No one wants to run the risk of wasting time and resources on launching an unprofitable product or service. Market validation helps solve that problem.

Without proper planning, it’s impossible to know if you’re making the wrong choices. Are you chasing the wrong audience? Are you too early or too late to the market? Is your target buyer already saturated with similar solutions?

Many of the same questions apply if you’re launching a product into a new channel. Download our ebook to get our take on what makes a partner experience great.

Using a proven process to validate your go-to-market strategy will improve customer acceptance as well as reduce time to repeatable revenue.

Avoid common missteps

The go-to-market stage is among the most challenging for any company regardless of size. Many stumble or fail. Those who navigate it successfully increase the chance of future revenue growth significantly.

Avoid these five potholes of launching a new product or service.

What is meant by go-to-market strategy

In simple terms, the go-to-market strategy is the way in which a company brings a product to market. It’s a handy roadmap that measures the viability of a solution’s success and predicts its performance based on market research, prior examples, and competitive data.

Why market validation matters

Even the brightest ideas can fail when they’re not executed effectively – it’s a well-known fact that 90 percent of startups burn out, often within their first year. Larger companies are not immune. They launch new products with much fanfare, only to see them fade quickly.

While a go-to-market strategy isn’t guaranteed to prevent failure, it can help you manage expectations and work out any kinks before you invest in bringing a product to market.

How our market validation service works

We use a proven process designed to create a repeatable, scalable selling motion. We break this down into five phases:

#1. Define who are your buyers and why they would buy now

Our process starts with a Strategy Workshop to assess the current state of your go-to-market plan. Major areas of focus are revenue goals and other strategic considerations, value proposition and messaging, ideal customer profile, and buyer personas.

We conduct hasty research with customers and prospects in order to make sure the plan reflects the voice of the market. All this happens in collaboration with you.

#2. Build the go-to-market plan to reach buyers

The focus of phase two is defining the selling motion and putting into place key components to facilitate sales. This includes conversation ice breakers and discovery questions, as well as packaging and pricing.

At this point, we start to identify sources for prospect data, ensure your website is minimum viable in terms of messaging, user experience, buyer journey, and content. Because what isn’t measured can’t be improved, we set up Google Analytics.

#3. Create mechanisms and content to engage prospects

Care and feeding of the selling motion takes place in this phase. For example, we work with you to create content, like brochures, case studies, product data sheets, your core sales deck, and cornerstone blogs.

In parallel, we design the outreach sequences, call scripts, and talking points.

#4. Test the plan with prospect conversations

With the live dashboard to monitor and measure progress, we start sales outreach. The objective is to get into conversation with as many prospects as possible. We run A/B tests on every key aspect of outreach to assess impact.

Key learnings are discussed with you in real-time. Changes are made rapidly.

#5. Apply the adjustments, then re-run the sales play

This phase is similar to phase four. The key point to takeaway is the iterative nature of the validation process. For example, messaging in sales outreach evolves. So do other aspects of outreach like duration, channel, number of steps, and the interval between steps.

The deliverable that bookends this process is the sales playbook, which documents every aspect of the sales motion.

How do I start?

Building a go-to-market strategy is critical before bringing your new product or service to market at scale. Market validation helps you avoid wasting time and resources.

If you would like to learn more about how our market validation service can help, then let’s talk. Start by booking an appointment.