Bulletproof Your 2025 GTM Strategy
Those 3 Go-to-Market principles are obtainable to everyone - but most people will ignore them
This post is sponsored by MeetRecord.
In 60 days, I improved my seller score from 3.5 to a consistent 4. I got better at selling and closing. My meetings got structured, and I no longer do “coffee chats” but real sales consideration. My time to close has reduced from 2-3 months to <14 days.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let’s end 2024 strong!
Get ready to win big in 2025.
Ping me if you have any questions.
Maja
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Insightful and empowering, Maja. Your principles highlight the power of clarity, intentionality, and customer alignment in driving GTM success. The "beachhead strategy" particularly resonated—it’s a masterclass in focus and resource prioritization.
For leaders charting their 2025 path: How are you identifying your beachhead—the high-impact area that will act as your launchpad for exponential growth?