Unlocking Startup Growth: From Product-Market Fit to Go-to-Market Fit
Unlocking growth beyond Product-Market-Fit: the journey of MobileIron's CEO from heroic selling to building a repeatable Go-to-Market playbook that drives scalable revenue.
- 1. After achieving product-market fit, there is a missing link called "go-to-market fit" which is necessary for growth.
- 2. Go-to-market fit consists of a simple and repeatable process that can be carried out by ordinary people.
- 3. The speaker, Bob, has worked with the listener, Barry, on two startups: Airespace and Meraki.
- 4. At Meraki, they achieved go-to-market fit by focusing on making their product extremely easy to use and providing excellent customer service.
- 5. Go-to-market fit is important for scaling a startup because it allows the company to consistently acquire new customers and grow.
- 6. The key to achieving go-to-market fit is understanding the customer journey and creating a playbook that outlines each step of that journey.
- 7. A good go-to-market playbook should include the following elements:
- * Stages of the customer journey, from first touch to purchase order
- * Urgent pain points that motivate customers to engage with the company
- * "Wow" moments that occur during demos or meetings and cause customers to lean in and want to learn more
- * Mary wows, which are specific things that convince executives to make a purchasing decision
- * How the product makes the customer a hero within their organization.
- * Specific actions and tools needed for each stage of the customer journey.
- 8. A good go-to-market playbook should be concise and fit on one or two pages, rather than being a lengthy brain dump of information.
- 9. To determine if you have achieved go-to-market fit, look for signs such as increasing sales efficiency and a feeling of momentum within the company.
- 10. As a startup grows, the ideal executive team may change, and it can be difficult to replace high-performing executives who are struggling in their new roles due to loyalty.
- 11. The speaker has experienced this firsthand when he stepped down as CEO of MobileIron in 2016 after realizing that the company needed a CEO with experience running a larger organization.
Source: EO via YouTube
❓ What do you think? What is one crucial insight or lesson that you took away from your journey of building MobileIron and discovering Go-to-Market fit? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!