Felixforge for Strategic Marketers

GTM processes in the technology industry

In yesterday's Blog I introduced some thoughts on Go-To-Market GTM processes. Here is a model I have used in the technology industry. There are two primary revenue streams. The first is repeatable revenues which take the form of license sales and maintenance contracts. The second is revenues from ancilliary services such as consultants and education.

In any instance to acheive revenues a series of decisions need to be made in the GTM process. The first is where to focus - existing customers or new business (boxes a,b and c). New business can be split into two sub categories - completely new business (b) and competitive replacement (c) which is replacing the incumbant technology that a customer already owns. After this a series of questions need to be answered:

Which Markets will I focus on? Which Partners (vendors) will help me? What are my most effective channels? Are my products right for these markets / channels or is there a gap I need to fill? and finally what is my ability to execute (in terms of geography, people skills, industy or vertical knowledge, etc)?

If you can answer these questions and build a strategy around the answers you will be achieving significant advantage in your GTM model.

Chris.

Go-To-Market processes

How do we compete? Traditionally we have on two major categories:

1. Lowest cost of production or,

2. Product differentiation.

These two options protect market share but increasingly their effectivness as competitive strategies is weakening. In both cases the pace of technological change and veracious consumer appetite has caused that reduction in effectiveness. Now firms need to look to other strategies to remain competitive. How they Go-To-Market GTM will be a crucial differentiator.

Look at the success of the various Virgin organizations (airlines, record labels, holidays, mobile phones). None of these businesses could compete on a cost or product differentiated basis so the only other option was to exploit how these operations reach the consumer or GTM. Each Virgin division has defined some unique customer focused process that has been a key contibutor in its GTM approach.

At felix we feel that the definition of robust GTM processes is crucial to our success and will keep our organizations competitive. As such we will spend a great deal of blog time on this subject and we hope that the felix community will help us to help you in defining GTM best practices.

Chris