The Best Go-to-Market Organizations Did These 10 Things During the Pandemic
The good news is that there’s still time to catch your go-to-market strategy up if you adopt these accelerators now.
My role at LLR Partners connects me to hundreds of C-level executives across the technology sector, from SaaS to fintech to healthcare. While the pandemic was a forced moment of reflection for these companies, the most successful go-to-market (GTM) organizations—even those that were forced to contract during the past year—used this time to regroup and rethink, and as a result, they emerged stronger than ever.
As the world continues to recover and move forward, it’s only a matter of time before these companies—some of whom may be your competitors—start to surge ahead of you. The good news is that there’s still time to catch up if you adopt these accelerators now.
Here are 10 go-to-market best practices that the most successful organizations did and continue to do during the pandemic.
1. Take care of your people. The best organizations emphasized the human element during this uncertain time. They were flexible and offered genuine emotional support, sweetened compensation plans, including commissions and bonuses when required, and set their people up with the best tools and equipment to do the job from home. They also prioritized the communication of company updates during the pandemic—an especially important activity when people are cut off from the office hub and likely to be feeling out of the loop. The same best practices apply today as companies roll out either a return-to-office plan or permanent virtual workplace.
2. Invest in development programs and tools. Even at the best of times, companies tend to overlook the importance of developing their people (especially the customer-facing teams such as salespeople, customer success managers, account managers and marketers). During the pandemic, development activities were often deprioritized even further. But successful GTM organizations reversed the trend. In cases where the company faced budget pressures, they repurposed line items such as travel and entertainment in order to actively invest in tools to improve sales and marketing effectiveness, such as sales enablement technologies, learning management systems (LMS) and live-streamed training. In addition, they built, or re-built, and published training and development curriculums for all GTM personnel.
GTM organizations approached the initiative holistically to ensure they had the tools, messaging and processes in place to generate demand more effectively.
3. Reimagine demand generation efforts. GTM organizations reimagined their demand generation efforts and refocused on more refined target market selection using account-based marketing (ABM) programs and named account strategies. These companies approached the initiative holistically to ensure they had the tools, messaging and processes in place to generate demand more effectively. For example, they:
- Worked on identifying specific target markets, including territories and verticals, with greater granularity and precision.
- Invested time in refining their database and cleaning the data to ensure that they were ready to target those markets accurately.
- Developed segmented, contextualized messaging to reach specific organizations and personas.
- Built processes that enabled marketing and sales to manage the logistics of outreach and engagement.
They also created specific plans for sales and marketing to follow up on progress closely and collaboratively. This is often a big obstacle when executing ABM frameworks.
4. Invest in digital channels. There has been a significant amount of investment in digital marketing channels to compensate for the evaporation of face-to-face marketing activities during the height of the pandemic. Those who already had digital marketing programs in place invested in improving their efficiency and productivity, often pairing these efforts with fresh sales development representative (SDR) programs to focus on outreach and lead qualification. They revamped their email marketing, SEO, SEM, social, and other digital channels and did so by making them coordinated and contextualized to different personas.
Instead of looking at top-line numbers, companies took a hard look under the hood to understand the formulas that drive them, including the relationships and the velocity that drive the stages of the pipeline.
5. Double down on your customers. The best GTM organizations didn’t just look after their employees—they looked after their customers. The pandemic was viewed as an opportunity to get closer to customers, understand their pain points and deepen the relationship by identifying new ways to help them navigate some of their most challenging business realities. Many extended free trials to customers to give them access to the solutions or features that could help them with immediate needs. Besides the opportunity to demonstrate value and build trust, these companies were often able to upsell or convert new customers with this approach.
6. Improve sales pipelines and processes. Companies took the time to improve operational efficiencies through RevOps. They started with the basics, such as tightening and cleaning up the pipeline and pipeline data, improving forecasting and systems evaluation, and optimizing sales and marketing workflows to reduce friction.
Many organizations also made a sustained effort to better understand the science of pipeline: Instead of simply looking at top-line numbers, they took a hard look under the hood to understand the formulas that drive them, including the relationships and the velocity that drive the stages of the pipeline. The result has been a more visible, accountable, and transparent way to look at the business inputs and outputs.
7. Evolve your go-to-market strategy. The pandemic highlighted how susceptible to change many business fundamentals really are, but also how adaptable businesses can be. As face-to-face channels dried up, sales learned to adopt digital tools to re-engage prospects and customers, becoming, in some cases, even more productive and effective than before.
Successful businesses went a step further, using this volatile period to undertake an all-encompassing introspective effort. They evaluated and evolved not only the tools and tactics but the underlying strategy, including markets, the prioritization of segments and verticals, product pricing, product or platform enhancements, competitor mitigation, and sales and marketing structures.
Forward-thinking companies invested time and effort into cementing the technology, commercial, channel and reseller partnerships they would need to accelerate growth.
8. Re-map your customer journey. The customer journey changed dramatically during the pandemic, and that change is most likely permanent. Proactive GTM organizations leaned into this change by re-mapping their journey from start to finish. This involved not just replacing in-person touches with digital alternatives but rethinking the purpose and potential of each touchpoint.
For example, as the monthly or quarterly executive business review went digital, these companies chose to reframe them as an opportunity to develop more detailed, substantive presentations, proof points, and value-added insights. They invested in technologies and reporting processes that enabled them to surface meaningful metrics so that they could quantify the levels of service and value delivered to the customer over the reporting period. As a result, they turned a drawback (a lack of in-person time with the customer) into an advantage.
9. Go on a talent offensive. While others downsized or furloughed, the best GTM organizations saw the pandemic as an opportunity to pick up some exceptional talent. And when they found it, they went all out to acquire it, knowing that at the end of the downturn, that deep bench would allow them to ramp up quickly to take advantage of the opportunities around the corner. As the economy bounces back, these companies are in an advantageous position, and it’s not too late to follow suit. Many great people displaced by the pandemic are still seeking their next role: companies that hire now instead of waiting until the last minute will have.
10. Forge new partnerships. Forward-thinking companies recognized that they would need to be ready to grab market share as the effects of the pandemic subsided. Early on, they invested time and effort into cementing the technology, commercial, channel and reseller partnerships they would need to accelerate growth. Similarly, instead of retreating from their existing partnerships, they actively strategized to find new and better ways to leverage them.
Here’s the bottom line.
The pandemic slammed the brakes and imposed a forced time out for many GTM organizations, but some used the time to explore fresh thinking, different priorities and new strategies.
By taking care of their employees and customers, investing in talent, focusing on demand generation and rethinking aspects of the overarching growth strategy, these companies have emerged with a stronger market position and a steeper growth trajectory. The most important takeaway is that it’s still not too late to take advantage of the opportunity. The best time to adopt these best practices was 18 months ago: The second-best time is now.