Go-to-Market Effectiveness
- Focused
- Engaged
- Enabled
Highly effective sales and marketing teams are focused, engaged, and enabled. In practice, few manage to perform really well across all three dimensions. We share some of the most important attributes below. We use these to inform our assessments of Go-to-Market Effectiveness and support subsequent improvements:
FOCUSED
The right customers / prospects
- Customer and prospect profitability fully transparent and understood, with sales attention prioritised accordingly (e.g. by industry, organisation size, growth, or other attributes)
- Appropriate attention split between hunting and farming
- Read more about ensuring you are focused on the right customers and prospects
The right channels
- Cost to serve fully transparent and understood – by customer and channel
- Continuous initiatives to shift customers to lower-cost sales channels without compromising effectiveness
- Read more about going to market via the right channels
The right products or services
- The ‘right’ products and services are promoted to customers and prospects, informed by current and likely future customer preferences and the competitive landscape
- Solutions shaped against customer needs
- Formal feedback loops in place between the ‘front-line’ and product/service development
- Read more about selling the right products and services
Pricing
- Pricing factors in a combination of full costs, competitors and value to customer
- Pricing setting, execution and assurance is proactively managed with clear ownership
- Read more about setting, executing and assuring the right pricing
Performance management
- Sales performance visible and understood by all through regular tracking, reporting, and management against (just a few) KPIs
- Both leading and lagging indicators effectively tracked
- Performance variances are acted on immediately
- Read more about performance managing how you go-to-market
ENGAGED
Culture
- Culture is informed by an organisation’s values and reinforces high performance
- Sales team performance managed on the ‘how’ as well as ‘what’
- Read more about building a high performing culture
Leadership
- Leaders are successful role models and effective coaches
- Leaders strike the right balance between support and assurance
- Leaders interface successfully with peers across functions
- Read more about go-to-market leadership effectiveness
Incentives
- Incentives are fully aligned with expected performance and periodically reviewed
- Incentives are fair, stretching, appropriate basic vs bonus split (no caps)
- Read more about devising the right incentive scheme for growth
ENABLED
Competencies
- The whole force scores well on technical (e.g. product / service knowledge) and sales (e.g. how to negotiate) skills
- Development plans in place with allocated budget
- Read more about developing and measuring sales and marketing competencies
Processes and Systems
- The end-end sales process (find, win, set-up, grow, retain, lose and win back) streamlined and consistently adopted, supported by the right systems (e.g. CRM)
- Processes continuously reviewed and improved to maximize value-adding sales time
- Read more about enabling go-to-market functions with the right end-end processes and systems
Marketing
- Supports sales effectively by driving awareness and desire to buy
- Marketing ‘operating model’ (resources, processes, systems and performance management) fit for purpose
- Digital marketing opportunities fully mastered and exploited
- Read more about supporting sales with great marketing
Organisation
- The sales & marketing team(s) has the right structure (hunting, farming, inside, field etc.) and is appropriately sized (size informed by goals, no. of accounts etc.), with wide spans of control
- Read more about go-to-market organisation structure considerations