How to Diagnose GTM Issues in a Scaling SaaS Business

Summary

The video discusses a structured methodology for diagnosing issues with recurring revenue growth in SaaS businesses, following five key steps - define the problem, collect quantitative and qualitative data, identify causal factors through models like the growth, data and go-to-market models, conclude the root cause via techniques like the five whys, and outline an implementation plan. It provides an example case study and real-world insights, advising starting small with agile iterations focused on customer impact, supported by a coalition of willing leaders.

Takeaways

• 😀 Diagnosing problems thoroughly is critical before jumping to solutions - spend 55 mins on diagnosing for every 5 mins on solutions
• 💡 Use quantitative data (metrics) and qualitative data (interviews, call reviews etc.) together to get the full picture
• 📊 Benchmark performance and conversion rates against industry standards to identify issues
• 🔎 Analyze data trends over time to spot potential problems early
• 🕵️‍♂️ Use models like the Growth Model, Data Model and GTM model together to uncover root causes
• ❗️ Going upmarket to enterprise requires new processes and skills across the org
• 💰 Misalignment between GTM model and rising ACV is a common challenge during scaling
• 😥 Symptoms like poor rep performance and high churn point to underlying root causes
• 🤝 Build a coalition focused on customer impact before trying to make incremental changes
• 🚀 Take an agile approach - start small, iterate quickly, measure impact

Q & A

What is the first step in diagnosing go-to-market issues according to the presented model?

The first step is defining the problem by collecting quantitative and qualitative data from different focus areas like go-to-market model, processes, technology, enablement, skills etc.

What three common problems were mentioned that companies face in the scale-up phase?

The three common problems were - not having a common data model, launching too many go-to-market motions too early, and not having a repeatable process nailed down.

What is the benefit of using both quantitative and qualitative data?

Using both types of data together provides the complete picture. Quantitative data provides facts and efficiency while qualitative data provides context and insights to generate hypotheses.

What technique did they recommend to identify root causes?

They recommended using the 5 Whys technique to drill down to the root cause by repeatedly asking why for each problem identified.

What issue did they uncover related to sales rep performance?

They found that 80% of revenue was coming from only 35% of the reps, indicating a skill gap among the broader sales team.

What change was required when moving upmarket to enterprise sales?

Moving upmarket requires implementing new processes and ensuring the team has the skills to handle longer sales cycles, complex stakeholder management, executive engagement etc.

What go-to-market model components were misaligned for the use case?

The ACV was $75k but they were using a 2-stage motion optimized for much smaller ACV deals, so sales roles, CS roles etc. were not equipped for enterprise selling.

What implementation advice was provided related to improvements?

Start small with incremental improvements, avoid too many changes at once. And focus on building a coalition aligned around customer impact before diving into solutions.

What benchmarking data source did they recommend?

They recommended Bench Site, an open source database of conversion rate benchmarks that can provide comparison to industry peers.

How can they assist with a goto market diagnostic for your company?

They offer a 4-6 week goto market analysis engagement costing around $50,000. They can also facilitate workshops to build internal alignment at an introductory price of $2,500.

Outlines

00:00

😊 Opening the webinar and setting the context for diagnosis as key to solving business problems

Introduces the webinar topic of diagnosing go-to-market issues in a SaaS business. Opens with an Einstein quote on spending significant time understanding problems before solving them. Sets the context that diagnosis is critical for businesses to drive optimal growth and performance.

05:01

📊 Step 1: Defining the problem by collecting quantitative and qualitative data

Outlines step 1 of the diagnosis process - defining the problem by collecting data. Recommends gathering both quantitative (metrics, reports) and qualitative (interviews, recordings) data. Introduces a framework for common areas to investigate - go-to-market model, processes, technology, enablement, skills.

10:03

🕵️‍♂️ Step 2: Identifying causal factors using growth, data, and go-to-market models

Details step 2 - identifying causal factors using recurring revenue models. Calls out analyzing growth model to map business life cycle stage, using data model for benchmarking and trends, and assessing go-to-market model fit. Goal is to uncover root causes behind symptoms.

15:05

😥 Common challenge of increasing ACV without realigning go-to-market

Highlights a common challenge faced when increasing Average Contract Value (ACV) - not realigning go-to-market model, processes and skills. This causes performance issues like lower win rates. Need strategies to serve higher-value accounts.

20:07

📉 Analyzing metrics trends to hypothesize issues impacting performance

Demonstrates an analysis of metric trends over time to hypothesize root causes. Examples looking at decreasing retention rate and possible product, process or organizational reasons behind the drop.

25:09

👩‍💼 Identifying required investments when increasing account complexity

Summarizes key investments needed when targeting more complex, enterprise accounts - new processes for longer sales cycles, different skills for stakeholder engagement, customer success model based on value not volume.

30:11

🚨 Realizing the go-to-market motion is now misaligned to ACV

Calls out a key insight uncovered - the go-to-market model, built for lower ACV accounts, is now misaligned after increasing focus on enterprise accounts with higher ACVs. This lack of fit is causing performance issues.

35:12

🤔 Using the 5 Whys technique to get to the root cause

Introduces a root cause analysis technique - the 5 Whys - to understand the deepest underlying reason behind the issues. Here, increasing ACV without realigning go-to-market is the root cause behind decreasing performance.

40:16

📝 Creating an implementation plan to address root causes

With root cause identified, the next step is creating an implementation plan to address it. Examples provided include updating go-to-market model, training reps with new skills, revising customer success based on account value.

45:17

😀 Starting small and building alignment to drive change

In closing, advises starting with small, iterative experiments vs. massive change, and bringing together executive leadership into a coalition for alignment. This builds the foundation for data-driven, customer-centric revenue growth.

Keywords

💡Diagnosis

The process of carefully analyzing a business to uncover the root causes behind issues in growth, revenue, etc. The video emphasizes spending significant time on diagnosis before jumping to solutions. Examples in the script include diagnosing recurring revenue business issues and using models like the growth model and data model.

💡Root cause

The original factor that is truly responsible for a business problem. Identifying root causes through diagnosis allows companies to implement targeted, effective solutions. The video provides an example of discovering that the root cause for decreasing retention was a mismatch between the go-to-market model and rising ACV over time.

💡Go-to-market model

The structured process a company uses to sell and deliver its products to customers. Examples include high-touch vs self-service models. The script shows how assessing the fit between a company's rising ACV and chosen go-to-market model revealed a key root cause.

💡Quantitative data

Objective, numerical data such as metrics, conversion rates, etc. that provide concrete facts. The video describes using quantitative data together with qualitative data to fully diagnose business issues.

💡Qualitative data

Subjective data based on opinions and descriptions, often gathered through interviews, reading communications, analyzing processes, etc. Combined properly with quantitative data, it provides a complete picture for diagnosis.

💡Revenue Architect

An expert focused on architecting, managing, and optimizing recurring revenue for SaaS and subscription businesses. The video positions Winning By Design's consultants as Revenue Architects.

💡Growth curve

A model describing the typical growth progression for a successful recurring revenue business, spanning from Startup to Scale-Up, Grown-Up, and Enterprise stages. Each transition poses critical milestones. The script directly ties stalled growth metrics to a company's struggles in its current growth curve phase.

💡Benchmarking

Comparing a company's metrics and conversion rates to broader industry standards to identify performance gaps, issues, etc. The video gives examples of benchmarking the case company against industry peers to reveal areas like an underperforming win rate.

💡Recurring impact

A core growth model metric quantifying a company's success delivering initial and ongoing value to customers. Part of diagnosing churn root causes involves assessing recurring impact performance and gaps.

💡Change management

The structured process of guiding people, teams and organizations through transitions in policy, structures, processes, etc. The video frames required go-to-market model changes for the case company as a change management initiative.

Highlights

Einstein's quote emphasizing spending most time diagnosing problems before solving them

Quantitative data provides facts but needs qualitative data for insights

Focus areas for diagnosing recurring revenue businesses: GTM model, processes, technology, enablement, skills

Common challenge moving from startup to scaleup phase is lacking unified data model, launching too many GTM motions, lacking repeatable processes

Industry benchmark conversion rates reveal company's discovery to closed rate is very low, indicating skill issues

Advanced performance analysis combines conversion rates to uncover problems; high discovery calls but low win rate signals diagnosis issues

Analyzing company retention rate trends over time uncovers drop correlating with potential internal or external factors

Growing ACV without realigning GTM model causes mismatch between selling approach and higher-value accounts expected experience

Moving upmarket requires new processes and skills like longer sales cycles, complex stakeholder management, executive messaging

Root cause analysis uses 5 Whys technique tracing from symptoms to underlying reason

Implementation plan addresses root causes through new GTM motions, teams, ICPS, processes to serve enterprise accounts

Start small and iterate quickly when applying learnings, don't try changing everything at once

Create alignment first with goto market leadership before diagnosing and making changes

Build coalition around increasing customer impact using frameworks to measure impact journey

Can facilitate private workshops to align GTM leaders on improving revenue performance

Transcripts

all right R I think we're we're a few

minutes in

so could suggest we going down the music

and um actually get down to

buiness Let's Do It All right so welcome

folks this is um yeah this is our

webinar about where we're going to learn

about how to diagnose go to market

issues in a SAS killing business we have

a few people uh of winning by Design in

uh in the call today but especially Ry

um I've got ruy here with me who's one

of our most seasoned Revenue Architects

Dominique is here as well our CEO I'm

currently I'm har based in Belgium

leading the um heading up the revenue

architecture team um and I want to get a

started with a simple quote one of my

favorite quotes So if you can go to the

next slide so why start with a diagnose

so Einstein actually said if I had one

hour to solve a problem I'd spent 55

minutes diagnosing the problem and five

minutes thinking about Solutions um I

absolutely love that quote because I

think it's very much applicable in real

life for all the people in the house

here who have a healthy long-term

relationship you all know this is a very

important rule to live by whenever

you're having discussions or if you're

like me you have three kids your house

is an internal mess this one help me

solve all my problems for months in a

row we discussed my wife and I like our

house a mess you should clean up more no

I should clean up more no we should have

an extra maid actually after a few

months we realized we just didn't

understand the problem we just didn't

invest enough time to educate motivate

our kids to clean up after them once we

understood this our life changed

completely our house has never been so

clean so that is a beautiful code and it

applies very much in the same way for

when you're um diagnosing a recurring

Revenue business so below you can

actually see um the winning by Design

approach a lot of customers come to us

to you know either design their

processes for an Enterprise sales motion

an ABM campaign or um or the FCS process

or activate this with their teams or

train their reps on how to be very good

at uh diagnosing or or giving really

sharp demos and how to reinforce that

with coaching those are all very very

big efforts and so in order to know

where you want leverage those efforts

minimal amount of effort for the maximum

amount maximum amount of impact the

first thing you want to do is make sure

you got a really really strong grip on

the problem and this is where the

diagonal start so for today and if we

can go to the next slide I want to

double click on that uh the diagnose

piece yes so the agenda for today we're

going to follow actually these five

simple steps and these five simple steps

are the very same steps as we would

diagnose the customer's problem so the

first part is always try to defining the

problem in order to do that you're going

to have to start by collecting data with

that data this is going to help you

identify some hypotheses and trying to

find some causal factors with all of

these hypotheses and testing these

hypothesis you will actually able to

finally conclude the root cause of the

issue once you have the root cause this

is going to be the moment finally where

we're going to be able to start thinking

about Solutions and start the heavy

lifting of of of implementing those so

Ro why don't you take us to step number

one defining the problem thanks Harry

all right let's define a problem now

usually clients come to us with a

problem it's almost in every case it's

about it's related to growth right up

until two years ago we had some

companies that come to us and told us

we're growing too fast or we grew too

fast we never really focused on on on

the processes and getting people up to

skill because skills because our sales

rep were so good oh sorry because our

product was so good we didn't focus on

our sales rep but nowadays we know that

the market is changing most of our

clients come to us with declining

metrics whether it's Revenue whether

it's win rate whether it's retention

rates these are the types of uh Pro

problems that we

encounter today's session we're going to

follow uh with this use case so this is

CEO and this is what he told us our

growth has stalled our churn has

increased some reps do reach their

targets but most of them

don't and I really feel that we need to

solidify our position in the market

that's going to be our use case for

today but before that we need to talk

about problems and root causes right

then to do that we're going to use the

RSA uh tree diagram right in the middle

we have a problem could be any sort of

problem but we want to separate between

the symptoms and the root causes right

if you're not focusing on the root

causes if you're not addressing the root

causes right it's like treating a

toothache with Tylenol Tylenol you need

really you really need to focus on the

root cause in order to really

improve and this is what uh uh we have

here so let's do this quick exercise

here are different uh things that we

hear or find let's call them findings

and I'll read them out for you uh

performance 80% of our reps uh 80% of

our Revenue comes from three of our

reps go to market you're applying the

wrong go to market motion retention turn

has been increasing retention is

decreasing you have yet yet to establish

a repeatable and effective process and

in terms of skills your skills are under

par your rep skills are under par let's

do this exercise which one are the

symptoms which one are the problems and

which one are the root

causes can you write in the

chat enough enough talking about and

chatting about kids and messy messy

houses what are the

symptoms the things that we can see what

are the problems and what are the root

cause

causes feels root causes rep performance

in the symptoms yeah I

agree cool I'm not looking for right

answers I just want you guys to start

thinking of how would you structure that

this is how we

structured this for example right so

performance and retention usually those

are the numbers that those are the

symptoms but they are because in this

case we have two problems because we

don't have a reputable process on one

side and on the other side our reps are

not skilled to do what they're expected

to

do but the root cause of all this is

that we're applying the wrong go to

market motion and we don't understand

that so that's how we focus on the

problem let's talk about how we collect

the data which is Step number

two yes absolutely so so before you want

to start analyzing the data do you want

to start collecting sorry analyzing prob

you want to collect data and this is

where we see you you want to work with

really two dimensions of data and they

work together like sort of Yen and and

Yen right so first part the quantitative

data second part the qualitative data so

on the quantitative data that's

everything that has numbers like

Financial metrics performance metrics go

to market metrics conversion rates AR

per rep you're going to spend a lot of

time in spreadsheets in pivot tables all

of that sort and that is fantastic

because it is very fact-based right it's

also very efficient to work with data um

data also has a few limitations data can

give you a lot of knowledge but it's

very hard to get insights out of data

without the qualitative Parts I think

another limitation that we also see you

do need to have a s size which is big

enough

right once you have that you go to the

qualitative data and this is usually

true interviews you're going to listen

to to rep calls and try to see what what

is happening there in in client meetings

you're going to read emails that go in

and out you're going to look at the

process analyze sort of the process now

the problem is if you have qualitative

data alone that's always very that that

has the danger to be very biased and

based on opinion right but once you

actually get to put those two together

this is where usually when you start to

see like the complete the complete truth

in front of you now I want to double

click also on on a couple of focus areas

now what you see here in front of you is

a pamment with seven Focus areas um if

you're diagnosing a recurring Revenue

businesses these are generally going to

be the focus areas where you you really

want to um dig in a little bit deeper so

it's going to be on go to market model

processes technology enablement skills

and or and why is this pyramid very

useful because it also it starts to give

us an indication of cality generally

what we see is that if you look at the

data that is going to tell you which

goto Market Mo model needs to be

followed once you know the go to market

model that's going to dictate which

processes that needs to be established

that's going to dictate which technology

you can actually use to enhance these

processes it's going to dictate what is

the enablement you need and that is

going to dictate the skills that that

you're actually going to need to fulfill

that and that's going to finally tell

you what are the types of people that we

actually need to be able to perform

those skills so that is also very

helpful way to sort of structure the

data as it starts to sort of Point

towards

causality Ro I'm gonna give it back to

you so now we're we have collect the

data let's start to identify the causal

factors all

right here is when we go back to the

revenue architect uh uh Basics we're

starting off with the growth model for

those of you who are familiar with the

revenue architect uh models the growth

formula basically says that a thriving

recurring Revenue business progresses

through four distinct stages the startup

phase up until roughly that 10 million

point that scale up could be a 100 could

be an IPO could be maybe 150 but this is

where you stop doing uh what doesn't

work and focus only on what works and

you do that efficiently and

effectively once you do that in the past

we used to say this is like the IPO but

nowadays uh we don't have IPOs at some

point you transition into a grownup

stage right this is where you want to

win the right customers you focus on

efficiency and

productivity and at some point you

become an Enterprise and Microsoft Adobe

of the world this is where that1 billion

dollar and growth basically um plateaus

right in our case our companies where

the blue dot is around that 12 million

which indicates that they're probably in

have begun or are beginning that

transition from that startup phase to a

scaleup phase now and that's a very big

change for the company culture-wise

process-wise peoplewise this is really a

dramatic change that a company um has to

go through now with that knowledge we

can start Hing in on common challenge

challenges that we see at that specific

point yep so what you actually see here

is the beginning of that growth curve

right where we actually see the most

that you start going from startup to

scale up from scale up to grownup you

need to you need to have nailed really

these following Milestones if you really

want to have an optimal growth B so to

say right where it starts in the early

days by making sure you get your pricing

and packaging in order then usually it

transitions to founder sales motion and

so forth and so forth all the way up to

to to grown up or even even beyond that

right so if you look back at our use

case right we know that there are

somewhere in between startup and scaleup

so what I would say a perfect company at

that moment should have um should have

had is the data model go to market model

and the repeatable process but this is

actually where we see a lot with our

clients that this is one of the most

common problems right although that the

revenue is sometimes at 10 million

sometimes at 20 million sometimes 40 50

million that some of these steps were

either skipped or they had nailed it but

something had changed and they need to

realign back on that step so the three

most common problems right that we often

see is that either they don't have a

common data model right and that can

mean either we are not measuring it or

yes we can measure it but it's taking us

hours to combine it from different

systems and there's no sort of

leadership dashboard that is look that

is presented presented with the

leadership on a weekly basis looking at

that common data model I think another

thing that we often very see very often

is launching too many Cod Market motions

to early um so just as a rule of time I

know I imagine many people here in the

house know this but um if you're not a

10 million AR don't start a second go to

market motion we generally recommend you

you can you don't have to but you can

start a second go to market motion once

getting to 15 20 million AR and a third

one once you're closer to 30 right um

third problem that we often see is that

sometimes when when the growth is so

Dynamic that you know there hasn't been

attention to really nail it into sort of

a repeatable process I think you know

those are not the only challenges but I

would say those are the most common

problems that we see even with clients

that you know are already in the scale

up or sometimes even grown up

phase all right so back back to our use

case we don't know which one of the fee

we're just uh assuming right now that

that is probably the area that we need

to look into um so in order to do that

let's move to the second model which is

the beta model uh for those of you who

are not familiar with the data model it

is visualized as a bow tie superimposing

a uniform layer of metrics on the

customer journey in our case let's say

this is the C the company's

metrics and they are measuring prospects

in this case last quarter let's say it's

the last quarter they had

17,800 fo spec coming into the website

3,000 of them reached a certain

threshold and became mqls from those

mqls S Sal's uh

666 and then we entered the discovery

call

619 68 of those uh turned into paying

customers which is equivalent of 5.1

million overall the ARR starting that

period was 12

million at the end of that period it was

9.4 you can already see where we're

going with this this should ring a a

bell here and lifetime value is

equivalent 243 with these numbers now

how how many of these metrics do you

know uh about your business do you

measure these sort of um

metrics yeah maybe let's ask it to the

crowd in a certain per yeah that's

that's what I mean I want uh to see with

a certain percentage right uh do do you

measure 100% of these 80% of

these okay we've got a few nods in the

audience 100% fantastic that is a good

start but Beth guys let me all you yes

is is it following the bow tie or just

uh your own data model that you invented

that's the

question all right of course it doesn't

matter right as long as you have a data

model we believe that this is a good

representation that is relevant for all

recurring Revenue businesses all right

so let's go back

to our use case we don't look at volume

metrics when we do our analysis we focus

on the conversion metrics why because it

allows us to focus on performance and

efficiency rather than pure volume

in our case you can see here number of

prospects that turned uh the conversion

rates to mqls is 177% we call the cr1

CR2 is

22% reaching that Discovery call from

Discovery call to a closed one to

becoming a a customer it's 11% that's

our win rate cr5 is activated so that's

100% in our case uh this company uh

doesn't have a real problem there

onboarding onboarding that is uh ends

with that first impact we're reaching

95% retention is 78 all right we always

already saw that problem in the volume

when we look at volumes and expansion is

only

6% the next step is we want to look and

Benchmark to Industry

peers what you see here is this is a

joint venture between winning by Design

and bench site

we're building a new updated repository

and a database of these metrics that we

just talked about sari will put uh in

the chat a link to bench uh to Benchmark

bench sites this is an open source you

can log in and review the bench uh the

benchmarks uh and the numbers what we

ask in return by the way is for to you

guys to help us uh enrich that database

and we're going to ask you an

anonymously to add your company's uh

metrics uh we're right now at around uh

400 our goal is to reach a thousand by

the end of the year and we need your

help to get there so yeah back to that

industry Benchmark offers a general

understanding of performance but by uh

by n nature it lacks the level of

accuracy to operate that we need to

operate a recurring Revenue

Factory having said that let's see how

we can use it and where it is helpful so

the blue one is our company's conversion

rates on top of that I laid I went to

the site and I laid these are actually

numbers for that ACV level and you can

see here the numbers let me ask you I

see the chat is active but I want to ask

you in the chat what are the areas that

you think is worth for us to zoom in

right

now

you can call it CR 1's to

to8 where will you double click and

focus

on what will be our next step cr4

cr78 that's right that's our off with a

cr4 because that's our next slide right

so yeah

cr4 followup question cr4 is the win

rate from Discovery call to a closed

one possible

problems and causes that the win rate is

almost half of Industry

Benchmark win rate is dramatically

low inefficient Discovery and like that

bad demos seller skills let's put

everything under seller skills remember

Harry's pyramid skill is one thing so

that's one thing that we probably would

want to look

into value proposition wrong ICP that's

always a problem right we're talking to

the wrong people which causes low win

rates targeted Industries yeah same

thing as ICP price too high Wilson yeah

I hear a lot of salespeople uh blaming

that our pricing is not competitive

enough um product of course do it the

constant beat between sales and and

product right the product is not mature

enough we don't have the right features

we're losing to competition all great

questions but I like all great ideas

let's zoom in on performance because

usually that's the first on skills and

performance because usually that's where

we zoom in

first uh a regular analysis that we do

in every engagement is uh when we see a

problem with cr4 is to look at

individual reps performance

and when we did this here each line

represents uh a rep a sales AE for

example and how much um how much new

Revenue they

attained what we uncovered here is that

80% of their revenue is coming from 35%

of the Reps made five in this case and

only two are actually healing their

quot the rest of this Salesforce is

generating only

20% that's a big red light

right and again coming back it's

probably a skill issue but let's park

this and zoom go up again and try to

look at other uh problems that we see

here for those of you who like to do

these number crunching another Advanced

performance metric and Analysis that we

do is combining both

CRS in this case let let's look at cr3

and cr4 CR

three is the conversion of a discovery

call that first discovery qualification

call and cr4 is the win

rate cr3 is above the Benchmark is

relatively

high that means

more uh deals past the discovery

stage than what is probably the norm the

industry Norm but the win rate is

relatively low is it's not relatively

it's very

low right and with these combination we

have this 2x two metrics and this is

where we start to analyze what is

happening in our case cr3 is above

Benchmark and cr4 is below

Benchmark which indicates that we have a

problem in the discovery and the

diagnostic part of the

process specifically here we identify

that it's a skill problem

and our solution here is to train the

sellers to diagnose and on priority and

do a better job

there and open less opportunities and

and filter more opportunities

there again let's park so we reached one

end let's go back up I want to analyze

CR7 another great analysis that we like

to do is looking at Trends so not

benchmarking yourself against industry

peers but against yourself so we take

each one of those CRS each one of those

volumes and track the trend line either

if we have the data eight quarters back

or four quarters back and we'd like to

see the trend line what is happening

there what we see here is that they used

to have great retention rates

CR7 but it has been

dropping

so something happened in Q Q3 or even Q2

of 22 any

ideas again we're just coming up with

hypothesis here what could happen here

what can

cause retention rate to drop product

issue right could be the existing

product or somebody we introduce new

products or new features and they're not

uh good enough for our customers closing

wrong customers

yeah we see that a lot right sellers are

good sellers they're selling uh to the

wrong ICP they get the product they

don't really know what to do with it um

lack of recurring impact of course

that's uh that's always uh the problem

prioritizing high risks hey V good to

see you there uh pandemic ended yeah for

a lot of us so less money to spend uh

everybody uh is feeling that right now

uh and competitors right maybe in Q2 or

Q3 a competitor came in and and undercut

our prices of course that's also a

possibility we like to split that into

two areas external factors which you

guys talked about end of the pandemic uh

the market changed competition and

internal factors we introduced a new

product new features something happened

with the product um we change the

process and it's not working or the team

structure has

changed what we did find out is that

it's not any one of those uh problems

that we saw let's see how we got to the

next

one yes so this is where it's getting

exciting right so we've been through the

growth model the data model some data

analysis I think the more models that we

start to collate on each other the more

we're really starting to to understand

the root cause and I think the next part

is is looking at the go to market model

so I think a lot of you in the room are

familiar with this model for the folks

um who don't what you're actually seeing

here is on the X AIS you have these

numbers 5K 15K 50k and so forth this is

where you want to have your ACV and

depending on your ACV there's going to

be an Optimum way to sell to those type

of clients those type of clients for a

particular ACV they expect a certain

experience

and we as a business right we can only

put x amount of people or product or

efforts on it to sell that to still be

somewhat profitable so that is where the

go to market model comes in to really

make sure that the way we sell fits with

the ACV right so um maybe quick quick uh

little question from the crowd so where

is your business more or less are you

focus in no touch low touch medium touch

High touch or dedicated touch so no

touch this is generally more product

that grow type of motion one stage means

you only have sales people no sdrs two-

stage meaning you have sdrs doing

outbound and a little bit of it bound um

passing it over to

sales then High touch is usually going

to be more ABM pro programs with with

field sales and so forth and so forth

okay so kg companies in the

CR daab we need to do something about it

ah Frank Frank is there LG okay

Frank all right so we got a we got a few

quite some high oh another plg two more

plgs here right so for the the folks who

are in the PG motion definitely be good

friends with Dave boy here with us um

he's a tremendous source of uh wisdom

when it comes to plg so um here we go to

the the next slide so right so back to

our client case um we have that go to

market model and we want to establish

where they are now we've

actually first we want to sort of learn

what are those motions and the way you

do that is simply by looking at

processes looking at interviews you look

at their or chart usually the way the

titles of the roles

you're mute rule there we go sorry rule

um back to our our um good Market model

so to interviews to process

identification you want to understand

like hey what motion are they after in

the case of our company there um we're

actually seeing that they are using a

two-state motion so that means asdrs

going after uh doing outbounds and once

they have a qualified opportunity they

pass it to Sales who get it to a commit

and then the CSM takes over with volume

of accounts let's say 250 account Downs

per CSM for example right so this is the

motion now next up we do want to plug in

their ACV and their ACV today is at what

we learned is at

75k so this is I think our first AA

moment so we see misalignment there but

just like Ry um did before with a churn

analysis it's often very helpful to do

sort of see how that evolves over time

and what we actually saw with this

particular company is that

they used to have a very good go to

market fit right they used to sell those

35 40K deals but then gradually over

time they started moving to Enterprise

and this is suddenly where you you're

starting to see that mismatch now this

mismatch is a beautiful mismatch on a

piece of paper but I want to know like

what does that look in real life right

what is what does a mismatch really

mean in real life so groy I'm going to

pass pass it on to

you yeah let's ask the crowd what are

some of the challenges that you

experienc going up Market into the

Enterprise

segment Sean I see you

there I know that you experienced this

care to share yeah mute for a second I'm

happy to talk through yeah go ahead yeah

um this this looks um I don't know if

this is us but it looks very similar if

if not so um you know as we going

through hyper growth exactly what we are

aiming to do is increase our ACV go up

Market get into more of an Enterprise

even in some cases a named accounts

type um so you know we of course put our

best AES uh into the biggest accounts

and set a higher price and and figure it

out uh and realiz pretty quickly you can

see you know similar flows to what's on

the chart here

that it wasn't that simple and we ran

into challenges around you know the win

rates going down the number of deals

were were closing going down um and

ultimately started you know working with

with r and team to really see that the

rest of our motions around those AES

just wasn't equipped to to be doing this

so the SDA team wasn't qualifying the

way that they needed for this um the way

we were thinking about multi-threading

and most of the Reps didn't even really

know what multi-threading was um wasn't

wasn't equipped for for this new motion

and go down the list all the way through

the process to Contracting having the

right CS delivery on the back end so

what we thought was going to be a

relatively simple adjustment ended up

being much larger and to a certain

extent complex but really just need to

be thought out at kind of a broader

perspective than the way we were

thinking about it which is really kind

of AE motion

focused thanks SE so it's exactly what

happened here by the way uh this use

case uh is is is not Echo Shan right

just uh numbers are nowhere near so what

we're talking about here is that our our

in our client in this use case didn't

realize that they're going off Market

well they they did realize they're

they're closing bigger accounts and and

bigger deals of course but they didn't

understand what does that mean so they

still had those sdrs calling up uh

Enterprise companies and of course it

doesn't work and uh we know that sdrs

pdrs are usually like entry level kind

of position and they're starting to sell

to more senior people and reaching out

and prospecting in most cases it does

not work and having CS by

volume they didn't have that so they had

CS managers managed 250 uh accounts

there that was their book of business it

didn't make any sense like you

Enterprise account expect a premium

service because they're paying a premium

price in General this is what we see

moving up Market requires new processes

and skills so if this is happening you

need to ask yourself what do we need uh

to change here and what you see here is

the list I'm not going to go over this

but um yeah different processes to have

longer sales cycle we all know this

right longer sales cycle complex talking

to multiple stakeholders we need to have

processes that support that of course we

also need to upscale our

teams how do they talk to Executive

levels how do they multi-thread their

accounts all these things that Sean just

mentioned so what we found out that they

are actually going up market and haven't

realized that they need a new go to

market motion new processes and new

skills all right so now we gathered all

these facts and

findings let's go back to identify the

causal factors

sorry to to to uh conclude the root

cause of everything that we're seeing uh

there are several techniques out there

to uncover root causes at winning by

Design we like to use the five y's and

here's an example of that so again we

already identifi that's easy when we

look usually at numbers this is usually

the symptoms so we usually start off

with that the symptom is is high high

there so the low rep performance and

high churn why is that happening it's

happening because the Reps lack skills

to serve the Enterprise that higher

segments of the market but why is that

happening because we don't have a

repeatable process we talked about we

need to have the right process the right

uh uh skills for the teams why is that

happening because we're applying the

wrong go to market motion and we haven't

realized that why are we applying the

wrong wrong Mark go to market motion

which we had the right one if you uh uh

quarters back is because we have been

increasing our ACV and we didn't

understand how that impacts everything

that we're

doing so using the five y to get to that

root root problem so our it's not a

problem in our case but that's what's

causing everything we're going off

market and our ACV is

increasing so we did this let's talk

about implementation before we do that

quick recap how we got here we started

off defining the problem we collected

the data step three ident identified the

causal factors we went through the three

models the recurring Revenue models the

grow growth model the data model in

which we did benchmarking analyze Trend

and did Advanced analytics and then we

go went into go to market

motions once we did that we concluded

the root cause we gathered all our

findings and found found that root cause

it could be one it could be many of

course usually is many and then we are

in implementation

planning this is how it looks like this

is what is the results of our entire

analysis that take weeks this is the

result this is the plan that uh uh we

are doing that helps address the root

causes so for this example we went and

told them hey you need to have two

distin go to market motions you need to

have a team that is dedicated to selling

to Enterprise you need to train and

teach them in most cases if you're going

off Market you would want to hire AES

that already have that

experience customer success it's the

same thing you you need more experienced

people that can serve bigger uh

stakeholder bigger amount bigger amounts

of stakeholders within a

company there we also identified we

didn't go down that path but we talked

about wrong icps at least in the chat

let's revisit the icps let's get that

right let's focus on the right icps in

the Enterprise segment Define the ex uh

Enterprise customer

journey in order to improve the

retention rate create racy who does what

to serve those accounts upscale your

team etc etc and we put it on a timeline

saying and we consider that as a

project and we need to find somebody

from the the company that leads that one

Central person that leads that change

management over time it's the chief

strategy officer or the new Revenue

Architects that uh are coming out of

wining by Design to implement that

change over

time once we have that implementation

plan the talk about the next

steps D ready to take us home yes let's

do it so maybe Sarah you can Spotlight

me I also see a question here in the

chat I'm completely lost captivated by

the chat so thank you but uh Jonathan

has a question there for an engagement

like this how long will it take but

let's talk about how you might tackle

this or where do we might go from here

like hopefully you were inspired to

start applying this to your own business

so you have a couple of options here so

let's go to the next slide

um first a word of caution right what do

we see go wrong uh you know when you now

go home and you take all these lessons

and you watch the reporting five times

and maybe read jao's book so one is that

you're trying to do too much at the same

time so advice number one I will leave

you with today as you're trying to

translate this to your own business is

break it down right there probably you

could analyze this and you could analyze

till the cows come home uh and then come

up with a list of 100 things or even 10

things it's too much okay you need to

start thinking about this in an agile

manner right think of it as Kaizen or

agile if I goto Market you're trying to

find one thing to improve in your goto

market then you want to implement that

measure it get everybody excited and

pick the next thing and it's not even

100% crucial to get the exact right

place to start right so yes use this

sort of rough 2 by two obviously pick

maybe something that has a bigger

impact and that's easier to do but again

don't get too hung up just get started

please like get started with something

small and in some of our other workshops

we've taught that even small imp 10 or

15% improvements let's say you take your

win rate from 30 to 33% right so 10%

Improvement which in that case is only

three points

you do that five to seven times you've

just doubled your Revenue without adding

a single salesperson or a single lead so

human brains are not good at thinking in

compound impact but that's how it works

so start small uh and iterate quickly

then next slide second thing to think

about is

um create a coalition of the Willing

create alignment the biggest mistake

people is that that they take my advice

number one and they delve right in like

nope hold on first get all your goto

Market team in a room and build a

coalition so it's it's um mindset first

and behavior second so to Circle back to

Harry's example right like if he wants

to teach his kills his kids to to clean

up after themselves there first has to

be a mindset like why would I even care

like why as a kid would I care about

clean house well maybe it's because

makes Harry very happy and then Harry

comes home with ice cream more often or

whatever it is is like there is some

some partal at the end of the rainbow

there's some bigger picture reason

there's a mindset that says okay yes we

are going to commit as a family or in

this case as a company

to what are we going to commit to I

wonder if anyone in the chat can quickly

type what are we actually going to build

this Coalition around we had it on the

slide who took it off which makes this

now a brilliant quiz

test impact impact Ron is already

talking about the Coalition is going to

be built around impact

if you can get everybody to be always

thinking about how can we create more

customer impact and eventually recurring

impacts and how can we adopt a framework

I recommend both I obviously to uh

signify to to visualize that customer

imp to Define that customer impact

journey and to measure that customer

impact Journey data model then

everything

else you know will go much easier

afterwards right team members will start

to to come up with ideas of things that

could be improved Etc so those would be

our two things just uh to get started uh

or to keep in mind as you get started

and take these lessons home but to

answer the question from the chat

earlier more specifically how could we

potentially help you know um because we

definitely always commit to you can do

it yourself or you could um have asked

do this kind of goto market analysis for

you right so so um when we do it for you

you have to think about I don't know

maybe a four to six week process uh that

costs about

$50,000 again depends that's why you say

contact us to discuss uh because there's

sometimes a way to do a focused go to

market diagnostic that's quicker and

less expensive and if you're in a very

large company with multiple go to market

motions of course that could be more

right um but I actually recommend

following my own advice start small

start by building that Coalition and um

we can help there too so uh this is

actually the official launch I guess of

a new offering that we have which is

where we run these private

workshops uh where we facilitate and

helping you build a coalition so again

that's only effective if you get

multiple go-to Market leaders in a room

doesn't have to be everybody you could

start by building a coalition and

initially get sales Marketing in a room

or sales and customer success but

ideally you get all your go-to Market

leaders and your CEO right go to market

these days really is a a companywide

opportunity that that the CEO should

care about and Lead uh but get get in a

room to to just commit to each other

that you're going to focus on customer

impact and that you're going to have an

agile mindset which also means that

you're going to model and uh measure

right how to iteratively and

continuously improve Revenue performance

in this way that Harry and rowey

introduced to you so um again you can do

that obviously on your own um you know

get people in a room and pull both side

from our website and so forth we could

also do it for you and because this is a

new product we're looking for our

first 10 Charter

Member customers I mean beta customers I

don't know it's pretty mature products I

don't want to call it beta but if you

book this by March 4th then uh we also

have an introductory price for that uh

of $2,500 and we'll send some more

information about that if you want to

take advantage of

that