You’ve completed your go-to-market planning for the upcoming year. Customer segmentation is complete, territories are carved, and you’re ready. Not necessarily. There are still ways that you can optimize your Go-to-Market plan.
Optimizing your GTM plan is crucial for achieving business success and will put you ahead of the 68 percent of companies that lack a plan for every GTM launch. GTM optimization is essential for business success because it helps refine key elements of your strategy for seamless execution, including data quality, system configuration, process alignment, enablement, and performance metrics.
Let’s discuss these five essential components:
1. Data Quality
Accurate data is the foundation of any effective GTM strategy. Inconsistent or outdated information can derail your plans. Example: If you’re segmenting territories based on geographic data, inconsistencies like “United States” vs. “USA” can lead to misalignment.
Optimization Tips
Assess Data Cleanliness: Evaluate the current state of your data to identify inconsistencies. This allows you to get a full picture of the types of inconsistencies you should anticipate and establish realistic expectations for how much manual work you’ll need to do to clean the data.
Implement Data Policies: Establish CRM policies to govern data entry and maintenance. Note that the time you choose to pull data and clean it is important. If you start planning in September for the next fiscal year and pull data at that time, by the time you’ve cleaned it, completed your GTM plan, and are ready to execute, the data is already 4-6 months old. This consideration has to be balanced with the total amount of time it will take you to clean your data. The process could take multiple months.
Regular Data Audits: Schedule periodic reviews to maintain data accuracy. Because data cleansing requires many hours of resources, most large organizations choose to use third-party services for this.
When designing data policies, be sure to factor in:
- Account Creation: How are accounts created in your system? Being aware of this allows you to stay ahead of problems during the creation process.
- Account Data Minimums: What fields must be complete to create an account? Typically, you need at least a data source to maintain enrichment, as well as territory data.
- Account Cleanup: Dedicate time to fill in strategic fields. Then, once completed, you can clean up accounts based on your data policies.
2. System Configuration
Your CRM and related systems must align with your GTM strategy to support processes like lead routing and territory assignments. Example: If you subdivide a territory, ensure your CRM reflects these changes to route leads correctly.
Optimization Tips:
- Advance Planning: Coordinate with IT or CRM administrators ahead of time to implement necessary changes. If setting up your various tools will require partnering with your IT or Salesforce admin, be sure to do so with plenty of advance time so that you minimize lag in rolling out your GTM.
- Update Documentation: Maintain up-to-date process documents to reflect system configurations. Make sure your new run-time policies are clear to everyone involved in executing them.
- Understand impacts to sales reps: If your GTM requires them to interact with the CRM differently, know how that will change and be prepared to provide sufficient support and coaching during the transition.
3. Process Alignment
Ensure that your operational processes are designed to support your GTM strategy effectively. Example: If your GTM plan emphasizes rapid lead response, establish processes that enable quick lead handling. Making sure that your entire sales org is aware of the WHYS behind your plan creates transparency that leads to trust. This includes everyone from XDRs to AEs to pre-sales and managers.
Optimization Tips:
- Process Mapping: Document and analyze current processes to identify gaps. Reiterate goals, and open the door for feedback. Be sure to specify the ways in which feedback can be shared. It’s best to have several ways of sharing your message as well as receiving feedback.
- Training: Educate your team on updated processes to ensure compliance. Dedicate times throughout the year to review feedback and adjust strategy, then follow up! Close the feedback loop so your team knows you’re reviewing and considering their input.
4. Performance Monitoring
As you roll out your GTM plan, the entire sales org will get a sense of its effectiveness. To make sure you’re getting the results you expected, gather feedback from the sales teams. Then, regularly track and assess the performance of your GTM strategy to identify areas for improvement. Example: Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the effectiveness of your GTM efforts.
Optimization Tips:
- Set Clear Metrics: Define KPIs that align with your business objectives. Example: If a rep is working a territory that had 10 named accounts but discovers that one of the biggest accounts has recently signed an 18-month contract with your competitor and has no intent in switching this year, that account is effectively no longer an opportunity. For continued transparency and accuracy of your GTM plan, receiving this feedback is critical.
- Continuous Improvement: Use performance data to make informed adjustments to your GTM strategy.
- Decide how and where to capture feedback. You may want to include free-form notes on opportunities, but also consider creating reportable fields. This may be pick-list fields such as disqualified reason and date fields such as re-engagement date.
- Set a feedback review process and timeline. This may be monthly or quarterly – but whichever way you go, make sure to follow through.
- Decide how to address review. In the example above, would you update territories? Would you refill the reps territories with other accounts to make up the difference?
5. Sales Enablement
Most organizations think of sales enablement in terms of training reps on the product and sales processes so that they can quickly close deals. It is equally important, however, that your team fully understand the internal processes and strategy that lead to the GTM plan.
Optimization Tips:
Successful enablement depends on how you package Data, Systems, and Communication, so that reps are prepared to take action to support the execution of the GTM.
- Use multiple formats. Invest time in putting information into multiple formats, such as job aids, that will be easily accessible and usable.
- Keep it short. Break the plan up into chunks and do short sessions (15 minutes) to walk through them. For example, give a bulleted overview of each aspect. This way, if there are glitches with something like routing, your team will feel comfortable reaching out rather than just griping amongst themselves.
- Create a dialogue. If “Do you have any questions?” doesn’t get any reaction, don’t stop there. Asking the right questions is key to getting people talking and doing.
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