stuff.

0:28:22 Jeanette Russell: You know, I would say two things. LinkedIn, Jeanette Russell, easy to find. And then also check out my website, J netmarketing.com all right.

0:28:32 Taylor Shanklin: Jeanettemarketing.com it looks good. I like I like all the colors. I was pulling it up again and looking at your website again since we last talked. Just looking good. Well, hey, thanks everyone. I hope this was helpful for you to get some good takeaways about go to market. Breaking it down, how to think about it when you might need to think about your Go to market. Until next time, give it some thought. You know, use some of this advice that Jeanette gave us today and you know, take a step back, take a moment to think about how you’re kind of approaching your ideal customer profile.

0:29:11 Taylor Shanklin: Well, hey there. That was fun. I love how much mind blowing and mind opening shizzle our guests bring to us with every single episode. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. Make sure to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast player so that you don’t miss a of the Talking Shizzle podcast. And if you’re listening on Apple, be sure to let us know what you thought and leave us a review.

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