Surfing the Wave: Setting the Foundations to Scale GTM
Javier Molina, CRO at Starburst Data Dropping Some Knowledge
Given the current environment, Software Snack Bites will be focusing on more go-to-market advice over the next few months. To start things off, we are super excited to feature a guest blog post with Javier Molina, CRO at Starburst Data, formerly SVP Worldwide Sales at MongoDB (involved in building the Atlas GTM strategy) and Sr Sales Director at Solarwinds. If you enjoy Javier’s advice, I highly recommend you give him a follow on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn as he’s an active startup advisor, investor and coach to many founders and sales leaders.
Having been involved both as an operator and an advisor/investor in various sizes of companies, from early stage, to public hyperscale, to PE backed growth software organizations, I understand the need for sales to drive revenue. However, to SCALE sales you should think about sales people as your “accelerator”, not your revenue magician.
Whether you’re focused on becoming a more efficient business, trying to increase your win%, battling the macro economic environment, trying to figure out how to create more pipeline or working towards a greater rule of 40, I’ve found the common theme in top tier companies is a great vision, GTM strategy and product execution.
Mike Volpi once described this to me through a surfer metaphor. The wave is the market, the board is the product and the surfer is your GTM execution. You need all 3 to be great.
So whether you’re hiring your first AE, looking to triple the sales org, or considering bringing on a VP, how do you ensure that it will be money well spent? How do you get the highest ROI from your sales org?
Note: Below I will not use “competitors” but rather “alternative solutions” which includes the incumbent or solving the pain using other methods
Can really good sales people sell most any product? The answer is, it depends.
Can a lot of really good sales people sell any product at scale? Likely not.
The difference? Multiple factors like perceived value relative to alternative solutions, size of obtainable market, true product differentiation, cost, reliability and performance. Sometimes great company execution can lead to general sales hubris, and while sales is the tip of the spear, it still needs “wood behind the arrow”.
When I’m approached by early stage founders who are looking to expand their sales org or potentially add a VP of Sales/CRO, the conversation often looks like this:
“Tell me about who within your company is driving awareness in the market” if no one or no natural open source adoption to monetize, then “who are you expecting to educate 1:many?”
“Who within your org translates your product's value, the way you sell and the way the market would understand, to your website, sales decks as well as internal and external documentation?”
“In what scenario do you feel like your product can win repeatedly?” (segment, incumbents, legacy processes) - ie Global accounts receivable with Netsuite integration necessary.
“Why do you feel now is the right time to start running an outbound sales motion” (inbound drying up, goals accelerating?)
“Are you often replacing an existing solution or are you a part of a new project”
All of these questions help to inform the decision of whether to add Sales, and more than half the time the answer is “not yet”.
You see, Sales is oftentimes seen as the magic dust that you can sprinkle across any company and the result is revenue. The reality is that sales delivers value, can help educate prospects 1:1, and helps accelerate revenue. However if done incorrectly, is expensive, demanding, and can hinder your company's trajectory due to misalignments around critical components such as features required to capture sales, your perceived product value relative to alternatives (including status quo), your company's messaging to the market, product reliability and so on.
Frank Slootman recently said, “You get a much better sales organization when you have entire alignment in the company….Great sales people can’t sell a bad product, lousy sales people can sell a great product”
Point being, to ensure your company can thrive, whether you’re bootstrapped or scaling towards $1B, focusing on fundamental Product and GTM Strategy, will accelerate your sales team's ability to drive revenue.
Here are a few fundamental areas to clearly document to ensure you’re able to confidently scale in any market:
1. Understanding who you’re building a product for, why they would pay money for your solution and how your solution is uniquely positioned relative to alternatives in the market. While obvious, this includes an obsession around customer, market and competitive research and understanding.
ACTION: Study your customer wins and losses, not just competitors but compare: inbound vs outbound, situation prior to speaking with your company (ie building an app or moving to cloud), incumbent technologies.
Where in the funnel are you seeing customers attrit (early, mid during comparison, late)? This will give you insights into whether you have a PMF issue, pricing, awareness, competitive differentiation, or execution issue.
Once you feel confident in your market positioning, build both external and internal facing assets to support.
2. Deeply understanding the market dynamics and separating your long term vision and TAM from the current obtainable market relative to the products current capabilities. Focus will allow sales to thrive.
ACTION: Break down what is repeatable so that your sales and marketing org can focus. What attributes are common within your ICP (
‘s post on identifying ICPs is a great resource here) ? Where are the landmines? Break this down by prospect maturity, employee size, geo, company demographics, common/ideal tech stack.
In this scenario I usually use a metaphor. A refrigerator sales person and a security salesperson both canvas a neighborhood together looking for sales. If you’re a security salesperson, you’re looking for houses without a security sign in their front yard. There’s a high likelihood they do not have an active system and they’re a clear outbound target. You can see this outside looking in. If you’re a refrigerator sales person, how do you know a house needs to upgrade or replace their existing fridge? How do you point your sales people and ABM activities towards the “no security sign” homes and direct broader marketing activities to get the homes to think of you when it’s time to replace the refrigerator. Point being, focus your sales activities and marketing activities on different sections of the market. To do so you need to understand what is identifiable from the outside as a seller relative to your ICP.
3. Lowering prospects barriers to find, try and buy your solution. This is accomplished through things like creating clear digital assets, community efforts, PLG motions, partner investments and speaking the language of your ideal persona.
ACTION: Constantly evaluate and survey your customers, solutions architects, and sellers on the ease of use to move from interested to evaluation to production. Where are the friction points? Additionally, study your persona deeply, where do they discover technology, what are their interests and how do they like to try and discuss new technology? Lastly, consider adding a wide range of billing methods. From pay-as-you-go via credit card, to billing in arrears (consumption products) to being able to procure through a marketplace. This will help lower friction in your acquisition motion, especially in Enterprise.
4. Are prospects purchasing a product or a process change delivered by a product. The latter requires a nuanced selling motion with stronger storytelling. I’ve worked for both.
ACTION: Which are you? Process oriented sales (ie changing the way developers fundamentally build code) will require an abundant amount of documentation, videos, digital assets, community focus and a prioritization and a certain level of intentionality from your sales team to educate before selling. Arm your sellers, and the company appropriately.
This is similar to when cell phones gained popularity. I had to educate (and remind) my parents that texting works as well as calling in the late 90s in order to buy a cellphone. This was a fundamental process change in communication. An example of a product change was us deciding to upgrade to the iPhone 14 over the iPhone 12.
5. When you are ready to hire (new or replace) a Sales Leader, ensure you’re both operationally and culturally aligned. This means creating a GTM motion and investment strategy that fits your company stage, focus and complexity.
ACTION: Ensure you embed these factors into your hiring process: Current stage of the company, expected scale over next 2 years, complexity of sale, and experience in your space - not selling same product, but if data/infra as an example, have they sold to technical personas before?Are you expecting to move into Enterprise, do you need to scale your SMB or Mid-Market motion, are you looking to become more PLG or move from PLG to Enterprise? All of these should factor into your hiring decision.
While some of these tips will provide immediate revenue, most have long tail benefits that will require those responsible to stay close and iterate as they build. A clear, focused Product and GTM strategy is critical to allow your sales org to flourish. Happy Surfing 🏄♂️
