Maja Voje's Blog, page 5

What Everyone Should Know About PMM

This is a guest post by Aatir Abdul Rauf.

Aatir is the VP of Marketing at vFairs with 15 years of experience in building and growing SaaS products across various industries. He currently leads growth at vFairs where he led a team of marketers to grow it 15x to an $18+ million ARR business in the past 5 years. In his career, he had the opportunity to run Product Marketing for multiple SaaS products at different stages of maturity: AfterHire (early-stage employee onboarding platform), Talentera (scaleup, recruitment SaaS), vFairs (mid-market event tech solution).

Aatir also happens to be prolific creator on LinkedIn and Substack where he talks about the intersection of product management and product marketing.

You can find more of Aatir on his substack Behind Product Lines.

I’ve chatted with several tech founders with a common itch.

They were looking for someone who could help them identify their sweet-spot customer segment, articulate why they were the best product for their needs, and run their go-to-market efforts.

Some sound bytes from those conversations:

“My marketing team can do ads but they aren’t technical enough to understand product.”

“Do I ask my Product Manager to write the copy for the home page? Or a content writer?”

“Who is responsible for educating customers about all the great features we roll out?”

I would get all variations of these questions.

These are all classic symptoms of a product team that is sorely missing a Product Marketing Manager to bridge the gap internally and externally.

But what does a Product Marketing Manager bring to the table, really?

In this article, I hope to help technical founders with this mystery and answer:

What is Product Marketing?

How is it different from other roles in the organization?

What the heck do Product Marketing Managers do? The tangible outcomes.

What are signs that you need to hire one?

What should you ask during interviews to gauge their caliber?

What is Product Marketing in simple terms?

Here’s what your trusty LLM tool will tell you:

Product marketing is a strategic function at the intersection of product, marketing, and sales. It focuses on bringing a product to market, ensuring its success, and driving its demand and adoption among target customers.

Or the more snazzy version on top blogs:

It’s the discipline that is responsible for getting the right product to the right hands at the right time.

Maybe you understood that but I’m going to pretend you didn’t.

So, I’m going to use some analogy magic here.

Imagine you’re running a sushi restaurant. Yes, sushi.

To run a successful sushi operation, you can imagine you’d need:

a marketing and branding team to promote the restaurant,

a brilliant head chef (like your product manager and engineering manager combined), and

a restaurant manager (your CEO) keeping everything running smoothly.

But here's the thing:

The marketing team, talented as they are, aren't sushi experts.

They wouldn't know the subtle differences between hon-maguro and chutoro, why aging fish matters, or how the rice-to-fish ratio can make or break a nigiri.

Question 1:

Who helps the marketing team understand why they should be highlighting the chef's traditional wasabi root instead of the fancy new plates?

Who tells the waiters what to say?

They might be great with people, but they might not even like raw fish. Some might have never tasted uni before starting the job.

Question 2:

So, who gives the waiters that compelling script about the various menu items and what specials to highlight?

And hang on - who writes the restaurant menu?

The head chef is a maestro with fish, not really with words.

Question 3:

Who crafts the perfect menu description that guides guests on what they should pick? Who influences the pricing that goes on the menu?

In summary, you need someone who can:

Write that mouth-watering menu that sells before the food arrives.

Craft waiter scripts that turn servers into confident cuisine guides.

Develop compelling narratives for promotional materials.

In the world of SaaS, these are just some scenarios where a product marketer would shine.

Product marketing is about:

Knowing enough about the product to understand its true value.

Uniquely positioning the product that it sets it apart from alternatives.

Articulating the product’s value such that audiences deeply resonate.

Empowering customer-facing teams to tell the right story.

and more.

Engineers code. Designers design. What the hell do Product Marketers do?

Tech founders I talk to often share their fears about hiring a Product Marketing Manager.

Some of their irrational phobias:

📛 "It's a fluff role that makes pretty slide decks."

📛 "They sound like expensive armchair strategists."

📛 "They ideate for other teams but don't really execute."

I get it. No one wants to pay a six-figure salary to doodle abstract circles in the air and rattle off marketing jargon.

So, I had to spell out specific activities PMMs worked on, clarifying that the exact tactics would vary depending on the product's stage.

For example, when vFairs (event tech platform) was an early-stage startup, the PMM hat required me to:

focus on one ICP: multi-nationals looking to run job fairs.

learn about the customer by shadowing sales calls.

center the positioning around the online job fair use case.

conceive a basic landing page & iterate on messaging.

train sales & customer success about product specifics.

draft email campaigns for existing customers.

write blog posts and LinkedIn posts.

record a 10-minute demo video to support sales & training.

collect video testimonials to put on the site.

But when we scaled into 8-figure ARR territory, our PMM's tactics evolved to:

constantly stay in sync with PMs and their build cycle.

talk to customers + unpack sales call recordings.

inspect new leads in the CRM to detect persona trends.

create custom AI agents to analyze G2/Capterra reviews.

draft positioning/messaging docs for EACH product.

draft copy for landing pages of a large marketing site.

drive launches using paid media, email, social, PR etc.

roll out a sales enablement library (decks, videos, etc.)

host sales trainings and equip them with competitive intel.

And yes, a PMM remains deeply involved in strategy.

But it's a far cry from "marketing fluff."

Done right - that strategic groundwork can save the team from harmful rabbit holes.

For example:

No amount of marketing fixes a wrong ICP.

Wrong go-to-market channels burn budget.

Focusing on sub-optimal use cases creates "bad" pipeline.

Uninformed or misaligned sales teams kill win rates.

The same founders I was speaking to also admitted that no one in their organization was focused on these problem sets.

That’s when their phobia turned into → demand.

In practice, of course, a Product Marketer in SaaS might do a lot more.

Another way to think about this is that Product Marketers are universal translators. They:

Translate market needs for the Product Team

"Here's what the market needs"

"This is how customers use our product"

"These are the pain points we're not addressing"

Translate the product for Customers

"Here's how our features solve your problems"

"This is why our approach is better"

"Here's the value you'll get"

Translate the product value for Sales/Marketing teams

"Here's how to explain our differentiators"

"This is how to demo the key features"

"Here's how to handle common objections"

But let’s get real.

Here’s what Product Marketers at famous SaaS products might do for them:

Market Research & Intelligence:

Competitive Analysis Reports

Ex: A PMM would conduct a deep-dive analysis to conclude that Riverside - a podcasting platform - should lean heavily on their studio quality recording advantage across their marketing messages as competitors lack that.

Voice of Customer (VoC) Program

Ex: A PMM at vFairs would run ongoing user interviews and analyze G2 reviews to understand exactly why customers are switching to their platforms (could be price, service, design etc.). They then funnel this back to sales and customer success to strengthen their pitches.

User Research & Segmentation

Ex: A PMM would analyze user data to decide Asana should launch a solution specifically for marketing teams and build out marketing-specific templates.

Core Strategic Work:

Write Positioning Docs

Ex: A PMM would decide to position Airtable as a "low-code platform for building business apps" after seeing enterprise users building complex workflows.

A Product Marketer would typically lead efforts to improve what your home page should say. Anthony Pierri (a homepage messaging expert) highlighted a few examples of how updating your home page positioning can make a world of difference:

Create Sales Battlecards

Ex: A PMM would craft battlecards showing HubSpot reps exactly how to position against Mailchimp, emphasizing enterprise features that Mailchimp lacks.

Here’s an example from SmartBug:

Design Product Launch

Ex: A PMM would orchestrate the entire launch of Canva’s Magic Tools. From positioning it as a “make your first draft, fast", to deciding on launch phases (Magic Tools was rolled out over 9 months of small releases), to crafting the campaign creatives (landing pages, social posts, emails etc.), a PMM would run the show to create awareness and adoption.

Conduct Win/Loss Analysis

Ex: A PMM would interview lost prospects and analyze loss patterns and discover product or service gaps the product has. This helps with detecting market demand shifts, tackling acquisition friction and even potentially blocking churn.

Messaging & Communication:

Message Architecture

Ex: A PMM at Linear would write the messaging docs that describe it as "The issue tracking tool you'll enjoy using" to battle Jira's frustrated users.

Value Proposition Frameworks

Ex: A PMM at DataDog would write docs that articulate the value proposition (feature, capabilities, benefits, differentiation, and specific use cases) for DevOps teams vs Security teams based on their distinct needs.

Content & Enablement:

Build Customer Case Studies

Ex: A PMM would strive to develop customer stories on how customers of DocuSign save hours in manual coordination and have better peace of mind with digitally signed docs.

Develop Pricing Strategies

Ex: A PMM may not own this entirely as other stakeholders like the CEO, Founder, and VP of Revenue may have input but a PMM would recommend packaging, tiers, pricing models (usage-based vs. license), and how to price competitively.

Script Demo Narratives

Ex: A PMM at ClickUp would partner with sales to craft custom demo flows to showcase how it can be used by HR teams to onboard new employees.

Create Persona-based Content

Ex: A PMM at Zendesk would partner with sales & marketing teams to develop distinct messaging tracks for Customer Support Leaders vs C-level executives.

How is a Product Marketer different from a Product Manager?

There is certainly some overlap between the roles. In my early career as a PM and Senior PM, I would have to wear the PMM hat when the team was lean. Knowledge of Product Marketing comes in handy for PMs in general as they’re able to impart more influence that way.

Things both roles share:

Customer discovery: Both roles need deep customer understanding, but use it differently. PMs use it to guide product decisions, PMMs to shape messaging.

Launch planning: This is a big one. While PMs handle the "what" and "when," PMMs orchestrate the launch with marketing, sales, and customer success providing them with messaging and assets to capture and engage the right prospects and customers.

Competitive analysis: PMs track competitors to inform feature decisions, while PMMs to craft positioning and narratives that help them differentiate.

Persona development: This involves defining who we’re building for. While both focus on factors like persona pain points, goals, and outcomes, Product Marketers deeply look into the buying committee, market segments, willingness to pay, and resonating narratives.

But they also have some distinct focus areas:

Product Management:

Owns the product vision and roadmap

Drives engineering and design execution

Manages backlog and feature prioritization

Product Marketing:

Owns go-to-market strategy

Crafts positioning and messaging

Drives market sizing and segmentation

Enables sales and marketing teams

I like to think that they both need each other:

PMs need PMMs to ensure product decisions are informed by market reality and competitive positioning.

PMMs need PMs to deeply understand product capabilities and roadmap to craft authentic, compelling narratives.

Together, they create a feedback loop: market insights → product decisions → market positioning → customer feedback → refined product decisions

OK, I’m confused. Isn’t a Product Marketer just a digital marketer?

This is a common misconception. I wish I had a penny every time I’ve asked about hiring a PMM and people thinking I’m getting someone to schedule Google Ads or handle social media.

Traditional digital marketing and product marketing are fundamentally different. Think back to the sushi restaurant example.

The marketer selects the target demographic, builds the creatives, and runs the ads. The product marketer provides the research and messaging fuel for each of those activities.

This infographic might help:

In a nutshell, traditional marketers:

Drive top-of-funnel through broad awareness campaigns and content marketing initiatives designed to reach the widest relevant audience.

Create general brand awareness through mediums like social media, blogs, PR, and advertising to establish market presence. They own and run these channels.

Optimize marketing costs while generating leads and nurturing them through email campaigns and content distribution.

Measure their success through metrics like cost per acquisition, MQLs, and return on ad spend.

Product Marketers, instead:

Own the entire customer journey from awareness through retention, ensuring product adoption and customer success at each stage.

Plan a go-to-market strategy, selecting the targe segment, positioning, and marketing channels. They take the lead during launch of new products and features.

Develop positioning and messaging that differentiates the product in competitive markets.

Create sales enablement materials, launch plans, and product narratives that directly influence buying decisions and product adoption.

I hope that clarifies why Product Marketers are distinct roles - not a subset of marketing or product management.

What outcomes do Product Marketers influence?

There are some metrics that Product Marketers directly own.

Examples of outcomes they can own:

Lead generation and demo requests when launching a new product.

Generated pipeline for a specific segment.

Conversion rates of landing pages for specific features

Adoption metrics of newly launched features

Improving win-loss ratio of competitive deals

But there are several metrics they can influence and move.

Sales outcomes:

They can help shorten sales cycles and higher sales velocity by enabling sales with the right assets.

They can also help with expansion revenue through effective cross-sell/upsell enablement to push existing customers to upgrade.

Marketing outcomes:

Improve the quality of MQLs (boosting conversion to opportunity) with better messaging

Reduce cost per qualified lead through better targeting and positioning

Better content performance measured by engagement and conversion metrics

Product & Customer outcomes:

Higher customer lifetime value through better product understanding and usage

Reduced churn through better customer education and expectation setting

What happens when you don’t have product marketing?

Here’s a little graphic that aptly describes the symptoms of teams with or without product marketing:

Who do Product Marketers influence and work with the most?

First, do they sit with product, marketing or sales?

Ideally, Product Marketing should be a separate department of its own that directly reports to whoever owns go-to-market.

But in many organizations, that’s not possible since it’s still a role that’s picking up steam.

In such cases, I prefer keeping the “reporting line” of product marketers adjacent to product teams to remain in sync with how the product is evolving because at the very core, product marketers need to know what they’re messaging and positioning for.

However, PMMs work very closely with customer-facing teams, specifically marketing, sales, and customer success. After all, they are prime vessels for carrying out a go-to-market strategy and bringing product to the market.

What is the Product Marketer’s contribution in go-to-market strategy?

In many organizations, the Product Marketer is the GTM architect, much like how Product Managers decide what to build and own the roadmap.

This means:

Product Marketers own the product launch.

They provide market insights the help team position.

They collect evidence on the beachhead segments to pursue.

They arm sales and marketing with the fuel for their machinery.

They help orchestrate the initial launch and identify the best channels.

They help with campaign planning and align internal parties for a strong launch.

They help content marketers pick the right topics.

They work with brand marketers to position the product appropriately.

They help performance marketers sharpen their ad and web copy.

When should you hire a Product Marketer?

Do you need a Product Marketer from day 1?

As much as I’d love to say yes, I would throw caution to the wind here.

Hiring a PMM before you achieve PMF can be helpful in iterating on messaging and finding a lucrative segment to focus on. However, at that stage, the founder or CEO is better suited to take up that mantle, as they need to own that part of the strategy early on.

A Product Marketer typically makes sense when you’ve seen strong signs of Product-Market fit, you have a clear and aggressive roadmap moving forward, and you’re observing a steady stream of “retained” customers.

Here are other signs that you need a PMM badly:

Your sales and marketing team can’t keep up with product’s delivery.

Your sales team struggles to explain the product’s value clearly to prospects.

Product adoption is lagging, despite positive feedback on features.

You’re getting leads but from the wrong segment.

Competitors are winning deals because their positioning resonates better with customers.

Customers are saying they had no clue you launched a specific feature.

Product launches are chaotic or an afterthought.

Feedback from customers and sales isn’t making it back to the product team effectively.

You’re unsure of who your ideal customer is or how to reach them effectively.

Customer churn is high, and there’s little insight into why they leave.

Sales materials feel outdated and lack focus on real customer pain points.

What should you look for in a Product Marketer?

As explained above, the exact skills and traits will depend on what your product stage demands.

But, in general, when I’m looking for a strong Product Marketing Manager for a SaaS product, I’m looking at the following boxes:

Marketing experience - they should understand user research, awareness and acquisition KPIs, segmentation, value proposition development, and basic lead generation principles.

Ability to zoom in and out - PMMs need to be able to strategize and look at the bigger picture of where to position a product and what a long-term GTM strategy would pan out to be. They also have to zero in details of product launches and enablement specifics.

Ability to write well - I can’t stress this enough. I know some people who object and say PMMs are not copywriters but I disagree. They need to be content creators at heart who have an innate ability to influence with writing. Sure, specialist marketers can make copy more spicy, but I haven’t yet seen a PMM who can succinctly describe products well.

Experience with product launches - you need to see people who follow a checklist vs. people who understand the audience and devise a go-to-market plan for it based on the budget.

Exposure to marketing channels - a PMM should have some sense of paid media, social media. content marketing, email marketing, PR, and content partnerships.

AI literacy - in this day and age, PMM should know a bit about how LLMs and SearchGPTs work (as organic traffic will soon shift towards these mediums) and shouldn’t be afraid to leverage AI tools to make progress themselves.

Ability to set goals - a lot of what a Product Marketer does requires setting the right goal and this can be very dynamic based on the initiative. For example, if you’re launching a new secondary product, PMMs might be measured on leads in the CRM. However, if you’re fortifying your product with new features, a PMM should be able to select the right adoption metric.

Educational mindset - the best way I can describe their relationship to sales and customer success is the role of an educator. Yes, PMMs produce sales decks and competitive intelligence docs, but the goal isn’t to dish out long PDFs. It’s to help sales and customer success to internalize the product’s value proposition and get truly excited about it. They need to teach with enthusiasm.

Influence and negotiation - PMM is a hard job. When people in the company don’t understand their strategic facet, they relegate product marketing into an ATM service for presentations. Sales is guilty of this a lot. PMMs, thus, need to know how to protect their time and also influence others to let them in on conversations they belong.

Not afraid to jump into conversations - PMMs need to be a bit nosy. I know that sounds off, but I assure you, no one will organically invite the PMM to a product review call, a win-loss sales huddle, or strategy calls. PMMs need to be on these. And if they aren’t and they get a hint of what’s happening, they shouldn’t be afraid to ask for an invite.

Bonus: industry or domain experience is a plus because a big part of a PMM is to translate complex product requirements into what a target audience would understand.

I know that sounds like a lot. But PMMs are strongly strategic roles. Companies like Google may hire PMMs straight from college, but I’m personally not from that camp.

I prefer to hire Product Marketing Managers who have evolved from Product Management, content or marketing roles.

Typically, a solid resume would show candidates with an early history in the following disciplines before working as a Product Marketer:

content writing / copywriting

content marketing / strategy

digital marketing / social media specialist

Product Management

marketing agency work

Of course, this isn’t set in stone. There are several paths that someone could arrive at their PMM calling. The goal is to understand whether they have been in roles where they were required to impart influence through writing, creatives, design, or documentation.

Potential Interview Questions to ask

What do you ask a product marketing manager in an interview? How do you discover a gem of a talent?

Here are a bunch of questions I ask based on the profile and position. Pick and choose the ones that suit your situation:

Strategic Thinking & Market Understanding

"Pick any B2B product you've worked with. What was its ideal customer profile, and how did you validate this?"

"Tell me about a time when you identified a market opportunity that your product team hadn't considered. What data led you there?"

"We think our early adopters will be [x audience]. How would you validate or challenge this assumption?"

"Look at our market: what trends do you see affecting our category in the next 18 months?"

Positioning & Messaging

What's the most successful positioning you've developed? Walk me through how you arrived at it.

Pick a competitor's product you're familiar with. How would you position against them?

How do you ensure messaging consistency across different channels and teams?

Look at these three competitor websites. What patterns do you notice in their positioning?

Launch & Go-to-Market Experience

Walk me through your most complex product launch. What made it successful or challenging?

We're launching [feature] next quarter. Draft a high-level GTM plan, including success metrics.

Tell me about a launch that didn't go as planned. What did you learn?

How do you decide which features deserve a big launch versus a soft launch?

Sales Enablement & Customer Journey

How have you enabled sales teams in the past? Show me an example of effective sales collateral you created.

Walk me through how you'd create and maintain competitive battlecards.

What's your process for gathering and implementing sales feedback?

How do you measure the effectiveness of sales enablement materials?

Research & Analysis

How do you stay informed about our market and competitors?

Show me how you'd analyze this competitor's website and messaging. What's working/not working?

Walk me through how you conduct win/loss analysis.

What's your framework for evaluating product-market fit?

Content & Communication

Show me a piece of content you're proud of. Why was it effective?

How do you adapt your writing style for different audiences and formats?

Walk me through how you'd rewrite our current homepage.

How do you maintain brand voice across different types of content?

Execution & Results

What metrics do you typically track? Walk me through a successful campaign with numbers.

Tell me about a time when you had to execute a project with limited resources.

How do you prioritize between competing initiatives?

Show me how you'd build our first-90-days marketing plan.

Startup-Specific Scenarios

We have no formal customer feedback process. How would you build one from scratch?

Our sales team is saying X about the product, but customers are saying Y. How would you handle this?

We're considering entering a new market segment. What would be your research approach?

How would you scale our messaging as we grow from 10 to 100 customers?

My favorite follow-ups to any of the situational questions:

What would you do differently if you had to do it all over again?

What assumptions did you challenge?

What were the main obstacles and how did you overcome them?

Hope this guide helped you gain some clarity on the Product Marketing role and dispelled some myths in your mind.

The bottom line here is the PMM is an internal and external bridge.

Internally, they are bridging the gaps between the technical intricacies of the product and how sales, marketing, and customer success understand and internalize that.

Externally, they are translating the product into digestible narratives and ensuring it gets in front of the audiences that will truly care about the product.

Their ultimate goal is to make prospects and customers feel “Yes, this product was designed for me.”

If you have someone who can nail that consistently, you’ve got yourself a keeper.

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Go-To-Market Actions: Do Whatever It Takes to Get Customers

In this Substack post, you will learn:

What did 100 unicorn companies do to get their first clients

How to differentiate between Go-to-Market Actions and Motions

Examples of how 12 successful companies selected and executed their GTM actions in a way that creates value

Let’s hop on an exciting adventure to see how companies find clients on their go-to-market missions.

Don’t miss my Black Friday special offer: 60% off a collection of all GTM Strategist products I launched this year. So far, they have helped more than 7500 companies build their go-to-market strategies. Get it at gtmstrategist.com/gtm-box

Before there are GTM Motions, there are GTM Actions

In 2022, Ali Abouelatta wrote a legendary Substack post 100 Unicorns: 12 different GTM Motions, widely used to plan the launches of new products even today.

Ali analyzed 100+ tech unicorns extensively and systemized them into 12 proven categories that worked then. However, much has changed since then—the renaissance of AI, spam filters, new communities, and some channels declining—so I say it is time for a facelift.

Before we dive into how these teachings can be implemented in 2025 and beyond, let’s define some basics. Here are two concepts that you need to understand before implementing this framework:

Actions instead of Motions: Go-to-market motions are predictable and scalable ways to get customers into the product. They are playbooks that you use to grow your company so you no longer have to worry about where your next client is coming from, but you can rely on a steady and sufficient inflow of leads in your business. Some tactics described here apply only for launches or one-off campaigns. For that reason, I prefer to call them Go-to-Market Actions (= do whatever is mission-critical to get customers) instead of GTM Motions.

Product-Market Fit (PMF) is a spectrum. Following the First Round Capital’s 4 Levels of Product-Market Fit framework, PMF comes in different stages. While scrappy GTM Actions such as warm outreach with a hook (for example, intros from your investors or clients) play a massive role in the nascent stage of PMF (how to secure first five customers), they fade off as you gain more traction. Eventually, everyone runs out of their “contact list deals” and needs to start predictably and scalably selling to “strangers”. While you can continue to use GTM Actions post-PMF to get spikes, consider that these tactics wear off. If you are launching on Product Hunt every month, the audience is likely to become saturated. The holy grail of the go-to-market stage (post-PMF) is to find at least one repeatable and predictable GTM Motion - a general, more complex set of repeatable activities for acquiring customers. Yes, you can continue to add fuel to the fire with GTM Actions as you are searching for new product-market fits (opening new markets, adding new products, testing a new channel) on your go-to-market journey.

Next, we will discuss every GTM Action proposed, and I will share more recent examples. Much has changed since “Airbnb scraped Craigslist and sent out many cold outreach emails to get first customers in 2010”.

How to find first customers in 2025 and beyond 12 GTM Actions with examples

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

These categories of GTM Actions are valid to this date.

The “HOW we apply them” changed.

Some channels got saturated, some tactics were abused and no longer work, the customer preferences and customer journey changed, and tech changes such as AI renaissance and rigid spam control by FAANG companies demanded refinements in executing these principles.

Today’s unicorns went through this journey 10-20 years ago. Now, you cannot compare yourself with companies 100,000 times bigger than you in traction.

Learn from the trenches NOW.

I will present recent examples of fast-growing B2B SaaS companies from my network on the go-to-market mission.

#1 Building in public

RB2B is a tool that helps you identify visitors on your website to run more informed sales and marketing decisions and actions. They grew to $4 million ARR in 40 weeks post-launch.

Their CEO, Adam Robinson, has built a LinkedIn audience of 100K+ followers and shares content 3-5x a week. The lion’s share of this content is videos of him explaining what they did to grow RB2B and sharing lessons learned with the audience, including pivots in business strategy.

RB2B CEO is one of the rising star content creators on LinkedIn. He shares all the milestones of their go-to-market journey - including this recent product update due to high churn (source).

Insights from the trenches of building in public are invaluable content for many entrepreneurs on LinkedIn, so Adam’s content gets lots of reach - spreading the word about RB2B at the same time.

#2 Produce discoverable content

Userpilot is the all-in-one tool for product, UX, customer success, and marketing teams, with analytics, in-app user onboarding and engagement, and in-app surveys.

They have dominated the SEO game in our space. Lusine Sargsyan, Demand Generation Manager at Userpilot, explains their content strategy: “Userpilot does product-led SEO, starting from the bottom of the funnel - focusing on the products in the market and the products' features, the problems they are solving for the target audience, then going more and more upfunnel with content relevant to the target audience.”

Organic content presents 77% of Userpilot’s traffic. Overall, they have 2850+ content assets that bring them over 200,000 monthly traffic.

#3 Warm outreach [sell relationship or credibility]

Tella is an Amsterdam-based startup backed by Gradient Ventures and Y Combinator. They develop a platform that allows you to record, edit, and share videos for demos, presentations and tutorials. Think Loom on editing steroids that make your video stand out. I use it for my video sales activities and courses.

As with all companies in the Y Combinator, Tella knew from day one how important it is to talk to users. I had the pleasure of speaking with the founder of Tella Grant Shaddick as a user of their solution, and he blew my mind with his customer discovery skills. Now I asked him to record us a Tella video of how they got their first customers 🤠

#4 Cold outreach [with a hook 🪝]

Lemlist is a cold email outreach tool that revolutionized email prospecting when it launched in 2018. When they had to find their first customers, it was only natural for them to “eat their own dog food” - using their own product to find customers with tailored, highly personalized cold emails that stood out in crowded inboxes.

By leveraging customization, like including recipient names and other relevant information, their emails didn’t feel generic—they felt personal, relevant, and worth a response. This strategy didn’t just showcase Lemlist’s capabilities; it turned recipients into customers who could envision the tool's value for their own outreach needs.

One critical factor in Lemlist’s success was their mastery of the hook. The first few words of an email often determine whether it gets read or sent straight to the trash. Lemlist used bold, intriguing openers designed to grab attention immediately. Whether it was referencing a recipient's recent achievement, posing an unexpected question, or highlighting a specific pain point, these hooks worked because they were authentic and relevant.

Lemlist’s killer feature: they even personalized images - like writing a prospect’s name on a coffee cup (source)

By focusing on personalization and starting with a bang, Lemlist turned cold emails into warm leads and ultimately built the foundation for their growth.

Guillaume Moubeche, co-founder of Lemlist, explained more on how they bootstrapped their go-to-market journey in my GTM Strategist Podcast:

#5 Fish on forums and online communities

Forums and communities on social media (like Reddit, Discord, and Facebook groups) can be a goldmine for user insights and finding early customers. You can tip into the communities when developing a product and share the MVP to find your first users.

This can be especially useful if your product caters to developers who look for tips or help in communities like Stack Overflow or on subreddits. Here is an example of how Tom Redman from Convex directed the discussion in the thread under their launch post on r/programming subreddit with more than 6 million members (thanks to Jakub Czakon for providing this example):

Source: https://www.markepear.com/example/great-reddit-post-from-convex#6 Embed yourself in the community [authentically]

Usersnap, part of the saas.group family, is an intuitive platform for product teams to collect and act on user feedback across the entire development lifecycle. Trusted by over 2,000 organizations, including Canva, Microsoft, BBC, Erste Bank, and Redhat, Usersnap helps connect directly with their target audience to discover the right problems, validate solutions during delivery, test before launch, and announce features & get feedback for adoption and iteration post-launch.

Usersnap has long worked closely with communities, but their CEO and CPO Shannon Vettes took this to an entirely new level. Here is her advice on how to build authentic relationships with communities:

Tip 1: Deeply give a crap, or you won’t be genuine.

Caring generates authenticity! I connect with product builders because I am one. We all wrestle with the same question: “Am I building the right thing?” Confidence is key, and poor choices can have lasting impacts.

Tip 2: Be legit, or they will quit.

Earn your stripes before you talk about them. It’s painfully obvious to me when someone hasn’t lived through what they are talking about - mastery is critical. I didn’t start publishing content until I was well over 10 years into product building because your audience is a b***sh** detector.

Tip 3: Share your struggle so they don’t have to.
The most valuable thing you can give to your community is in sharing how to avoid the struggle. Give away your hard-won advice to win rapport and trust. Don’t ask for something in return, just give because you want all the boats to rise with your tide. In my top 5 posts, I often shared things I did wrong, or mistakes I learned from to help others avoid them - and those were the most popular posts by far.

Tip 4: Go outside!

In-person events are the unsung hero of community building. Personal connections form stronger bonds than virtual ones. Can’t find an event? Create one. Pitch sponsors, find a venue, and bring your audience together. Leading events like Women in Product has been deeply rewarding for me and Usersnap.

Tip 5: Follow up, but not to sell something.

Nurture your connections over time. A simple “How’s it going?” a month or two after meeting shows you care. But if you follow up with a sales pitch, you’ll erode trust immediately. Keep it genuine, and relationships will flourish.

#7 Launch somewhere (& get online buzz)

Tally, a form-building tool, is a remarkable example of launching a self-serve product in a legacy-dominated market, previously served mainly by Google Forms and Typeform.

Bootstrapped by two founders, Tally prioritized simplicity and a generous free plan to attract over 250,000 users and reach $100K in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). By focusing on product-led growth and engaging actively with their community, they built a loyal user base that became their strongest advocates.

Tally differentiates by offering unlimited submissions for free and charging only for advanced functionalities, combined with an intuitive form builder that works like a text document. Its success underscores the power of user-centric design and organic growth.

Co-founder Marie Martens explains that Product Hunt launches were a very important part of their growth. They first rocked it in 2021 and for the launch of Tally 2.0 in 2023, it again brought them lots of additional online buzz and new users.

Tally’s MRR growth in their first year (source)#8 Full blown PR

With all the hype around generative AI and large language models (LLMs), the media is hungry for stories about “the next big thing”.

Perplexity, an LLM-powered search engine, is leveraging this trend by strategically using public relations (PR) to grow its presence and compete in the generative AI and search engine space. The company has embraced a high-profile approach, engaging with media and tech communities to highlight its innovative features, such as real-time search capabilities, source citations, and recently even shopping. These capabilities position Perplexity as a credible alternative to Google, especially for users seeking concise, sourced answers and advanced query handling.

Their PR campaigns have amplified both their strengths and their controversies. For example, initial criticism around content attribution was turned into an opportunity to showcase transparency improvements by incorporating source credits and partnerships with news organizations.

For Perplexity, embracing media interest and doubling down on PR is an important driver of user adoption. Their ability to position themselves as a disruptor while maintaining credibility through clear messaging has allowed them to remain relevant despite competition from giants like Google and OpenAI.

Perplexity’s product updates get tons of media coverage (source)#9 Influencers

Cello is a German B2B SaaS startup that raised 6.3 million € in seed funding. They help you launch referrals on autopilot - for your own product’s users, partners, influencers, and affiliates. In 2024, they have really been dogfooding 🐶.

Their head of marketing and people Philipp Neusser explains:
“As an early-stage company, you can create amazing content, but getting people to actually see it is the hard part. That’s why we work with all-star influencers who have a great product/ target audience fit. They help get our content out there - like featuring it in their Substack - and it also adds trust when people see their known faces on our website. It’s awesome for building brand awareness and, over time, brings in those high-value customers we’re after."

They worked with various top-notch B2B influencers, including Elena Verna, Aakash Gupta, Kyle Poyar, Maxim Poulsen and Kate Syuma, and created lots of long-term content assets with them. Here are some of Cello’s ballpark figures for content collaboration with tier-one influencers:

Impressions: 60k

Engagements: 780

Unique Visits: 360

Total Leads: 10

Total Qualified: 4

Thanks so much for the transparency. 🤘

#10 Grab attention [on the streets]

Especially if your message is locally relevant, it makes sense to think beyond digital and consider grabbing attention on the streets, like with billboards or even more guerilla tactics.

These campaigns can have spillover effects in the form of viral posts, and Head of Growth at Rows.com, Henrique Cruz, is a grand master of virality.

When Rows launched their next-generation spreadsheet software in 2022, they bought two digital billboards as close as possible to the Google and Microsoft HQs.

Their goal was to position Rows as the real alternative to Google Sheets and Excel. An important part of the campaign was then to share it on social media.

Physical-to-digital campaign by Rows resulted in lots of social media coverage - as well as 5k new sign-ups (source)

Two years later, the team still hears from new customers about how they first became aware of Rows with this billboard campaign.

#11 Hack a distribution channel

I do not know what French companies eat for lunch 🥖 🇫🇷, but they are among the most subversive and out-of-the-box GTM thinkers. After some heavy thinking, I decided to invite Favikon’s cofounder and CEO Jérémy Boissinot to pitch in and explain how to hack the distribution on LinkedIn.

Favikon is an influencer marketing platform on which you can find, analyze and manage your relationships with influencers. Here is how they hacked LinkedIn:

“Our viral rankings have become a powerful growth engine for Favikon, creating a self-sustaining loop where creators share their achievements, driving organic visibility, while brands subscribe to discover super-niche influencers. This dual-sided strategy not only attracts aspiring creators eager to be featured but also monetizes their ambitions through subscriptions, all while providing actionable insights to brands. By addressing both discovery and visibility needs, we’ve built a platform that maximizes value for creators and brands alike, fueling continuous growth and engagement,” explained Jérémy.

#12 Create a super-fan by over-servicing one customer at a time

Command AI (prev. CommandBar) is an AI-powered user assistance platform. In merely 4.5 years, the team has raised $24.5 million, and in October, Command AI was acquired by Amplitude.

Their product is used by support, product, growth, and marketing teams and embeds into your company’s product. Gusto, Freshworks, Yotpo, Superhuman and, many others use Command AI.

Customer obsession is in the DNA of the company.

Their CEO and co-founder James Evans explains:

“We serviced early customers furiously. We fell into a bit of a trap of trying to be "cute" about it, though — we undertook a lot of brain damage trying to categorize our early customer's requests as "good" requests or not. Were they asking for features we expected to be able to generalize to our other customers and our market? This caused a lot of paralysis.

After a while, we stopped this approach entirely and agreed to just roll out the red carpet for every customer, and reassess quarterly whether we were building toward a coherent product or not. We tried to solve the problem with sales and not product. If we felt like a customer wasn't a good fit, we wouldn't sell to them. But if they were, once we onboarded them, we treated them like royalty 👑.”

The key to exponential growth: Create synergies among GTM actions

You were right all along. There is no magic bullet. It is all about the intelligent orchestration of these tactics. None of them skyrockets your business as a stand-alone action - together, they create epic strategies.

If I had to derive a formula from all these 12 case studies, here is my v01:

Do something extraordinary (attention-worthy)

⬇️

Magnitude it up (attract attention)

⬇️

Harvest attention (capture leads or demand)

⬇️

Push the momentum till it fades. 🌬️

I had quite a challenge selecting the stories for this post.

There were so many good cases.

I decided to use mainly the ones from my network because I could make sure that we are fact-checking the information with CEOs and growth leaders instead of ChatGPT 😏- yeah, call me old school 🤘

What’s next?

This week, I published a guest post on Behind Product Lines Substack. If you’re ready to move from GTM Actions to full-blown GTM Motions, you will find actionable tips on how to select the ones that will work for you. Read it here.

If you need more go-to-market resources, it’s your last chance to catch my Black Friday promotion! The 100-step GTM Checklist is available at the best price ever ($67), and a mega-bundle of ALL my products can be yours for -60% off.

I hope you enjoyed this mega-post.

If you have more stories to share, please do so in the comments.

How did you or companies in your network get their first customers?

Bulletproof Your 2025 GTM Strategy

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Dear GTM Strategist! 

As we approach the grand finale of 2024, we inevitably have to hedge our go-to-market bets for 2025. 

With all the teams I am coaching, we use these three go-to-market principles to craft and execute winning go-to-market strategies: 

Radical focus inspired by the beachhead strategy 

Reverse-engineering the desired states (objectives) 

Make a promise and overdeliver on it 

You will learn to understand and implement these core principles in this post. 

I will also provide an example for each and offer some frameworks to implement these principles in your go-to-market strategy for 2025.

Also, don’t miss a sweet Black Friday deal (-60%) at the end of this post! 🖤

1) Radical focus inspired by beachhead strategy  

The mindset of scarcity and inability to choose because of loss aversion burns more promising technologies than the lack of product market fit.  

The mantra for 2025 is focus.

Focus is a friend. 

FOMO is the enemy. 

You can do anything, but you cannot do everything. 

It applies to everything - to your target market, GTM Motions selections, new product development strategic bets - the general rule is: Choose the action where you will most likely succeed. 

The beachhead strategy was used in WW2 when the Allies strategically selected 5 beaches in Normandy to enter Nazi-occupied France. They strategically selected them for their terrain and weak allocation of enemy forces there. When they attacked, they focused all their forces there, enabling them to conquer the beach. These beachheads became a stronghold area from which they advanced inwards until they liberated France and Europe. And the rest is history - but is it? 

The beachhead strategy is often used when a new player enters a saturated market. It is used by Uber, Google, Amazon, Meta, and many other companies. The point is that you find your “beach”. Usually, it has the following characteristics: 

High pain points - almost “shut up and take my money”.

Reasonable willingness to pay and relatively short sales cycles.

You have a proximity to the market, meaning you can conquer a significant share of it in the next 3-18 months (duration of your GTM Strategy).

This segment will create references and case studies (recommendations) to attract adjacent segments to your product. 

We usually select a small sub-segment of the underserved market with a larger TAM (Total Available Market) and good growth prospects. 

Example: One of the teams I am coaching builds a platform for creating AI agents as an AI application built on top of an AI model. You win using case studies and precise positioning. We had to limit their strategic focus from 14 use cases and market segments to three that we will strategically push with marketing, growth, and sales actions. That does not mean that it is not a “horizontal” solution. It could serve multiple use cases, but we have to get there by creating robust case studies in our beachhead segment and growing within it (easier) before we reinvest profits into expansion. The easiest thing to sell is “more of the same.”

2) Reverse-engineer the objectives

The strategy is the prioritization of finite resources against unlimited opportunities. As such, it is all about your best allocation of time, money, people, and attention to prioritizing the actions that will take you toward your desired objections. You state the objections, research and brainstorm “how to get there,” and find actions that will most likely achieve the desired outcome within reasonable resource constraints in a given time. 

Sounds simple. Why is it not? 

What I see in practice is that teams have problems defining the objectives. Sometimes, their analytics infrastructure is insufficient to provide them with intelligence that would really “move the needle” in their business. Other times, they are so occupied with business as it is that they find it hard to “think strategically”. 

While these are very intimate challenges that we tackle one-on-one with leaders, the best advice I can give is to ask yourself - what would move the needle in my business? Choose metrics that matter most, not some marginal improvements. Use divergent thinking to unlock big bets. The higher in the organization you are, the more it is needed to do so. 

“What are the must-win battles?” is one of my favorite questions during the strategy planning sessions. After we know them, we can prioritize based on “what is mission critical”. It provides wonderful clarity and excellent ground for prioritization that is understandable to everybody. 

The prioritization frameworks that I usually use are RICE - Reach, Impact, Confidence, Ease, but even a simple Value (how likely is this action going to take me to a desired outcome) vs. Effort (how cheap and easy is something to implement) matrix will help you get from overwhelmed to hyperfocused. 

Value vs. Effort - this simple prioritization exercise will bring clarity to your business. Here is an example for my Black Friday campaign.

Example: Last week, I was coaching a team in the fintech space. Their objective was to close 1200 new clients by the end of the year, and I kid you not - their to-do list of action points was 154 elements long. By doing some prioritization work, we narrowed it down to 18 critical actions they need to prioritize by the end of the year, assigned ownership, and duration. They are in the right formation to win now. Instead of scattering their resources among 154 to-dos, they are following an intelligent action plan to secure the objective we defined. 

3) Make a promise and overdeliver on it

Much has changed this year. Mainstream adoption of AI is changing the game of content creation and budgets. Barriers to new players entering the market are lower than ever. Customers are getting more sophisticated and picky when finding their go-to solutions. They may have been burned before, are rightfully skeptical, and we need to rebuild their trust. 

The most abstract way to see the business is the process of value exchange:

You have/do something that brings value, and I want to get this value. 

I will compensate you (pay) to deliver this value to me. 

But things get messy. Here are two main problems I see in practice: 

Companies have problems defining their UVP (unique value proposition) = your promise to the customer and their USPs 

Companies do not deliver on these promises, creating FUD - fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the market - making it even harder for everyone to compete. It becomes a negative spiral. 

Defining UVPs and USPs is not hard. I use this template, which is part of the Startup Positioning Framework by Andrej Persolja. 

Define your UVP (what is your promise to the customer) and USP (why you - why are you different/the best in delivering on this promise to them). Here is an example for my Black Friday offer. 

Being consistent in communicating and delivering them is hard. 

As we continue to develop our products and offers, the customer journey might no longer be aligned with our value-delivering method. In most extreme cases, the customer just wants something, and you must do it to stay in business.

The best way to optimize this is to reverse-engineer successfully monetized and retained customers. What shared action or experience did they have? Maybe they created their first dashboard on day 1, or maybe they built their first AI agent that delivered value (define value) to them in <30min. Ultimately, that would be your perfect onboarding experience, and you have to do what is mission-critical to get there.

I still do 10-15 calls and DM conversations with my customers weekly. I often check in on their progress, too, or send them additional resources/examples/hot tactics that are working for me right now. Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator, said: “As long as you talk to customers, you can solve any business problem.” I could not agree more.  

Example: I coach a team developing specialized analytical software in a highly technical vertical. They realized they were 5x more likely to close the deal if they got a prospect to demo. So, what are we doing in the foreseeable future? More demos! It is not “things that scale”. Ideally, this would be a product-led growth operation. However, because this is critical company infrastructure for decision-making and the solution is new to the market, prospects want and need more individual attention. We must respect that. Maybe we will have to reflect these pricing changes soon, but not before securing 200 paying customers. For them, we will do white-glove onboarding even for lower-tier accounts. We are still learning, and one day, these insights will give us the confidence to build an onboarding experience and traction when we no longer have to do so many demos. But we are not there yet. Therefore, one metric that matters right now is the number of weekly demos, with a target of 50.

Think about how you can implement these 3 principles in your business. If you apply at least one, I can assure you a positive ROI of your investment into studying this post. 

What else could I assure you? 

Best deal for all my assets this year: Black Friday -60% 🖤 

Go-to-Market Strategy is important, but what moves the needle in business is implementation - getting things done. 

Are you ready to take action? 

I just launched the sweetest deal in 2024: 60% off a collection of all GTM Strategist products that I launched this year. I continue to work to improve this material, and so far, they have helped more than 7500 companies build their go-to-market strategy.

VCs use them; field experts recommend them, and I have tested them all along with thousands of companies that have shortened their path to successful Go-to-Market Fit with these frameworks, workshops, assets, examples, and tools. 

I named this collection GTM in a Box, because it is everything you need to plan and execute go-to-market strategy for an insane price, valid only until December 2nd. There will be no better offer this year, and this is the biggest seasonal discount I will offer.

Secure your GTM in a Box:

Get it here

Let’s end 2024 strong! 

Get ready to win big in 2025. 

Ping me if you have any questions.

Maja

Celebrating One Year of GTM Strategist Book

Dear GTM Strategist!

I cannot believe it! It has been a year since the GTM Strategist first broke free from my computer to your bookshelves. 

And it has been a wild ride. Since many people have been pinging me to write a post on how to publish a book, this is a perfect occasion to look back and share some highs and lows of the book-writing journey. 

And you know my style - I will tell it like it is. In this Substack, you will find:

hands-on inspiration and motivation on how to survive a year of maker mode

tips and tricks on how to run a successful launch (yes, numbers included)

guidance on creating a sustainable business model in less than a year. 

I will break it down for you from the inception launch to the building and scaling a business out of an edu product. It is a bootstrapped business, and I have lived to tell this story. 

Here it is …

Thanks for reading GTM Strategist! Subscribe for free to receive new posts every Friday.

The inception: Maja, why don’t you write a book?

It was August 2022, and we were hanging out with some friends in our backyard. I love my countryside home dearly. It gave me peace, freedom of thinking and boredom needed to undertake this journey. 

While I was sharing my business adventures, one of our friends, Tim, interrupted my flow: 

“Maja, you are so into this - why don’t you write a book?” 

For a moment, this idea captured my mind, and I was thinking - why not 🤷… Maybe one day. 

But this thought became my brainworm and stuck with me. 

Why not? 

Writing a book was never “a purpose of my life”. I cynically think a book is an extended business care and a tough business to pull off. But if it is so “old school” - why do I keep thinking about it? 

So I did a little research. I asked a couple of my colleagues, such as Sean Ellis, Wes Bush, Morgan Brown, Ramli John, and Stoyan Yankov what is this book-writing journey all about and got some great tips and perspective. 

I got inspired and committed to the journey of writing a book.

But what book? What should I talk about? 

Solve a problem worth solving and solve it in a way that a person can DIY this 

As a pragmatist, I like practical literature. I judge every post, article, book and whitepaper by its ability to transform the way I think and work. And if I am doing it - I want it to bring transformation in people’s lives.

I did some soul-searching and talking with past clients and colleagues. I asked them a question: 

“What unique value did I bring you?”

Their answers were all over the place - from them naming me as a “business butterfly” 🦋, to the word energy ⚡ being used in every single review to an actually useful idea that “I can do a lot with very little and inspire the s*** out of teams to get work done”.

Oh, that was good! 

So where could I apply this? Where do we need to make the best out of any situation and resources while bringing the best out of people?

Hello, go-to-market. 

Now I had to inspect this from another angle - am I worthy to talk about go-to-market? Do I have relevant experience, proprietary ideas, and track record to take on this mission?

Looking back on my career, I was doing it the whole time, without knowing its name. My background is in growth. I love the scientific method, and absolutely adore the thought leaders in the industry but here was my big question - everybody told you you need a product market fit, but no one told you how to get there reliably and how to get your company ready for scaling.

Most of the hero stories out there were about Ubers, Dropboxes, and Airbnbs who were all VC-backed companies. And that is survivorship bias with examples from 10+ years ago.

I come from Europe. The capital is scarce and our mentality is more “I can tell you 100 reasons why not to do it instead of one good one why should you absolutely do it?”

That is a quest worth pursuing. 

I live for a good challenge; the ultimate challenge is winning against all odds.

Can you do it as an underdog? 

You say it is not possible? Watch me. 

A heart of the challenger. 

The other thing that resonated a lot was my love and affinity for freedom and creation. I sincerely believe that every good product deserves the best fighting chance. I am in love with the idea of helping people build and live their 3.0 lives - to become the best versions of themselves. 

This period, which I call “discovery,” lasted for two months (September 2022-November 2022).

OK, so now we have a title - now we need a book. 

One year of maker mode: How to develop a writing habit? 

While my friend Simon bluntly asked me - “Maja, why don’t you interview some people and train ChatGPT to write the book for you,” I knew that it was not the type of book that would make me proud. 

What would make me proud? I live by “world-class standard”. To create world-class products, services and ideas, you have to go all in. We still iterate, learning by doing and we can build in public, but the product has to be perfect enough - it has to wow people. Especially in the super crowded category of “selling books on Amazon” and as a first-time self-published author. 

Building products that make you proud takes time and iterations.

More importantly, it takes iron discipline and good habit creation. 

After studying Atomic Habits, I came to the conclusion that I first have to develop a writing habit. To sit down - look at that boring Google doc and do the work. Simple as that. 

I started to condition myself to spend every morning (my mental energy peak) doing the work or at least sitting down and not allowing myself to be distracted by other things. 

That was Sparta. Here is a very strict ritual I kept: 

Wake up at 5.00 to 6.00 and have coffee 

Go to your home office - do not check the phone 

Turn on Mozart and start typing 

Do it for at least 90 minutes in your pajamas - no time and decision-making power to waste 

Say hi to Anze (my husband) and walk the dogs 

Go back up to the office and clock at least 120 additional minutes of deep work

There were limitations I had to consider: 

To the best of my ability, it was impossible to squeeze more than 5 hours of focused work a day. 

Zero email and social media before noon. It hijacks the brain and scatters the attention you need for deep work.

There was a significant drop in productivity after lunch (I do intermediate fasting, which is a fancy word for skipping breakfast, for 15+ years, love it).

Since not every day was “perfect” in terms of the routine, I decided to also do writing (at least one slot) on weekends to never break the habit chain. 

The quality of the work was the next thing I had to improve. I am not a trained writer. I learned on the go. So, the GTM Strategist project overall had 953 pages and 3 evolutionary stages: 

Braindump: Stories from my work, what I think is true … It looked a little bit like this: “Back in 2016, I was in cold sweat when we were launching in some basement in Belgrade …” 

Encyclopedia: I did a bunch of expert interviews and researched many mental models. A “sample”: Yes - to make sense out of customer discovery, you can use assumption mapping (boom - 3 pages) and/or double diamond (another 5 pages) and make sure you are also keeping a backlog of insights.  

Handbook: Centered around the central model and with to-dos at the end of each chapter led to logical progression and finally achieved the vision of this book being a DIY manual on how to go to market for practitioners. 

And this lasted from November 2022 to July 2003.

It was a battle of discipline and willpower. I literally have to prove to myself that I can do it. 

Luckily, I had really awesome people (my family, friends, chapter reviewers, featured experts, community on LinkedIn, awesome editor and team members) to support me on this journey. 

I will forever be grateful for this. Yes, in my experience, it takes “a village” to write a book. 

I was SO happy when I received the first test print🎯 Mission critical: Get 2000 customers

Oh shit - I was writing this book since November 2022, and now it is July. 

I was off social media for months. 

Will people still remember I exist? 

Did I lose relevance and momentum?

All my efforts will go to waste if no one will read the book.

So, I put my marketing head back on and created a launch plan for the book.

As you know, I always like to start by reverse-engineering the objective.

I set my brain on the objective that I want to sell 2000 books by the end of 2023. 

The number was projected so that I could recover my initial 15K investment into the project (editing, design, first print batch, marketing expenses, etc.) - I did not even calculate my salary and opportunity costs. I just wanted to be break-even. 

I also knew that I wanted to make an Amazon bestseller. Upon gathering intelligence on how much sales of the book is needed to create the best seller on Amazon, I came to the conclusion that I have to sell 500 copies on the launch day to claim the badge. And I did not want to sell it dirt-cheap because I think it depreciates the value of the product. Let’s be honest - how many free ebooks have you read this year? I read two - did not like them. 

I projected that I need to sell 600 copies on the launch date (just to be safe) and that I need a waitlist of 3,000 people to make this happen (projected 20% conversion rate). I exported my contacts from Gmail and filtered them. I had approximately 300 people that I knew would be a great fit - how to get 2700 more was a critical question to tackle. 

So I went back to my target market. I did a simple experiment. I listed down all the potential “personas” who could be a good fit for my book and sent a video preview of the book to 50 “representatives of these profiles”. I mapped their feedback and color-coded it: 

Green = hell yes

Yellow = meh 

Red = hate it  

Here’s how I put the first feedback from different personas on a Miro board and color-coded it

I quickly realized that “personas” for the book are multiple-time founders, tech founders, product managers and empowered growth experts with a more holistic view on business. However, the book was not a “no-brainer” fit for people from hardware and “dropshipping (non-branded) ecommerce”. 

Next, I had to tackle the question: where can I find those people?

The answer was LinkedIn. I went all-in to content creation, collaborations and community building for the remaining 3 months to launch. The key call-to-action was “sign up for launch”. The beginning was slow and painful. But just like with writing, I became good by putting the reps in. 

Growth of the waiting list for my book launch

The planned launch was mid-November, just before Black Friday and Holidays. 

The workload was brutal. We were posting 2x a day, I was pitching podcasts, developing relationships with communities, we even did a mistake of launching our own podcast in that period and wasted resources on that (more about why I think this was foolish some other time), but luckily things worked out according to the plan. 

I wish I could give you a better explanation - but all I really cared about at that point was that I finally got some good feedback after spending a year in maker mode with completely delayed gratification. You can imagine how happy was I to finally see some signals that we are onto something good here… 

So we survived the launch … only to realize that:

Selling books on Amazon is not a sustainable business model for my product vision

My brother Jure Knehtl, a seasoned e-commerce entrepreneur with 2 exits under his belt, asked me the best question possible after the launch:

“Maja, what kind of life do you want to live now?”

I was speechless. 

Being so focused on mission-critical: “Sell 2000 copies by the end of the year”, I really did not have the bandwidth to dream what my life will be after the launch. 

So Jure helped me understand some strategic options: 

You can be a professional speaker and travel around the world to do keynotes and costly workshops - meh, not for me, I like living and working in the tranches

You can create a kick-ass funnel, and you create a portfolio of digital products that will help people to DIY this, but you will have to invest a lot more into the operation - good but scary before I can recover my initial investment 

Take some time off and relax - find your new mission. Hell, no! If you launch something, you should promote it. Best-selling author of 1-page marketing plan Allan Dib told me that a book is a 2-5 year project. He was right. I have to ride the momentum and make the best out of this business. No matter how tired I am. New mission critical: Build a sustainable business out of this operation. 

So digital funnel or a value ladder was my new mission for 2024. I am happy to share numbers.

If I sell 100 books on Amazon, I make $900. Amazon’s fees are crazy, but I will continue to sell there because it is the only way how I can get your printed copies without turning my house into a storage and shipping unit. And this is really not my vision of the business. 

But I would also like to grow this business, hire new team members and get customer data to have an opportunity to speak to my customers (I get zero customer data from Amazon) - the best I can do is to offer free resources to download in a book and if someone connects with me on LinkedIn. 

GTM Strategist deserves better, so I invested another 20K in building a value ladder to turn the “book project” into a sustainable business operation.

In 2024, we launched 3 new products in the GTM family: 

GTM Strategist bundle: an enhanced digital version of the GTM Strategist book with additional resources and a quick-start video.

GTM Checklist: 100-step checklist tested on 750+ launches with templates (emails, launch plans, posts, landing pages), which will guide you from getting ready to launch to an impactful launch and scaling stage.

GTM Bootcamp: 5-hour deep-dive into GTM strategy that guides you to choose ICP (target market), pricing, positioning & selection of best GTM Motion (channels, tactics).

And I can finally say that we have a sustainable business. 

We grow organically with LinkedIn, through partnerships, and with Meta ads.

And I can finally sleep easily knowing that we have secured product market fit. 

Or can I?

Nope - I had to defend it every single day. 

Show up and do the work. 

This is not some passive income dream, but honest and hard work of helping more than 10,000 companies cross the chasm. The mission is never done. But I did learn to balance. New in Q4 - I can take every second weekend off 🤠- still grinding, but I am happy to see this venture grow and evolve. 

Me being “smart” about my business after a year in the GTM Strategist venture

A French podcaster Carlota Güell, Product Marketing Manager at Decathlon,  asked me a really interesting question last week: “What would you do differently now?”

Upon reflection, there are 3 things I will do better if I ever get on this journey again: 

Start promoting the book way sooner - at least 6 months.

When you launch, go on a book tour immediately. Have everything planned out.

Double down on the funnel from the beginning on. Don’t overthink about how to write a book - you can hire an editor to help you. Think more about how to build a business. 

And to celebrate this launch with the community - here are some gifts 🎁: 

I improved one of my most popular frameworks. Here are 3 new examples of Power Hour: one pre-product market fit, one is ours (at product market fit), and cofounder of folk CRM did the third one (post-product market fit - how to get to 10K customers).

Announcement of the announcement: With my 🇪🇸 partner Product Hackers, we will launch the Spanish version of the GTM Strategist. The launch event will be in Barcelona on December 11th. I will keep you posted. If you are there, let’s shake hands and exchange some GTM gems.

If you missed my presentation on how AI products go to market in Dublin or Bologna, you can watch the recording here: 

 GTM Strategist methodology keeps on getting momentum. I was proud to share my take on go-to-market strategies for AI products with G2. Read the interview here: https://learn.g2.com/professional-spotlight-maja-voje  

And something that I failed to deliver: I wanted to surprise you with an AI agent to celebrate this milestone, but the MVP was not world-class. I do not want to launch half-baked products. We will take more time to make it perfect enough, but it is rolling in our backlog. Will keep on pushing!

If you have any questions, just hit reply. I am happy to chat now that I have better structured my thoughts.

Last but not least—this post would NEVER happen if it were not for you.

Your support, interest and feedback made it all possible. Thank you for sharing this journey with me. 

Love from Maja and the GTM Strategist team

Thanks for reading GTM Strategist! Subscribe for free to receive new posts every Friday.

From Engaged Lead (MQL) 🧲 to Closed Deal 💰

What is my promise to you (UVP):

In this Substack, you will learn: 

How to qualify and enrich the engaged leads and book meetings using a viral LinkedIn post case study

How to run a sales meeting 

How to close the deal 

How is this post different (USPs):

Why should you pay attention to this one: 

Short and sweet case study from my lead magnet 

Proven assets you can use (5x sales decks + 2x sales script) 

Derived from practical insights, not theory or survey answers. 

Up for it?

Dear GTM Strategist!

We went viral on LinkedIn with sales decks, so I got your hint—you want more hands-on tips on becoming a better seller that you can implement in your business today. 

I've got you covered. 💜

You can still grab my sales deck template here: https://gtmstrategist.kit.com/sales-decks

But hey - the last time I checked, I could not buy groceries 🍌 with likes, comments, and impressions - so how do I channel this momentum into tangible business opportunities?

We have three jobs to be done: 

Qualify and enrich the engaged leads so you do not waste my time meetings 💩 leads  (some people just have time to waste - you don't - focus on your ICP) 

How do you book a meeting to provide mutual value - forget “book a demo” 🗓️ 

How to close the deal = money in your bank account 💰

Let’s learn how to get this done. 

Qualifying leads 1.0: ICP for the win 👑 and avoid shit leads (pardon my French)

OK - after this post “went viral,” it is time to make sense of its success. 

I have already seen some spikes: 

1000+ new followers 

40% sales increase in our digital products funnel month-over-month

4 new inbound leads for consulting. 

This is great. 

But there is more I can do with this.

I started the lead qualification. 

This time, I tested a tool, Leadspicker, which is an excellent software that removes the monkey work of me manually checking out 1000+ profiles, enriching them, and seeing if they are ICP. 

From 1000-something people who engaged, there were 175 opportunities that are a good fit according to my very stiff definition of ICP - now, what to write to them?

The stupidest thing I could do is send them: 
“Hey, I hoped you liked my sales decks. Wanna grab a 15-minute virtual coffee to meet ☕?” 

This could actually result in some meetings, but there is so much more we can do.

Instead, I came up with this idea: 

This is done with https://leadspicker.com/

I could add these data to remarketing lists and start advertising, but I prefer to operate in DMs (faster feedback loops 🔁). 

The results? 10 more meetings booked, so instead of 4 inbound leads from the campaign, we now have 14. 🎉

Me likey. 👍

Now, what to say at those meetings to convert? 

How to run a sales meeting like a pro: 2 proven scripts for products and services 🔴  

Listen to your customer - yes, always.

Align references, examples, and case studies in your sales deck with what they will relate to.  

Come to the sales meeting prepared. 

Avoid chit-chatting about “scuba diving trip to the Canary Islands, how cats are the best, and what the weather in the UK is” for over half of the meeting to avoid selling - you can do a warm-up for up to 5 min - and then you have sales to do. You should be in control.  

Now, how exactly to coordinate this meeting? What to say? 

I asked my colleague Pramod Rapeti, Head of Growth at MeetRecord, to give us some insights based on their analysis of 70 million touch points, 3 million hours of conversations, and 150k opportunities.

We created two proven sales scripts for selling products and services. You can access them here: https://gtmstrategist.kit.com/sales-script

Get a free sales script

Access proven sales scripts here: https://gtmstrategist.kit.com/sales-script

Follow these blueprints if you do not know what to say at sales calls. They will supercharge the effectiveness of your sales meetings and make you a better closer. 

You can additionally check your sales script following the CLOSER framework by Alex Hormozi: 

Clarify their purpose

Label their problem 

Overview past pain 

Sell them “the vacation,” aka ideal solution/perfect worlds 

Explain what their concerns 

Reinforce their decision  

By the way, Alex Hormozi’s firm Gymlaunch was one of MeetRecord’s first customers. 💪

📦 Big Black Box: You had a great sales meeting - now what? 

True direct response legends can sell on the spot. They get the prospect to swipe the card immediately and pre-buy. 

But you and I work in tech, so we know this is impossible.

We often deal with complex buying cycles and multiple decision-makers/buying committees.

Because of that, there will be a little “limbo” between your sales call and purchase completed. 

The best advice I can give you: 

Follow up the same day with the arranged extra assets (offer/sales deck/one pager/case studies - whatever you agreed on)

Check-in in 3 working days if all is good and if they need anything else

The more you can use templates, the better. 

But make sure you personalize every offer you make. AI tools make this a lot easier.

 I will have to leave you with a cliffhanger here 🧗

Because I really need you to get your sales deck and sales script in order first.

In 14 days, we will continue our sales discussion with more insights on how to sell like a PRO. I will also share my results of testing MeetRecord for a month and give you some very hands-on tips on how to continuously improve your sales process. 

Join me in this experiment.

Take MeetRecord for a spin - 600 minuets of FREE sales calls recording will give you good insights on how and where you can improve and you will never miss a follow up email again. Click here to get 20% off on annual subscriptions for Professional, Business, and Enterprise plans.

Other updates:

Next week, I will be the keynote speaker at Product Management Day in Bologna 🇮🇹. If you are from Italy and work in product management, you should not miss it - it’s THE product event in Italy.

Kyle Poyar published my guest post on his Growth Unhinged Substack. This was on my 2024 bucket list since I am a huge fan of Growth Unhinged. I am so happy we made it happen. Hopefully your community will find our take on how to build GTM strategy from scratch helpful.

Next week, we will celebrate 1st anniversary of the GTM Strategist book, so stay tuned for more value-packed content - especially if you’re interested in learning more how to launch a book or a similar knowledge asset.

Now, go, go and close! 

It is the closing season 🤠

Build yourself a fantastic pipeline for 2025 and make it your best year so far. 

Let’s go to market!

Maja 

Are you ready to dive deeper and work on your Go-To-Market strategy and execution?

Discover my solutions that support your journey from launching to scaling:

[BESTSELLER] 🏆 Ready to win: Tackle the most pressing Go-to-Market issues such as selection of ICP, positioning, how to get customers, build teams and select proven ways how to go to market. Book a 90-minute hands-on consultation with Maja, get personalized guidance, a Miro board, and reliable vendor contacts for further work.

Want to bullet-proof your 2025 strategy? Book a session ($500)

🛰️ Explorer: Understand Go-To-Market and develop a winning GTM plan.
Get best selling GTM Strategist book + 20 frameworks (workshops) + online course ($47). Tested by 7500+ companies

🚀 Doer: Leverage the 100-step GTM Checklist tested on 750+ launches with templates (emails, launch plans, posts, landing pages), which will guide you from getting ready to launch to an impactful launch and scaling stage.
Get the Checklist ($97)

💫 Leader: Guide your team to successfully choose ICP (target market), pricing, positioning & selection of best GTM Motion (channels, tactics). GTM Bootcamp includes 5 hours of applicable videos and a personal Miro board.
Get the Bootcamp ($347)

From engaged lead (MQL) 🧲 to closed deal 💰

What is my promise to you (UVP):

In this Substack, you will learn: 

How to qualify and enrich the engaged leads and book meetings using a viral LinkedIn post case study

How to run a sales meeting 

How to close the deal 

How is this post different (USPs):

Why should you pay attention to this one: 

Short and sweet case study from my lead magnet 

Proven assets you can use (5x sales decks + 2x sales script) 

Derived from practical insights, not theory or survey answers. 

Up for it?

Dear GTM Strategist!

We went viral on LinkedIn with sales decks, so I got your hint—you want more hands-on tips on becoming a better seller that you can implement in your business today. 

I've got you covered. 💜

You can still grab my sales deck template here: https://gtmstrategist.kit.com/sales-decks

But hey - the last time I checked, I could not buy groceries 🍌 with likes, comments, and impressions - so how do I channel this momentum into tangible business opportunities?

We have three jobs to be done: 

Qualify and enrich the engaged leads so you do not waste my time meetings 💩 leads  (some people just have time to waste - you don't - focus on your ICP) 

How do you book a meeting to provide mutual value - forget “book a demo” 🗓️ 

How to close the deal = money in your bank account 💰

Let’s learn how to get this done. 

Qualifying leads 1.0: ICP for the win 👑 and avoid shit leads (pardon my French)

OK - after this post “went viral,” it is time to make sense of its success. 

I have already seen some spikes: 

1000+ new followers 

40% sales increase in our digital products funnel month-over-month

4 new inbound leads for consulting. 

This is great. 

But there is more I can do with this.

I started the lead qualification. 

This time, I tested a tool, Leadspicker, which is an excellent software that removes the monkey work of me manually checking out 1000+ profiles, enriching them, and seeing if they are ICP. 

From 1000-something people who engaged, there were 175 opportunities that are a good fit according to my very stiff definition of ICP - now, what to write to them?

The stupidest thing I could do is send them: 
“Hey, I hoped you liked my sales decks. Wanna grab a 15-minute virtual coffee to meet ☕?” 

This could actually result in some meetings, but there is so much more we can do.

Instead, I came up with this idea: 

This is done with https://leadspicker.com/

I could add these data to remarketing lists and start advertising, but I prefer to operate in DMs (faster feedback loops 🔁). 

The results? 10 more meetings booked, so instead of 4 inbound leads from the campaign, we now have 14. 🎉

Me likey. 👍

Now, what to say at those meetings to convert? 

How to run a sales meeting like a pro: 2 proven scripts for products and services 🔴  

Listen to your customer - yes, always.

Align references, examples, and case studies in your sales deck with what they will relate to.  

Come to the sales meeting prepared. 

Avoid chit-chatting about “scuba diving trip to the Canary Islands, how cats are the best, and what the weather in the UK is” for over half of the meeting to avoid selling - you can do a warm-up for up to 5 min - and then you have sales to do. You should be in control.  

Now, how exactly to coordinate this meeting? What to say? 

I asked my colleague Pramod Rapeti, Head of Growth at MeetRecord, to give us some insights based on their analysis of 70 million touch points, 3 million hours of conversations, and 150k opportunities.

We created two proven sales scripts for selling products and services. You can access them here: https://gtmstrategist.kit.com/sales-script

Get a free sales script

Access proven sales scripts here: https://gtmstrategist.kit.com/sales-script

Follow these blueprints if you do not know what to say at sales calls. They will supercharge the effectiveness of your sales meetings and make you a better closer. 

You can additionally check your sales script following the CLOSER framework by Alex Hormozi: 

Clarify their purpose

Label their problem 

Overview past pain 

Sell them “the vacation,” aka ideal solution/perfect worlds 

Explain what their concerns 

Reinforce their decision  

By the way, Alex Hormozi’s firm Gymlaunch was one of MeetRecord’s first customers. 💪

📦 Big Black Box: You had a great sales meeting - now what? 

True direct response legends can sell on the spot. They get the prospect to swipe the card immediately and pre-buy. 

But you and I work in tech, so we know this is impossible.

We often deal with complex buying cycles and multiple decision-makers/buying committees.

Because of that, there will be a little “limbo” between your sales call and purchase completed. 

The best advice I can give you: 

Follow up the same day with the arranged extra assets (offer/sales deck/one pager/case studies - whatever you agreed on)

Check-in in 3 working days if all is good and if they need anything else

The more you can use templates, the better. 

But make sure you personalize every offer you make. AI tools make this a lot easier.

 I will have to leave you with a cliffhanger here 🧗

Because I really need you to get your sales deck and sales script in order first.

In 14 days, we will continue our sales discussion with more insights on how to sell like a PRO. I will also share my results of testing MeetRecord for a month and give you some very hands-on tips on how to continuously improve your sales process. 

Join me in this experiment.

Take MeetRecord for a spin - 600 minuets of FREE sales calls recording will give you good insights on how and where you can improve and you will never miss a follow up email again. Click here to get 20% off on annual subscriptions for Professional, Business, and Enterprise plans.

Other updates:

Next week, I will be the keynote speaker at Product Management Day in Bologna 🇮🇹. If you are from Italy and work in product management, you should not miss it - it’s THE product event in Italy.

Kyle Poyar published my guest post on his Growth Unhinged Substack. This was on my 2024 bucket list since I am a huge fan of Growth Unhinged. I am so happy we made it happen. Hopefully your community will find our take on how to build GTM strategy from scratch helpful.

Next week, we will celebrate 1st anniversary of the GTM Strategist book, so stay tuned for more value-packed content - especially if you’re interested in learning more how to launch a book or a similar knowledge asset.

Now, go, go and close! 

It is the closing season 🤠

Build yourself a fantastic pipeline for 2025 and make it your best year so far. 

Let’s go to market!

Maja 

Are you ready to dive deeper and work on your Go-To-Market strategy and execution?

Discover my solutions that support your journey from launching to scaling:

[BESTSELLER] 🏆 Ready to win: Tackle the most pressing Go-to-Market issues such as selection of ICP, positioning, how to get customers, build teams and select proven ways how to go to market. Book a 90-minute hands-on consultation with Maja, get personalized guidance, a Miro board, and reliable vendor contacts for further work.

Want to bullet-proof your 2025 strategy? Book a session ($500)

🛰️ Explorer: Understand Go-To-Market and develop a winning GTM plan.
Get best selling GTM Strategist book + 20 frameworks (workshops) + online course ($47). Tested by 7500+ companies

🚀 Doer: Leverage the 100-step GTM Checklist tested on 750+ launches with templates (emails, launch plans, posts, landing pages), which will guide you from getting ready to launch to an impactful launch and scaling stage.
Get the Checklist ($97)

💫 Leader: Guide your team to successfully choose ICP (target market), pricing, positioning & selection of best GTM Motion (channels, tactics). GTM Bootcamp includes 5 hours of applicable videos and a personal Miro board.
Get the Bootcamp ($347)

Do You Have an Acquisition Problem or a Sales Problem?

This post is my first ever post on sales. It aims to bring you the following insights: 

A short diagnosis - Quiz: Should you first solve an Acquisition or a Sales problem? 

3 lessons that everyone should know about sales 

V01 of the founder-led sales process for go-to-market - how I DIY-ed my sales processes and added a feedback loop

Bonus: A sales deck template with 5 great examples 

Experiment with me: In November, I will record all my sales calls with MeetRecord to get AI-based insights into what I can do better as a seller. Are you with me? 

Dear GTM Strategist! 

Never would I ever imagine that I could have a sales problem. 

I was one of the wacko entrepreneurial kids. 

My early ventures included:

Event management 🤡: Organizing puppet shows for the neighborhood (Pro tip: raffles during the breaks were a huge money maker) 

Direct to consumer sales 💐: Dealing freshly picked flowers from my field to relatives

International ventures 🐚: Selling seashells at the promenade to tourists with other entrepreneurial kids from Eastern Europe. We did not speak the same language. We still made enough money for ice cream. 

My life-long love for entrepreneurship made my relationship with sales very simple. 

No sales = No business. 

Yup, you have to do sales to do business. It is what it is. 

I believed all I had to do was just follow the general wisdom of value exchange with customers: 

Listen to the customer

Solve their problems 

Teach, do not sell, aka challenger sales 

But life taught me it is a little more complicated than that. 

Sometimes, the market pulls you in unwanted directions and sends mixed signals… 

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford

Suppose strategy is all about prioritizing the limited resources to create the best results in a given situation and solving the right problem at the right time. 

Yes, listen to the customer. 

But make damn sure that it is your ICP and that you are not diverting too much from your product and business vision. 

Focus is a friend, and FOMO is the enemy. 

Before we go into the nitty gritty of sales, let’s diagnose if you even have a sales problem or is it better for you to continue working on your ICP, positioning and acquisition strategy to get more “input” for your sales process. 

Quick Quiz: Do you have an acquisition or a sales problem? 

The other day, I talked to Anthony Pierri, co-founder at Fletch, and expressed my frustrations with founder-led sales with this doodle: 

You built something cool - now you need to sell it. Is the problem just getting people interested in what you built or does your sales process need work?

In most simple words, I could describe this “OMG what am I looking at” image as: 

You built something cool. Now you need customers. 

You need people to visit your website and book a call/demo.
(That is the acquisition problem - you can do it yourself or outsource it, as long as it gets the job done.) 

Now you need to know how to make the “best out of the call” so you do not waste half of the meeting talking about “weather in the UK ☔” or nerd out about 51 features without letting the other party speak.  

(Now, my friend, we are fixing the sales problem.)   

Do not overthink this. I created a mini self-evaluation quiz to help you solve this dilemma. Rate each of the statements below based on your experience:

Answer "Yes" if the statement applies to you (0 points)

Answer "No" if the statement doesn't apply to you (2 points)

Statements:

I often feel that the market does not want what I sell. My traffic is very low while competitors are killing it.  

I have no predictable and scalable ways how to get customers. I live from one deal to another. 

My scheduling link is wide open 🦗. No one books the meetings. 

People often do not show up for the calls/demos they booked. 

It takes me forever to close the deal (more than 6 months). 

My closing rate from sales meetings is <30%. 

I have to personally sell a service/product for <1000$ to get sales.

Prospects often ghost me 👻 after we talk. I don’t hear back from them.  

I have to fight for every single sale. Nearly no one repeats the purchase or refers others. I am under constant pressure. 

If you scored <14, you most likely have an acquisition problem. Also, check if your offer is off, if you are pitching to the wrong audience, and if positioning and messaging are clear and ICP centered. 

But if you have seen that Go-to-Market components are already coming together nicely (score 14+), and the top of the funnel looks good, you can create a lot of impact in fixing the sales problem. 

That was precisely my situation in September and October. For the first time in my life, I had a sales problem. 

Want to go on this journey together? It is all about feedback loops 🔁

Join me on my mission to record and analyze sales calls. I listen to at least 5 sales calls a week and spend 8 hours analyzing them. This is how I learn to do better. I was doing this manually for myself and founders in my network whenever we felt we had a “sales problem”. We learned so much, but it was not scalable and I have some biases in self-analysis. 

I am testing MeetRecord software that gives suggestions on improving your sales meetings and was super impressed that Alex Hormozi, the ultimate sales machine, uses it with his team. If it is good enough for him, it is good enough for me. After two weeks of testing it, here are my scores. I am trying to get better and better at this. 

Record 600 minutes of your meetings and see where you can improve your selling skills to drive more conversions from your meeting, and let me know how it goes. My top score is 4 right now. Can you beat me to it? 

Sales lessons for people who do not like sales (+ Sales Deck Template) 

Look, I get it. Nearly no one went to business to do sales. It has a weird rep. There is fear of rejection, and many people in tech even feel intellectually superior to do sales. HUGE mistake. Sales is where you meet the customer in the tranches and learn a ton.  

As a founder or a department lead, you will have to understand and participate in the sales process. At least in earlier, discovery stages, where you are still learning who the customer is, what would they like to buy and how would they like to buy it.

Here are three sales lessons I learned on my journey. 

None of them is repulsive or ethically questionable. 

Lesson #1: Leads that contact you want solutions NOW - not in a month.

In September, I was busy working on our products and forming new partnerships, and I did not manage to make many sales calls (maker mode) 🙈. Some opportunities died off - others I could restore. My unwillingness to take sales calls combined with my 7-day response time killed many opportunities. The longer you procrastinate with your response, the less likely it is that you are going to make a sale. 

Need for speed is true when it comes to sales (source)Lesson #2: There is a knowledge asymmetry between a seller and a buyer.

You have to lead the sales call. You must prepare an environment where customers feel comfortable and secure enough to buy. Preparation is crucial. You do not just come to a sales call to do a “demo of the 45 product features” or be there for Q&A session. You have to dive deep into the problem, understand the competitive alternatives (how else can they solve this problem), have ready relatable case studies, and be prepared to answer customers' questions.

In other words, you need a Sales Deck. 

Access this Miro board for free: https://gtmstrategist.kit.com/sales-decks

I recently read April Dunford’s best-selling book, The Sales Pitch. Based on her principles and best practices from my network, I created this free practical guide for how you can create or improve your sales deck (with examples and structure that you can follow). Hope you will love it.

Get the sales deck template

Lesson number 3: Kiss the mental garbage goodbye 😘 - Sell. 

If I could teach one superpower to my portfolio companies, sales would be it. So many smart people are self-sabotaging themselves when it comes to sales. Look, it is not rocket science and you can learn how to do it. People with much lower IQs than you are doing it well, and so can you. Stop overthinking it. You are definitely not “too good to do sales”. 

I listen to many demos and sales calls from my teams. Fixing the sales process is one of the fastest ways to secure more revenue and growth for them.

These are common mistakes that I have observed in my business practice: 

Jumping into a demo before even understanding if the client has this problem and how it manifests in their business 

Read the sales scripts 

Talk for more than 10 minutes without letting the other party talk

Sugarcoat the objections - if a client needs a feature, saying that it is in your “pipeline” will not be a good enough reason to buy

Avoid talking about the prices and offers 

Sending the offers too late 

Luring the deal with discounts when the client never asked for them 

And so many more. I get it - sales are hard. Fear of rejection is a very paralyzing feeling and to my best knowledge, the only way to beat it includes shock therapy of confronting this fear. To just do sales. 

Think about sales as this: 

You know something is a good idea. Now you can help other people to improve their life by embracing this idea. 

If you really think about this, you have been selling all your life: 

You sold your parents the idea that you can do out on Fridays.

You sold your idea of how you can help their business to an employer.

You sold the idea of living together, getting married or create a family to your partner.

Now, let’s focus your natural sales talents on a mission to grow your business. 

V01 Founder-led sales process: My November 2024 Sales Stack

Yes, I am still the one doing all my sales. Sometimes, I work with my business development partners for other geographies or niches, but 95% of the time, you will have a sales call with me. Why? Am I too cheap to hire proper salespeople? 

No. I would love to scale my sales process, but not before I know that it can be scalable. There are jobs to be done (most likely by a founder) before you can bring big sales guns to the business: 

Effective tech stack to capture and process the lead - as you know there is a need for speed in the sales process. You have to make yourself available. Tools, templates, and automation can help you complete this job effectively and efficiently. Make it easy for a customer to buy from you. I recently launched this landing Notion page for my 90-min Go-to-Market consultation. There is a demo, testimonials, it is easy to book and most importantly - it converts at 11%, which is great. Most people do not go to “15 min coffee chats” with strangers and have better things to do in life than watching random demos. Tell them what is in it for them and show evidence that you can deliver on this promise. 

Qualification process - the last thing you want to do is to lose time on sales calls with someone who is not your ICP and cannot buy for you. You need to be super-focus and careful where you allocate your sales efforts when you are scarce on resources. Spraying and praying is not a good strategy. For that, you need a well-structured ICP. Here are the methods that can help you validate your ICP. 

Standardized sales documents and processes - today, I shared the sales deck template with you, but I am also working on a Sales Script and Deal Room with my partners. I will keep on sharing these materials with you on Substack and LinkedIn.

Follow up, upsell, retargeting and referral sequences - When you make the first sale it is just the beginning of your relationship with a customer. An average customer acquisition cost for a B2B client is $700 (Dreamdata, 2024). You have to optimize for LTV (lifetime value) or similar retention metrics. Eventually, you will need to invest in expanding the sales process to new deals and building up the LTV of existing clients. 

Here is my business “in a box”. This is how I work.

Even though my close rate is very high at the moment, as the company is growing, we need to structure the sales process much better and start building fundamentals from “founder-led growth” to a more scalable process. I do not want to use morbid comparisons like - what about if I get hit by a bus tomorrow - but you know what I mean. 

Cool - hope you liked this one. Let me know in the comments. Sales are a new subject for us to talk about, but hey - we have covered so many Go-to-Market motions so far that it was above time to scratch the surface of “what happens next”. 

Good luck closing & remember, you have been doing sales all your life. 

Now buckle up and let’s transfer this knowledge to create growth in your business!

Are you ready to dive deeper and work on your Go-To-Market strategy and execution?

Discover my solutions that support your journey from launching to scaling:

🛰️ Explorer: Understand Go-To-Market and develop a winning GTM plan.
Get best selling GTM Strategist book + 20 frameworks (workshops) + online course ($47). Tested by 7500+ companies

🚀 Doer: Leverage the 100-step GTM Checklist tested on 750+ launches with templates (emails, launch plans, posts, landing pages), which will guide you from getting ready to launch to an impactful launch and scaling stage.
Get the Checklist ($97)

💫 Leader: Guide your team to successfully choose ICP (target market), pricing, positioning & selection of best GTM Motion (channels, tactics). GTM Bootcamp includes 5 hours of applicable videos and a personal Miro board.
Get the Bootcamp ($347)

[BESTSELLER] 🏆 Ready to win: Tackle the most pressing Go-to-Market issues such as selection of ICP, positioning, how to get customers, build teams and select proven ways how to go to market. Book a 90-minute hands-on consultation with Maja, get personalized guidance, a Miro board, and reliable vendor contacts for further work.

Want to bullet-proof your 2025 strategy? Book a session ($500)

How RevOps Brings Your ABM Strategy to Life

In this Substack, you will learn:

What are the best practices of Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

The function of RevOps and their role in the go-to-market strategy

How to set up ABM tech stack, even if you are just starting out

Account-Based Marketing is a highly targeted go-to-market motion where businesses focus their marketing efforts on specific high-value accounts or organizations, rather than on broader audiences.

We didn’t cover ABM in-depth yet, so I invited Haris Odobasic, co-founder at Revenue Wizards, to prepare a guest post.

Haris helps leading B2B SaaS companies grow revenue and is a top authority on RevOps, a strategic and operational support function connected with ABM.

Sarah, working for a large advertising company, is searching for customer retention software. Retaining clients has become a challenge. You, as an ABM pro, already have her account marked to be in the consideration stage, as she perfectly fits your ICP. That’s why she saw a video guide on customer retention on Facebook. Now, she’s on your website, greeted by the message, “We understand the challenges advertising companies face in retaining customers.” She scrolls and sees case studies of how you helped a competitor. Intrigued, she reads further when a chatbot pops up, offering more industry-specific info. Sarah is hooked and books a demo for the next day. Oh, and though your company is based in New York, Sarah is in France—her entire experience was in French.

That’s the power of a world-class, data-driven Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy, enabled through RevOps and executed by Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success.

ABM and RevOps Strategy

Let’s align on definitions: Gartner defines ABM as a go-to-market strategy targeting certain accounts with coordinated, ongoing marketing and sales activities. This approach works for both new and existing accounts. For example, upselling products to key accounts through a focused ABM campaign.

RevOps, meanwhile, is a strategic and operational support function that helps GTM teams improve business impact and customer experience by leveraging enablement, process, technology, and data insights. To make ABM work, you need all these tools, but strategy comes first.

Invest in Strategy

ABM and RevOps both require commitment and investment. Half-baked efforts, done just because they’re trendy, yield mediocre results. Treat them as strategic investments, and you’ll join the many companies already succeeding in this space. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 75% of all high-growth companies will have a RevOps department, and HubSpot reports that 67% of brands are already using an ABM strategy.

If you haven’t started with ABM yet, let this be your motivation. However, keep in mind that ABM isn't for every B2B business. ABM expert Wouter Dieleman recommends having an Annual Contract Value (ACV) of at least $50,000, with ideal results above $100,000. For a simple ABM pilot, expect to invest at least $15,000 and 500 hours of team effort. Surprised? Don’t worry, at the end I show you how I hacked an ABM strategy for $0 and smaller ACVs.

In the rest of the blog, I will explain to you the RevOps perspective on enabling an ABM strategy. I will not cover ABM strategy in this blog. With strategy I mean, what content to show at what point to which prospects, in which channel to engage them, or how to know who your ICP is in the first place. My focus is on how RevOps enables ABM. Ready?

Foundations Before Advanced Strategies

At Revenue Wizards, we remind clients: “You can’t run before you walk.” Advanced strategies like ABM require strong foundations. Other advanced processes like predictive forecasting, automated invoicing, live target tracking, and AI applications all build on these basics.

Here’s how foundational work impacts ABM:

Your ABM tech stack

While process usually comes before tech, ABM is an exception. To succeed, you need a best-in-class tech stack. The keyword for ABM is intent—knowing an account is in the market before they reach out.

You heard before that 70% of purchase decisions are made before talking to sales. We want to tap into those 70%. Maybe reach prospects at 30-40% mark. This is the game changer of ABM.

Solutions like 6sense uncover intent by tracking customer behaviors and keywords, while Mutiny personalizes your website for each ICP. Chatbots, such as Drift or Qualified, engage prospects based on their stage in the buyer’s journey. A Customer Data Platform (CDP) like Segment captures and organizes all this data, and revenue intelligence software like Clari or People.ai provides AI-driven insights to optimize account targeting.

Now, this is a best-in class ABM techstack to accomplish that I illustrated in the opening story. In addition, you will need a CRM, Marketing Automation Platform, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a data enrichment tool like Cognism or Apollo, and advertisement tools for your relevant platform like LinkedIn, Facebook, or TikTok. A tech stack like this you will most likely require if you sell into midmarket or enterprise (Hence, the minimum 50k ACV volume to be most effective).

Here is a visualization of a tech stack example:

Visit the Miro board to explore more examples: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVNRmo97Y=

Pro tip: When acquiring a data solution for intent data, account data, or prospect data, always ask for a sample of your key ICP. This is especially important if certain industries or regions are important for you.

Giveaway: Here is a Miro board that has the above intent layer mapped out! Mapping the intent part is only one step. Most businesses don’t have a clear overview of their full tech layer and especially people across teams are unaware. Mapping your tech stack helps you to create visibility, identify gaps, and improvements.

Explore the board

Your ABM steps and RevOps process

Your ABM strategist will use the tech stack to engage prospects. For example, if an intent signal is detected from an ICP account, that account gets flagged, and relevant campaigns are triggered. Here’s a simplified process:

Over time, you will gather a lot of data in your CDP about your customers and the engagement history. Your ABM strategist and RevOps will analyze the data to continuously improve your ABM process. 

ABM Enablement and RevOps

In a typical sales organization sales wants to jump on an account when they see the first intent signal like an ebook download. With an ABM strategy that would be against the whole point of ABM. We want to engage the account with the right message at the right time. Enablement in ABM will also include teaching people when not to take action (many VP of Sales are not going to like this). For example, when a prospect is in the awareness stage then we don’t need to ask prospects for a demo. It is too early for that. Rather they may be interested in educational content like a webinar. 

The ABM tech stack may appear complex but for your user it does not need to be. Integration, automation and smart layout choices in your CRM will allow you to make all the complex tech invisible for the end users (Marketeers, BDRs, AMs, CSMs). They should just see what is relevant to them in the platform they are living in. The job of a good RevOps is to reduce the friction. 

My Freemium ABM techstack

What if you're a small business, don’t have $100,000 lying around for tools, and want to start with ABM? Get Clearbit. It has a free add-on that identifies the accounts visiting your website based on their IP address.

Clearbit is also a great example of ABM in action. They identified that I visited their website, took a screenshot of our landing page at Revenue Wizards, and used it to demonstrate the power of their tool. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the power of ABM.

Once a week I crossed-check the website visitors with those who visited my profile on LinkedIn. If I identified an ICP then I wrote them a message along the lines “Wanna talk RevOps?”. This yielded to a few meetings. 

This is a good starting point and from here you can automate it further. For example, you can use the Clearbit to extract the visitor information to a no-code tool like Clay. Then you can further enrich the data in Clay with data from LinkedIn SalesNavigator and build personalized automated outreach campaigns. 

No matter if you are a small start-up or a large enterprise, everyone can get started with ABM. 

Haris Odobasic is working on a RevOps book. If you’re interested to learn more about this topic, join the waitlist now: https://revenuewizards.com/revops-book 

Subscribe to Revenue Wizards’ Substack:

Growth Track by Revenue WizardsGrow your business and save hours of research with our 5-minute reads on GTM and RevOps.By Zhenya BankouskiAre you ready to dive deeper and work on your Go-To-Market strategy and execution?

Discover my solutions that support your journey from launching to scaling:

🛰️ Explorer: Understand Go-To-Market and develop a winning GTM plan.
Get best selling GTM Strategist book + 20 frameworks (workshops) + online course ($47). Tested by 7500+ companies

🚀 Doer: Leverage the 100-step GTM Checklist tested on 750+ launches with templates (emails, launch plans, posts, landing pages), which will guide you from getting ready to launch to an impactful launch and scaling stage.
Get the Checklist ($97)

💫 Leader: Guide your team to successfully choose ICP (target market), pricing, positioning & selection of best GTM Motion (channels, tactics). GTM Bootcamp includes 5 hours of applicable videos and a personal Miro board.
Get the Bootcamp ($347)

[BESTSELLER] 🏆 Ready to win: Tackle the most pressing Go-to-Market issues such as selection of ICP, positioning, how to get customers, build teams and select proven ways how to go to market. Book a 90-minute hands-on consultation with Maja, get personalized guidance, a Miro board, and reliable vendor contacts for further work.

Want to bullet-proof your 2025 strategy? Book a session ($500)

3 Proven Ways to Create Leverage on LinkedIn 🧲

In this article, you will learn: 

How I create leverage on LinkedIn that resulted in 246% YoY growth of my business

How you can 10-100X increase your reach with EGC - Employee-Generated Content—and how Scripe can help you with that (special gift inside!)

How to get 1000+ followers in a day with growers 📈

And much more … 

Dear GTM Strategist,

Are you sick and tired of your content falling flat on LinkedIn despite your best efforts? I know exactly how that feels—draining, lonely, and discouraging. The lizard brain 🦎 starts shouting: “Nobody likes you. Your tribe has left you to be eaten by a saber-toothed tiger 🐅” 

Fight or flight is a normal response when you see a tiger

It happened to me, too. Last year, I was on a mission to create a 3,000-signup list for my book launch. Following the “go where the target audience is” logic, I selected LinkedIn as my hero channel. 🎯 

The mission-critical goal was to unlock the best-selling badges to kick things off. I had to secure 500-600 customers to buy on Amazon on the launch date. 

This is what the actual growth chart looked like: 

a slow start,

a period of stagnation during which I almost gave up on my “become best-seller idea,” and 

a weird growth spike right before the launch date 🤔

This journey made me believe that there is a compound interest in marketing

LinkedIn's organic posting strategy alone would not get me to the objective of generating 3000 emails on time. The LinkedIn algorithm will constantly change, and you know that the winning strategy is to play on your strengths.

I had to build leverage to fuel this growth curve. 

In this post, I will outline my go-to levers on LinkedIn that have kept my business growing “organically”, resulting in 246% YoY growth in my business. 

Here is how I did it.

Proven Ways to Build Leverage on LinkedIn 

When I do not know what to do in business, I listen to a podcast by Alex Hormozi 🤠. His simplistic approach to business energizes me to go back to work. 

My favorite lumberjack philosopher and multi-millionaire believes there are 4  “Cs” of building leverage in business: 

Code/Automation

Content

Capital

Collaborations/Labor 

4 “Cs” of business leverage by Alex Hormozi

So I went ahead and tried to implement them all to my LinkedIn strategy. 

But don’t skip the essentials first: 

Optimize your LinkedIn profile for conversions (check out my moodboard) 

Post min. 2-3 a week (ideally from Tuesday to Thursday + Sunday works well for me, too; Monday, Friday and Saturday are slower)

Create content that is aligned with your business goals (max. 1 selfie or meme a week) 

Have a decent-looking company page with logo.

Invest in LinkedIn Business Premium (starts at $69/month) to gain more visibility and insights.

Be diligent in responding to connection requests, answering comments and DMs.

Now, it is time to get serious … Let’s build some leverage!

1) 10 comments a day keep LinkedIn oblivion away 

Do not post and ghost 👻. LinkedIn is a social media platform. If you are there as a person, it wants you to spend more time there and engage with people to help them spend more time there so the platform can serve us all more ads. While the reach of company pages is 1/10 on what you can see on personal profiles, you can use this to your advantage. 

One of the most challenging questions is to choose with whom to engage. The simple answer is: engage with people who have the engagement and attention of your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). 

But because that is a journey, I created a cheat sheet of types of people that you should consider connecting, adding on your “always watching and value commenting.” 

Here are just a couple of names, but I am so grateful to all of you who support me on LinkedIn 💗

How do I do it? 

On average, I write 10-20 comments a day. I try my best to answer all non-AI generated comments under my posts and I strategically comment on posts of creators who have the audience that I would like to have. My posting routine (1 hour a day) is: 

I get notifications 🔔 for 30 selected profiles in my network when they post 

5-10x comments on strategically selected posts 

I post and stick around for 30 minutes to generate early engagement 

I return to my post in the afternoon to nurture all the other comments. 

Avoid these mistakes: 

Value commenting on mega content-creators profile such as Justin Welsh and other whales 🐳- you have no fair fighting chance there and it is irrelevant, especially if you are not selling LinkedIn copywriting services. 

Avoid AI-commenting tools. You know them when you see them: “Albert, thanks for highlighting the importance of LinkedIn. I agree content marketing is important. What else makes businesses successful?” They just make people look ignorant. 🤖 (This week, I published this rant about AI vs. humans.)

Hiring a “value commenting coach or copywriter” - yes, that service exists. Look, if you have nothing to say, sit this one out. Let your intelligence and experiences shine through in your comments. That is great for business. 

2) 10-100x your reach with Employee-Generated Content (EGC) 

Each week, I reach at least 100,000 and up to 300,000 people on LinkedIn organically. Now imagine if there were 3 “Majas” at Growth Lab—we could reach 1,000,0000 people every week 🤩 . Founder-led growth and building in public is a powerful strategy, but adding multiple profiles to engage and strategically spread the main messages can skyrocket the results. 

Following the principle of “stronger together,” the best-in-class partners I work with, such as Clay, Userpilot, Rows, and Amplitude, invest in the Employee-Generated Content (EGC) LinkedIn strategy. They empower their team members to create and share relevant content and build their personal brands.

As a leader, you have to be a role model and first ambassador of this commitment. If you are not doing it, how can you expect that your people will eagerly do it?  

How I did it (and it did not work) + My newest attempt to make it work. 

Honestly, guys, I am struggling with this one. Many of my colleagues are not active on LinkedIn and they have other fields of impact, which makes it hard to prioritize “LinkedIn work” over other work. But this is what I plan to do nevertheless: 

I shared my posts in our Slack and iMessage groups - sometimes I am lucky to get a like from them, but this is so random … 

I tried to bypass this problem by activating my partners to do this job instead of my team - it worked to some exponent. 

Now, I want to try something different. I want to set up my team members to success by supporting them with their efforts to post on LinkedIn. Here is how I structured the program that will hopefully result in convincing my partner in life and business Anze Voje to post more on LinkedIn - I am a woman on a mission now 🤠

I discovered Scripe - a personal branding workspace that enables you to create LinkedIn posts with a viral potential in seconds (with AI). Scripe turns any form of your unstructured voice, video and text inputs into personalized social posts. It’s also cool that you can collaborate on multiple personal brands with its Team plan.

Uploading a voice memo and turning it into a LinkedIn post - that’s really a time saver! Here’s how I did it:

Try Scripe at https://scripe.io and use the special code MAJAGTM to get a free month of usage. 

Avoid these mistakes at UGC: 

You cannot do this halfway. Reshares have a significantly lower reach than native posts. If your team members post natively, the overall reach will be much higher.

Do not send your troopers to LinkedIn unprepared. Invest in some basic training, show them best practices, and support their content creation and business development efforts there.

Without interacting with external profiles, you can create a “internal pod purgatory”. If the only people who interact with your content are your coworkers, LinkedIn algo can think “Oh, this type can of content is ONLY relevant to people who work at Red Panda, Inc. - maybe we should not bother others with it”

You cannot force your people to do it. If someone does not want to do it, that does not mean they are a “bad player”; they have other reasons. 

Many people consider their social media presence private and you will have to learn to respect that. There are other ways to invite them to co-create content: internal interviews, repurposing of their articles, podcasts, etc. 

3) Attract 1000+ followers a day with a viral post 

Oftentimes, my community asks me what to post on LinkedIn. 

Here is a quick and dirty content strategy for LinkedIn that you can copy and paste:  

Imagine that every post on your LinkedIn should have a job to be done. Some posts are purposefully designed to: 

Help you position as an expert (aka thought leader);

Add value to the audience, aka knowledge bombs where you “give before you ask” to create goodwill;

Then there are lifestyle posts where you “present yourself as a person to your audience to form genuine human connections,” aka memes and selfies; 

Your sales posts (recommended up to 10% of content) in which you pitch your offers and make some money.  

One element is mission-critical: growers 📈

You can hope to get reach, but I prefer to look at data to see what type of posts work best for me. I call these posts “growers.”

My best-performing content comes in 3 categories:

Simple, but powerful mental models, like Growth Loops or Product-Market Fit Cycle

Lists of useful tools

Viral assets and playbook (how-tos).

These are my top-performing posts from the past year:

Each brought me 1500-2000 new followers, reached over 100,000 people, and became an "oldie goldie" that I can recycle at least once a quarter and achieve similar results.

For you, it might be infographics or knowledge assets (checklist, step by step guides, mood boards, proven templates, etc.). 

Have you ever noticed that the content you put a lot of work on performs much better than your “regular post”? 

Love them or hate them.

They work. 

Do not be afraid to use those types of posts to grow your audience and advance. While not every post will go viral, it is mission-critical that every now and then you hit a jackpot and significantly grow your audience. You can start by replicating other content creators, but eventually, you will find your style and what works well for you. 

How I did it? 

Please study this example https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X-NahBaZiFuHYGXTX9q6bY1DndhlEYH7oT0SKFuF1ns/edit#heading=h.fi9y83j43wm0 - it is a value bomb. I put all the numbers there. Use it to fuel your launches.  

I try to have three such posts each quarter, but even one would make me happy and attract new community members to our ecosystem, which would create significant growth. 

Avoid these mistakes: 

Overusing this technique - once a month is more than enough.

Creating shit assets. Not every braindump you have is worthy of use as a grower. Make sure you deliver on your promises. If you get the people excited to get something and then serve them some ChatGPT vanilla disappointment, your reputation will burn. Make sure you overdeliver your promise in the post. 

Thinking that it is one shot, one opportunity. If something did not go as “viral” as you hoped, there are multiple reasons why this could be the case. Maybe the algo changed, something hijacked the attention of your target audience (big creator, big event, news) or the hook or the graphic was off. Repost and try again after a week or two. 

Assigning this powerful asset a “one-week shelf life” as if it were your regular posts. Those are not posts. These are assets. Repurpose your posts. As you grow your audience, new followers will always learn something new, and even your loyal community on LinkedIn likes the occasional reminder. Do not be afraid of recycling oldies goldies. In other words, do not try to reinvent the wheel. What works works. 

OMG - I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I did - I had to delete 2 sections from the draft - because otherwise, we would be at 20 pages 🙈

As you can see, I am super passionate about this topic. 

If you want to continue this conversation, I invite you to attend My proven LinkedIn Playbook for GTM - Free workshop with a case study

I use this framework to train 7-to-9-figure companies and teams to use LinkedIn as their growth channel. 

I will select one GREAT case from all the applicants we can all learn from. 

I will coach live pro bono using my GTM LinkedIn Playbook. 

We will go through: 

Goal setting for LinkedIn 

Selection of the GTM Strategy that is the best fit for you

I will give you feedback on how to improve your profile 

We will analyze your content and create a new content plan and strategy 

I will share a bunch of extra resources that you can use to step up your LinkedIn game. 

If you want this hot seat, DM me before the event. 

I will select the most interesting case for my community. 

Join me on Friday, 25 October 2024, at 18:00 (GMT +2) 

Register here

The webinar will be recorded and repurposed in my content stream. 

If you cannot make it, you can get a glimpse of the content from my interview in the Lean Marketing Podcast that I recorded with 2x best-selling author Allan Dib. The author of The 1-Page Marketing Plan and Lean Marketing. We talked a lot about LinkedIn in the second half of the episode.

Until next time,

Maja

Are you ready to dive deeper and work on your Go-To-Market strategy and execution?

Discover my solutions that support your journey from launching to scaling:

🛰️ Explorer: Understand Go-To-Market and develop a winning GTM plan.
Get best selling GTM Strategist book + 20 frameworks (workshops) + online course ($47). Tested by 6500+ companies

🚀 Doer: Leverage the 100-step GTM Checklist tested on 650+ launches with templates (emails, launch plans, posts, landing pages), which will guide you from getting ready to launch to an impactful launch and scaling stage.
Get the Checklist ($97)

💫 Leader: Guide your team to successfully choose ICP (target market), pricing, positioning & selection of best GTM Motion (channels, tactics). GTM Bootcamp includes 5 hours of applicable videos and a personal Miro board.
Get the Bootcamp ($347)

[BESTSELLER] 🏆 Ready to win: Tackle the most pressing Go-to-Market issues such as selection of ICP, positioning, how to get customers, build teams and select proven ways how to go to market. Book a 90-minute hands-on consultation with Maja, get personalized guidance, a Miro board, and reliable vendor contacts for further work.

Want to bullet-proof your 2025 strategy? Book a session ($500)

Go-to-Market Milestones: A Roadmap for Scaling Your Startup

In this article, we’ll take you through the essential go-to-market milestones that unlock sustainable growth. Welcome to the journey from PMF to setting the right fundamentals for scaling. 

Reaching your startup’s growth potential requires focusing on key milestones. These milestones aren’t based on a rigid methodology, but on universal truths we've observed through years of experience working with thousands of companies. 

Go-To-Market Stage begins with capturing signals of product market fit and ends with finding a scalable and predictable way to find customers. 

Once you achieve that, you are ready to find a new product market that fits the scaling stage by introducing new products, opening new markets, and validating new motions. 

Success comes down to knowing what to focus on—and when. 

This article builds on a previous one Sean wrote suggesting who you should hire to lead your go-to-market efforts (much recommended reading).

Here are the 9 Steps to help you navigate the Go-to-Market stage and take you closer to the Scaling. 

The Go-to-Market Milestones for Startup Growth1. Find Early Signals of Product-Market Fit

As soon as you release your MVP, start looking for signs of product-market fit. Who loves your product, and why? Pay attention to the early adopters who consider your product a must-have, and study their demographics, use cases, and pain points. These early users are your key to refining your product.

Tools like the product-market fit survey Sean created can help you gather insights into how well your product resonates with early users. The survey has helped many companies understand which users find their product essential. Keep in mind, product-market fit isn’t a static milestone—it requires continuous validation and iteration. Stay connected with your customers to ensure your product continues to meet their evolving needs.

2. Establish Metrics That Matter

Once you’ve found product-market fit, metrics become essential for growth. Focus on tracking metrics that show how effectively customers are moving through your funnel, from acquisition to conversion, and beyond. Additionally, engagement metrics and cohort-based retention tracking are crucial for understanding how well your product resonates with different segments of users over time.

Metrics provide actionable insights. Beyond basic conversions, dive deeper into customer behavior by tracking cohort retention and activation rates. These metrics will give you a clearer picture of whether your product is delivering lasting value. Tools like Mixpanel and Amplitude will help you focus on the metrics that drive faster iterations and optimize growth.

3. Uncover and Amplify Core User Value

Your next task is to remove complexity from the user experience and messaging to highlight the core value your product delivers. Simplify the onboarding experience and eliminate non-essential features that don’t contribute to a gratifying experience. This focus on core values will make it easier for users to understand and appreciate your product. 

Here is how Sean Ellis visualized the relationship between the funnel and growth loops.

Effective activation is critical. Ensuring that users quickly experience your product’s core value will improve retention and engagement, making scalable customer acquisition easier and more profitable. A high-velocity experimentation culture will help refine activation flows, accelerate growth, and maximize customer value. 

4. Implement a Business Model

Once you’ve validated product-market fit, it’s time to start charging. Many startups delay monetization, thinking that user growth should come first. However, revenue is a critical driver of growth, and implementing a business model early can help you scale faster. Be clear on your pricing strategy, and don’t hesitate to experiment with different revenue models to find the most effective one.

Here is a blueprint for how you can test pricing and business model in go-to-market stages. Use research methods with higher confidence when you are testing this out. Yes, they can say they will love it, but will they pay for it?  

5. Find Scalable Customer Acquisition Channels

With a business model in place, the next challenge is finding scalable customer acquisition channels. This requires a mix of experimentation and rigorous testing to uncover channels that bring in new customers cost-effectively and at scale.

Sean suggests to start with low-cost channels like SEO, referral programs, and partnerships. These can provide a foundation of organic growth without significant upfront investment. As you grow, experiment with paid channels such as social media ads, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), and influencer partnerships. The key is scalability. Not every channel will scale as your business grows, so prioritize those with potential for sustained growth. Test, optimize, and discard channels that show diminishing returns. The faster you identify scalable channels, the faster you can grow without unsustainable customer acquisition costss

6. Focus on Brand Experience Over Awareness

In today’s startup environment, it’s not about spending billions on brand awareness; it’s about delivering a seamless brand experience. Understand what your core users love about your product, then obsess over refining every element of that experience. A great brand experience leads to high retention, customer loyalty, and organic word-of-mouth marketing.

Brand experience drives long-term growth. Rather than simply increasing awareness, focus on delivering a memorable, emotionally resonant customer experience. Tap into psychological triggers such as social proof, trust, and FOMO (fear of missing out) to enhance your customer’s connection with your brand.

7. CEO-Led Growth

When it’s time to push for growth, the CEO must take an active role in driving go-to-market efforts. Customer acquisition and retention are critical for scaling, and while the CEO may not lead marketing, they should never fully delegate responsibility. The CEO must ensure that growth efforts align with product strategy and customer feedback.

Sean has been a strong ambassador - he coined the term Growth Hacking, which has changed the industry forever and established a global Growth Hackers community. He definitely walks the talk here. Source: https://www.msnbc.com/your-business/watch/methods-to-help-business-leaders-strategize-fast-growth-958681155673 

Cross-functional collaboration is essential. The CEO should encourage alignment between marketing, product development, and customer success teams. Growth doesn’t happen in isolation; it’s driven by shared insights and coordinated efforts across the organization.

8. Adapt as Channels Saturate

Effective growth channels don’t last forever. As more marketers pile into a hot channel, its effectiveness decreases. Stay ahead by constantly testing new channels and tactics, and be ready to pivot when a channel’s performance starts to decline. This approach ensures you remain agile and can capitalize on emerging opportunities. 

When I interviewed Sean Ellis for the GTM Strategist book, he offered a brilliant suggestion that we should keep 80% of our resources focused on GTM Motions that are already working (where the money is) and assign 10-20% of experimentation resources we have to testing out new channels, tactics and opportunities. By doing this and increasing the velocity of the tests, you will stay ahead of the competition and the laws of shitty clickthrough rates as channels get to the mainstream red ocean stage. 

Stay curious and experiment continuously. As channels saturate, some of the best opportunities come from trying new approaches that others overlook. Build a culture where experimenting with new acquisition channels and creative marketing tactics is encouraged and rewarded.

9. Build for Scale

As your company grows, operational complexity increases. It’s essential to build a scalable infrastructure, both in terms of processes and people. Bringing in experienced operators to manage growth and ensure smooth execution is a smart investment as you approach the scaling phase.

Prepare for scale with the right mindset and infrastructure. Scaling isn’t just about growth; it’s about doing so sustainably. Build cross-functional, data-driven teams and implement systems to manage both complexity and the opportunity for growth.

Staying the Course

While these milestones provide a roadmap, the biggest risks come from losing patience and skipping steps. Many startups rush through critical phases, which can lead to unsustainable growth and eventual failure. A disciplined approach is key, ensuring you’ve achieved product-market fit, established a solid revenue model, and fixed operational bottlenecks before pushing for aggressive growth.

Mindset matters. Encourage your team to remain curious and resilient in the face of failure. Growth leaders must embrace the ups and downs of experimentation and learning. The goal isn’t just to grow—it’s to build a sustainable growth engine that can withstand challenges and adapt to new opportunities.

Remember, 🎯FOCUS remains your best friend. Your go-to-market strategy is your roadmap to sustainable growth.

Focus on solving real customer problems, validating your product, implementing a strong business model, and scaling thoughtfully. By hitting these milestones, you’ll position your startup for long-term success while minimizing the risk of burnout or premature failure. 💪

Build for future scaling, but stay focused on what is mission-critical to get there. 

Good luck on your scaling journey! 

Sean & Maja

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