B2B Go-To-Market Strategy
By Ted Mercer
Helping B2B Technology Companies Grow their
Revenues
416 939 5794
tedcwmercer@gmail.com
B2B Sales Framework
• Each box on the following slide can be
expanded into a one page strategy which can
be aggregated into a Go to Market Strategy for
companies who sell their products and
services to other companies.
B2B Sales Framework
Value Proposition
Sales
Capabilities
Networking
Sales
Resources
Inbound
Lead
Generation
Referrals
Opportunity
Management
Outbound
Partnership
Refining the Value Proposition
• Articulate the Value Proposition in a way that reflects
your understanding of the clients’ needs
• Develop the Ideal Client by considering the size,
maturity, industry, niche, etc.
• Develop the Prospect Target List, including the
company name, decision maker’s name and contact
details
• Goal should feed your Brand
Sales Capabilities
• Many companies at the early stage have ad hoc sales
processes that do not provide adequate reporting,
efficient management of sales people, effective
tracking of opportunities or appropriate marketing
materials
• Pipeline management enhances the accuracy of
opportunity forecasting to management and the board
• A CRM tool helps organize and report on the
opportunities
• Tie all this work together with a set of metrics to
measure and improve your performance over time and
appropriately compensate sales people.
Pipeline
Cold Lead
Warm Lead
Demo
Negotiation
Client
Sales Resources
• Culture – Decide what kind of culture you want
early and relentlessly pursue it
• Roles – What kind of sales roles do you need?
Cold callers, Inside Sales, Outbound Sales Execs
• Seniority - Make sure that your sales resources
are the appropriate level of seniority
• Number - Determine the appropriate number
of sales resources to grow your business
Opportunity Management
• The goal of the sale is to gain the client’s trust
and prove to them that you can deliver what is
promised and will be around for long enough
to support them during the contract period
• Product Demonstrations – Listen more than
Product Demonstrations
• Use the product demonstration to prove to
the client that your product/service can meet
their needs
• Ask questions to understand what the client
REALLY wants to see in your demo
• Show them what they asked to see and
nothing more
• Ask them whether they understand your
offering often
Lead Generation Strategy
• In the early stages of a company, leads are driven by
networking though existing relationships and
inbound marketing in the form of SEO and Content
generation
• Then a company can leverage those relationships to
get referrals to new clients
• Building an outbound sales team to open doors of
clients on your target client list
• Developing partnerships to scale up with other
companies’ relationships
Networking
Networking includes the events that you attend with the
intention of meeting prospects
• Targeted networking events will drive significant
placement in clients’ minds
• Speaking at carefully selected conferences and events
can help to define your company as a thought leader
• Prepare an appropriate networking plan to increase the
value of networking dramatically. The plan should
include the list of potential events to attend.
• Obtain the list of attendees beforehand
• Research the attendees on LinkedIn to see their picture
so that you can identify them when you are at the event
Inbound
Inbound includes the efforts undertaken to encourage prospects to
contact you about your solution offering and convert those prospects
to leads
• Create a great website with exceptional SEO
• Feed high value content through your website to educate your
market and warm up your leads
• Distribute your content through relevant social media
– Remember the 70/20/10 content generation rule. 10% thought
leadership; 20% valuable content that makes people think; and 70% of the
content should contain your company name and brand and nothing more
• Three components to the inbound strategy:
–
–
–
–
Website SEO
Content Generation
Social Media
Traditional Marketing Activities
Referrals
Referrals are the activities undertaken to encourage
existing clients and other organizations to send leads to
you.
• Take a strategic approach to getting your business to
the top of your clients’ minds
• Campaigns are an effective way to do this
• Remember that the best way to get referrals is to
provide fabulous service to your existing clients
Outbound
Outbound includes the efforts undertaken to solicit business
from organizations on your Prospect Target List.
• Cold calls and cold emails are less effective than they
used to be because every company uses them; so warm
up your target list with content generation and
distribution and only call those prospects who have been
warmed up
• Outbound is the most expensive lead gen strategy so
think about how to improve your other strategies before
ramping this area up
• Tie your outbound efforts back into your Networking,
Referral and Inbound strategies
Partnerships
Partnerships are your relationships with other companies
who can be motivated to sell your company’s solution on a
regular and ongoing basis.
• Vet new partners to ensure your goals are aligned
• Enable partners properly with training and marketing
materials
• Motivate partners with appropriate compensation
models and relationship building activities
• Monitor the performance of the partners with regular
meetings and reporting of sales results
• Don’t waste your time on bad partners
Overall Lead Generation Strategy
• Individually, the lead generation strategies will
increase your sales. When integrated, they will
maximize the leads from the money spent.
– When you have an effective inbound lead strategy via
your website and social media work,
– Your networking efforts will be enhanced because
potential prospects will Google your product, service
or firm and find you more easily
– When that prospect hits your site, their information
will be automatically captured and the outbound sales
process can cause a sales person to give that prospect
a call
Lead Generation Resource Allocation
• Allocate your resource spend across the areas
appropriately to maximize the benefit of you spend
• This table is an allocation that we might recommend
for a company like FI. The specifics would be
developed further after more work is performed.
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Networking
Referrals
Outbound
% Resource Spend
Inbound
Partnerships
Stress Testing the Go-to-Market
Strategy
• After creating the Go-to-Market strategy, there
are a number of activities that can be done to
stress test whether the strategy will be effective
including:
– Contacting a selected number of prospects on the
target list
– Performing A/B testing on the various website
versions
– Tracking the metrics from campaigns
– Presenting to peers and colleagues to gain their
opinions and improve your pitch
B2B Go-To-Market Strategy
By Ted Mercer
Helping B2B Technology Companies Grow their
Revenues
416 939 5794
tedcwmercer@gmail.com