Saas GTM Assessment - Part 1

Let me not grab attention (refer to the picture) with an introduction about GTM and assessments. These are important; I am sure you understand that. We can connect assessments with our health. For health insurance purposes, in some countries it is mandatory to take blood tests, give details about food and diet, details about lifestyle, sleeping habits, exercise and more. So the outcome is a multi-dimensional model. This is confirmed. Similar to revenue or GTM … 🙋 

I trust assessments because I believe that right questions can lead to right outcomes.

• Use these Saas gtm assessments to gauge the current state better, make changes to approach, team, capital allocations, channels and bring in more revenue. 

• These assessments are quick questions and can be used to guide the GTM and related operations. 

• All questions are applicable to most of the go to market motions - early, mid-stage and mature. 

Section 1 - 

1 - What is Your Company’s annual revenue goal for the current year and beyond? How much % increase are we targeting YoY? Goal decides the approach. The bigger the better; it shapes the thinking, planning and doing. 

I would say, Goal and timeline - these two matter the most.

2 - How is our Saas GTM motion today? If you need to explain the GTM motion to someone, how would you do it? This is for clarity on the current approach and should portray wisdom on previous years. Hope you get what I am suggesting … 🏂

If we do not measure something, it would be hard to grow Saas onwards and upwards.

3 - What is Your Company’s current MRR/ ARR? Give details about the last 3 years of MRR/ ARR growth. This is self-explanatory. 

I have seen very rudimentary metrics in excel or similar to wonders if acted upon.

Here is a refresher story for you -

A reporter once asked Mahatma Gandhi - "Do you think you are properly dressed to meet the King?"

Mahatma Gandhi said, "Do not worry about my clothes. The king has enough on for both of us". 

Brilliant; clothes are clothes as long as they are neat and clean.

I agree, there is nothing there unless you are selling clothes. 

4 - What worked in ramping up the existing ARR? Which channels did we focus on, which worked and which did not work and why? Every Saas GTM is unique in terms of market conditions, channels, geography, state of the product and many other factors. Putting all that in perspective is important here. 

Teams can get emotional at times if you start doing channels by %, allocation and optimisation. This is mandatory.

5 - Give a break up of Your Company’s MRR % - by free, premium sections, and enterprise or applicable? How has the break up evolved over the years? This question should shed light on the experiments which are already done.  

6 - What is the conversion from free to paid? What is the conversion in the Saas enterprise sales segment? Need to understand what is the one conversion which is correlating to the actual growth in the business. It can be free to paid, demo to close, trial to close or similar.

I suggest only one and not more. Find this and carry it along with the north star … 🎖️ 

7 - What are the traits of a flagship user/ customer (ICP) of Your Company? How and where did they come from in the pipeline? ICP is not only about closing the contract/ deal but also about onboarding, using the product and being a happy customer and referring someone.  

8 - If Your Company’s buyer asks in the sales process about ROI; how are we showing the ROI? Be ready to share a customer facing detailed document with $ amounts. Saving money, saving time and/ or saving something else; let's put a dollar amount to it. This is a goldmine for Saas if done well … 🏁 

9 - What is the average sales cycle? In the case of enterprise customers, where the budget for Your Company’s is coming from? Operations, R&D departments or similar. A deeper customer and buyer understanding is needed in this case.

I learned an important lesson that - ROI, budgets, customer understanding etc. are all correlated to the Saas sales cycle length. 

These are my 9 pointers in the gtm assessment. GTM, sales and growth should be looked at from an end to end perspective. Otherwise leaks can always happen; better not to let those happen. More pointers in Part 2.

Happy growing … 🏆

About the picture - It is interesting to understand the unique GTM approach event companies follow. These events bring in half million plus per event; impressive. Very relevant to Saas GTM.

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Swagat Irsale is a Growth and Scale Advocate. He works with start ups and scale ups and helps them grow revenue and build enterprise products which users use.

Connect with him for work, partner opportunities.