To get repeatable sales, you need a great “go-to-market strategy”

Do you have a product that some customers love, but you haven’t achieved a repeatable sales model? Then chances are you need to fix your go-to-market strategy – how you market and sell you product.

In this episode, I share the four fundamental components of a go-to-market program that works.

The 4 key components for a great go-to-market strategy

As product managers, we are the custodian of the “product knowledge” without which you cannot have a successful go-to-market program.

I like to break this down into four fundamental components of what I call “product knowledge.” Product knowledge is what marketing uses to create marketing programs for the product, and what sales uses to qualify, guide discovery with, and then eventually close the prospect.

The four components are:

* The market segment that has the problem your product solves. It’s not everyone!* The well-articulated problem your product addresses, and how it does that.* The reasons your product is a better choice for the target prospect than their other choices.* A set of objection handling information for moving the sales process along and reducing the prospect’s perception of the risk of buying your product.

If you can create even a short document containing all these items – especially 1, 2, and 3 – for your colleagues in Sales and Marketing, that’s an excellent start. Make sure to use your customer’s own stories to help you articulate #2 and #3. In most cases, your customers’ words are much more powerful and effective at engaging prospects than your words will be.

The 3 Laws of Marketing Physics

The four components I mention above map beautifully into Doug Hall’s 3 Laws of Marketing Physics, from his awesome book Jumpstart Your Business Brain.

The 3 Laws say that to be successful, your product needs:

* An Overt Benefit* A Dramatic Difference* A Real Reason To Believe

In the episode, I map this all out. I find that having these two complementary and overlapping mental models helps me immensely in my thinking about go-to-market.

3 things you can start doing today

At the end of the episode, as usual, I share three ideas for things you can start doing right away to diagnose and then treat your go-to-market challenges.

* Start where you are. How much of this have you done: Can you articulate the problem in the customer’s language? Can you articulate your differentiators?Can you articulate the most common objections and how to handle them?* Test this against what your sales people and marketing people are saying in marketing and to prospects. Are they aligned with what you have learned, what you came up with? * Then figure out where you’re weakest and start to make inroads.

Go-to-market-related links

* Doug Hall, Jumpstart Your Business Brain* My blog post about the 3 Laws of Marketing Physics* I borrowed April Dunford’s story from her fabulous book