How to tell if your GTM is broken.
Very few SaaS businesses scale past $10MM in revenue. I have read articles which cite less than .04% make it past $10mm in revenue.
What sets companies that scale beyond $10mm ARR apart is not their vision, people or culture nor the product but what sets those companies apart is their GTM process.
GTM is the single most important thing that drives business and you need scale to get efficient with GTM.
GTM is not a Sales and/or Marketing strategy. Think of it like a product. Every day, week, and month, leadership make trade-offs in their organizations like should we hire another salesperson or give money to marketing? Do we acquire one company or partner with another? Should we open up a new office or add more engineers to the product team to create a scalable ecosystem? All these questions and decisions are part of the ongoing GTM process.
But how do you know if your GTM is broken. Here are four signs I have seen in companies that have not yet figured out their GTM
1. You have heroic salespeople that pull the “rabbit out of the hat” at the last minute. It doesn’t look like you’ll hit your number but somehow your salespeople manage to squeak enough deals over the line before the month closes to hit your number. If you have to rely on heroic acts to hit your target every month, your GTM is broken.
2. You’re closing new customers but they don’t renew. You’re bringing on new customers like it’s nobody’s business because your marketing materials rock and your demos are cool but these customers don’t stick around beyond their initial contract with you. If your customers didn’t get ROI, they don’t agree that your product does what you sold them, or they don’t believe you delivered value, your GTM is broken.
3. You can’t scale or forecast your business. You may be able to look ahead a quarter with decent accuracy, but as soon as you try to forecast further you have no idea what’s going to happen. If your pipeline and revenue are not predictable, your GTM is broken.
4. Senior leadership talks the big talk but your front lines disagree. When leadership is focused on amazing big picture numbers but your customer success team can see you’re not bringing on good clients or keeping your existing customers happy, your GTM is broken.
If your business is experiencing any of the symptoms of a broken GTM, this is your sign to pause, dive deeper into what you’re doing now, figure out what needs to happen next, and get somebody to take the baton and fix it.
