FROM HUSTLE TO SCALE: A Go-To-Market & Sales Execution Guide for B2B Tech Start-Ups

By PAT WILLIAMS and Raymond Aaron

"The best technology or product rarely wins in the B2B technology world."

If you're like many Founder-led B2B technology start-ups, your leadership comes from a technological or engineering/product background, and because of this, they have limited experience or knowledge in sales and/or sophisticated Go-to-Market strategies.  They depend on a "product-led" strategy where connecting with the customer consists of describing, educating or over-informing prospective customer's on what the product's features and functionality consists of.  Making them reliant on innovator or early adopter type customers that can make the linkage between your technology or product and how it can help them, to drive your customer & revenue growth.

Hustle to Scale shares the unique approach a 6-time tech start-up CRO developed on how to create a GTM strategy and Sales execution plan which takes a company from early Product Market Fit to predictably converting market demand into scalable customer & revenue growth which resulted in several successful liquidity events.  Focusing on B2B technology start-ups wanting to avoid the inconsistent or stalling sales and customer growth that often happens when trying to emerge from product market fit in "product-led" organizations, the author shares how to be "customer experience – led" by creating a GTM strategy and Sales plan which aligns your Sales, Marketing & Support teams around how your customer defines success.  More specifically - in terms of business value and desired outcomes, or what is referred to as – Solving for the Customer!

No longer will you need to talk the buyer/target customer into having the problem, only to THEN have to convince them they need what you have.  You will be converting market demand for problems they have expressly identified as a high priority and must solve.

Hustle to Scale provides the roadmap to transform your organization from product-centric to customer/business value - centric, and the tactical advice for organizing a company around this. A must-read resource for founders, entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders of all kinds who seek to unlock the growth potential of a company and scale it to drive breakthrough results!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781772775105

Book preview

Introduction

I learned a not so obvious lesson as a result of failing in my first four technology start-ups. The best technology or product rarely wins in the B2B technology world…

In the hyper-speed moving world of hi-tech, taking a company from a start-up with an interesting concept or technology, to a high growth, viable business is a monumental challenge! The fact that only 1 out of every 10 start-up companies ever make it is a testament to this.

I have been there, working with companies to increase top-line revenues, deploy their go-to-market strategy, and transition their customer acquisition efforts, from a product-focused sales and marketing approach to a solve for the customer strategy.

During my career, I developed the knowledge and capabilities necessary to devise a unique GTM/customer methodology that transitions technology companies from the product-focused marketing and sales strategies traditionally deployed, to a customer experience-centric approach, focused on business value derived and successful outcomes delivered. Or what I call a solve for the customer strategy. The results of my efforts speak for themselves. As Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), in just one company over a four-year period, implementation of a solve for the customer strategy and go-to-market plan propelled sales from $8 million to $75 million, with a 75% CAGR and a 225% ASP increase. New business substantially increased, along with net retention, and we were subsequently acquired for a very nice multiple (8x) of revenues.

Over the past 15 years of leading revenue/commercial teams globally for private B2B technology companies, I have achieved outstanding outcomes, orchestrating CAGR of 40%-75% in the last six companies, with four of those companies achieving successful exits/liquidity events.

In every instance, I didn’t just implement a better product go-to-market strategy. I revamped sales and marketing to align with solving for the customer, and that led to amazing results. Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, That is where I want to take my company. Being able to create amazing products is part of what makes the technology industry so compelling. The challenge is that many product and technology savvy CEOs and founders have limited experience or understanding about how to translate what their product is or does, into a go-to-market and sales strategy that conveys how you help customers solve their business problem(s) or achieve their desired outcome.

The truth is that I can’t be everywhere as a consultant or CRO, but I can give you the benefit of my experience and knowledge in this concise guide. Each chapter shares a part of how I create my go-to-market plans and sales strategies, as well as how I implement them across the organization. I also dive into how critical your people are to the process (truthfully, they are the greatest asset you have.)

This process is about more than just choosing the right marketing campaigns that outline what your products do. It is about defining the business value your products uniquely bring to the market, by making it easy for your target customers to become aware of this, and making it simple to comprehend why you are the right solution to choose vs. the alternatives [a.k.a. the competition].

This is not so easily done. You need to shift how you think about marketing and sales, moving away from the traditional linear ideas found in most product management, sales, and marketing publications. Instead, I want you to embrace the disposition and viewpoints of your customers, both in terms of what they are really asking you for (HELP! Solving problems or enabling opportunities in their businesses) and how they make their decisions. Once you understand that, it makes fostering a dialogue with your target customers much easier, because you are not just giving them a list of your product’s features and functionality, in the hope they will be able to decipher your capabilities and make the connection of how it applies to their business. Instead, you are expressly identifying potential customers who are experiencing the types of business problems you can solve, and showing them how your company uniquely helps businesses like theirs solve the problem and contribute to their growth.

Let’s get excited about the possibilities of rapidly accelerating your company’s growth, where potential customers know who you are and are excited to choose your solution over any other.

Ready to dive in? Then let’s begin by defining the problem you are having with your current go-to-market status, and why my solution is effective at solving it.

1

Product Fit versus Customer Experience Fit

The best technology or product rarely wins in the B2B technology world!

For those of you coming from a technical or product background, who are developing or creating these amazing products or innovations for a company you think is going to change the world, this may be a bit disheartening. The reality is, it’s the norm rather than the exception. Just ask Microsoft, in the operating systems and browser worlds, or Oracle, in the relational database world, or for that matter, Salesforce.com, in the CRM world.

After all, you are building these leading-edge products, and now you just want to find the right customers to connect with, who really need your solution. Yet, that very disconnect between innovative development and go-to-market planning can be the death knell for many creative start-ups looking to disrupt the status quo.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the internet taking off and the emergence of digital transformation of businesses, being a disrupter was not as difficult. Google, for instance, was a relatively unknown company back then, which created a search engine that ended up dominating the market leaders at that time—remember Yahoo? As they progressed, Google discovered other ways to provide services to individuals and businesses, which made them a critical part of daily life. Today, Google’s brand has expanded; we talk about googling something rather than asking Jeeves.

Would it be difficult for a new search engine to come into this marketplace and dominate or disrupt Google? Many have tried. However, it has proven extremely difficult, because Google has redefined an industry and set the standard.

At that time, the idea of product fit was prevalent. If a start-up company could develop a new technology or product that was 10 times better than the competitive alternatives, and gain some early customer traction, then it was deemed to have attained product-market fit. If you did get to that point, the challenge became how you would get more potential customers aware of it, buying or using it, and reaping the benefits of your product.

During this period of disruptive technologies changing the business models of many companies and industries, your sales team was an educational force, due to the fact your potential customers were not familiar with or understanding what you were trying to get them to buy. It was a process of teaching these potential customers how this new technology/product translated into increased productivity and operational or growth improvements, while being significantly better than what was in the market.

Around the midway point of the 2010s, things began to change. As disruptive technology and the internet became more mainstream, business models were changing, products became easier to build and deploy, and the number of tech companies touting innovative products increased dramatically. A great product was no longer sufficient. The pace of new innovations was accelerating, the volume of information available about these was skyrocketing, and the amount of attention accessible from prospective customers was diminishing.

Companies were spending so much time and effort on creating this amazing technology or product fit, they were leaving it up to the customers to figure out what your product or service is and how it could help them. That meant many customers were