GTM Confessions

In this GTM Advice episode, Kate VanLue, VP of Revenue at AudiencePlus, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Kate answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge that exists today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Working at a start-up is challenging…no matter the role. It’s kinda like flying in a plane while the plane is still actively being built. Definitely not for the faint of heart. And the pressure is even higher for sales in a start-up because the company literally lives or dies based on revenue. So, what does it take to be successful in a sales role at a start-up>

That’s why we’re talking with Kate VanLue, VP of Revenue at AudiencePlus where she oversees sales strategy, partnerships, and growth. With more than 15 years of exceptional performance in B2B and B2C sales environments, Kate has developed and honed her skills in customer relationship management, sales operations, recruiting, coaching, and team building.

In this episode, Stephanie and Kate talk about what it takes to work in a start-up, the challenges facing sales leaders, how to think about measuring sales effectiveness, and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Being successful in sales at an established company doesn’t mean you’ll be successful in sales at a start-up or scale-up.
2. Start-up sales leaders and AEs need to be resourceful and willing to wear multiple hats. You will have to build EVERYTHING from scratch. 
3. Nothing should be scalable for a while. That’s the nature of a start-up. 
4. Getting attention from prospects is REALLY hard. Invest in building a brand for your company and educating the market about the problem you solve. It makes sales easier in the long-term.
5. An initial “no” from a prospect is likely not a permanent no. It’s typically a “not now.” Education is key to changing these a no to a yes.
6. Forecasting sales is more of an art than a science at this stage.
7. Understanding the financial model of the business is crucial for every sales leader. 
8. Market conditions will happen to your business that you can’t control. Focus your efforts on how you can productively respond to these market conditions. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Wes Bush, Founder and CEO of ProductLed, answers a fast round of questions and shares his go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Wes answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge that exists today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Countless new software companies are launching every single day, making the market more commoditized than ever before. It’s more expensive than ever to acquire new customers using a traditional sales-led motion. And customers expect the ease of a Netflix-like experience. So, what’s the answer? Enter product-led growth (PLG). Using a product-led strategy, a company uses its product to acquire, engage, and monetize users, allowing them to essentially try the product before they buy. And it’s becoming a prominent go-to-market strategy in SaaS. 

That’s why we’re talking with Wes Bush, founder and CEO of ProductLed. He’s the bestselling author of Product-Led Growth: How To Build a Product That Sells Itself and is one of the most sought-after product experts in the world. After working for some of the world’s fastest-growing companies, he now partners with SaaS founders around the globe on how to turn their products into powerful growth engines.

In this episode, Stephanie and Wes talk about what it takes to be successful with product-led, common misconceptions about PLG, transitioning from sales-led to product-led, and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. The founder and CEO MUST be involved in and leading the company’s PLG effort for PLG to be effective. PLG must become the company’s go-to-market motion and be baked into its DNA.
2. Product-led is a go-to-market strategy, not an initiative driven by the product team.
3. PLG is NOT just a free trial. 
4. PLG conversion rates are not the same as win rates in a sales-led motion.
5. Your company must have moats of how you’re going to win that make it clear why your product is the obvious choice in the market.
6. You have to understand your user better than anyone else in the market. 
7. Sales-led pricing strategy won’t automatically translate to a pricing model that works for PLG. 
8. Don’t go into PLG from day one with zero customers. Use founder-led sales to obtain your first 10-30 customers, then implement PLG. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Jillian Hoefer, Senior Content Marketing Manager of UserEvidence, answers a fast round of questions and shares his go-to-market advice with you. 

Blog posts. Ebooks. Webinars. Podcasts. And the list goes on and on. There are so many different ways to create content today and distribute it. Oftentimes, we tend to think of content marketing success as hitting the publish button on a new piece of content. The reality is that content marketing isn’t about publishing new content all the time. It’s about growing mindshare. 

That’s why we’re talking with Jillian Hoefer, Senior Content Marketing Manager at UserEvidence. She’s so dedicated she is to creating different, memorable, and impactful content that she once got in a REAL dumpster for B2B content. Throughout her nearly 10-year career in content marketing, she's worked for brands in the tech and e-commerce spaces and helped them create content that not only earned mindshare, but drove demand. Some of her proudest career moments include hanging with Saxsquatch for a virtual event called "Break Sh*t", acting alongside a puppet, wearing the coveted Disney name tag, getting a cease and desist from Cards Against Humanity, and seeing the word "EVERYWHERE!" as someone's self-reported response for where they heard about us while booking a demo.

In this episode, Stephanie and Jillian talk about what she’s learned from a career in and out of tech, the value of original research, how content marketers should define success,  and how to get content marketing a seat at the table.

In this GTM Advice episode, Mason Cosby, CEO of Scrappy ABM, answers a fast round of questions and shares his go-to-market advice with you. 

Product market fit. Account-based marketing (ABM). Ideal Customer Profile. Target Accounts. These are the most critical and talked about topics for go-to-market leaders. And they’re also most misunderstood and oftentimes poorly executed. 

That’s why we’re talking with Mason Cobsy, CEO of Scrappy ABM. Mason has built scrappy marketing programs that deliver millions in revenue. While serving as a marketing leader at numerous boutique and bootstrapped businesses, Mason saw firsthand the power of trading a shiny ABM program with all the fancy tech tools for a scrappy account-based program that instead sourced over $15M in the three years, driving a 20x ROI.

In this episode, Stephanie and Mason talk about what it means to really have product market fit (PMF), why ABM strategy requires PMF, who should be in the room to define your ICP and target accounts, and a bunch of acronyms you need to know. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Product market fit means sales is EASY. If it isn’t easy to sell your product, then you don’t have it. No exceptions. 
2. It doesn’t make sense to launch an ABM program until you have product market fit.
3. Marketing, sales, customer success, and finance need to collaborate on defining your ICP and creating a target account list. It cannot be owned by only one functional area. It’s also imperative that you consider how many customers you want to add within the next five years when you create the target account list. 
4. Content marketing should make up half of your ABM strategy because it’s both destination and distribution.
5. Five plays can help your business consistently create pipeline: closed lost, customer winback, website engagement, event activations, and podcasting. You should be running these plays every single month. 

Welcome to GTM Confessions. The show where we share what it takes to be a go-to-market (GTM) professional today…because it’s freaking hard and it’s far from the glamorous picture that social media often paints.

Each week, we’ll have a go-to-market professional on the show to share real examples of what’s worked and what’s failed spectacularly…the extreme highs of this career, the lowest of lows, and everything in between.  Think of it as your weekly go-to-market therapy session…where you realize you’re not alone in trying to figure it all out.