Can you get to your first million with a single case study?
Rob Snyder, Fellow at Harvard Innovation Labs, thinks you can
Dear GTM Strategist!
Are we overthinking GTM and wasting our precious resources and time by worrying about the next hot "hack"?
GTM should be a straightforward, proprietary strategy you and your team can quickly grasp and implement. It should be crystal clear to everyone and distinctive enough to catch your competition by surprise.
Here is a simple example:
I sold all consulting services in Q2 by showcasing a single case study. The case study described how my client made $4 million sales pipeline for a B2B SaaS solution by targeting large companies using outbound. The (not so) secret ingredients:
Differentiated positioning
Kick-ass sales deck
ICP-first landing page for the offer (not a home page!)
Well-targeted Outbound campaign with 300-400 relevant prospects focusing on a no-brainer offer
The service consisted of 4 workshops and co-creation of deliverables (contact bases, segmentation, outreach sequences, and refining the business development process) with a client.
Before I stumbled upon Rob Snyder's Harvard Innovation Labs: The Path to PMF presentation, I thought this success was a stroke of luck.
But it is actually a proven system that you can replicate.
I took 56 screenshots and studied his presentation for 6 hours (did all exercises).
I STRONGLY encourage you to dive deeper into it yourself
I've also distilled the most crucial lessons and action points to a shorter version and asked Rob to share more examples.
In this Substack, you will learn:
There is no such a thing as demand creation, according to Rob and a giant Poodle Silky 🐩 I met in Budapest
You will be invited to consider a bold idea that the true PMF is just ♻️ replicating a single case study made with a single person you can help in mind
Your most essential sales material can be a simple case study, not a 36-slide sales deck or an 87-page long white paper
Become more confident in communicating the results to clients and getting the right job done again and again for the client.
Let’s dive right in!
You cannot create demand. You can only find and harness it.
"I chuckled the first few times I heard the job title “Demand Generation Manager.” Most businesses can’t generate demand any more than they can generate the sun rising. Your aim is to tap into demand rather than trying to generate it. You want to be like a solar panel absorbing the sun’s rays and turning them into usable energy as efficiently as possible." - Allan Dib, 2x best selling author, The 1-Page Marketing Plan (2016) & Lean Marketing (2024)
You cannot convince people to buy your product. Instead, you should focus on identifying those who already have a need for it and are willing to pay for it.
Rob thinks of demand differently than most others. For him, demand is “supply-agnostic”. Don’t think of demand FOR your product. Instead, think of demand as: “What’s the project on someone’s Asana board that I can tie my product to?”
People are searching for solutions and jobs to be done, not products.
Meet Silky, a lovely poodle 🐩 parading in Budapest that our Australian Shepherd Juno enjoyed playing with.
He sports a continental groom, a classic style for poodles but not for other breeds.
Would I ever groom my dogs to look like Silky? - Nope.
Is it convenient for a dog guide to do it? - Nope.
Is Silky a great-looking doggo? - Juno approves. 🐾
But when I saw Silky for the very first time, I whispered to my husband:
“Oh boy, I would never cut Juno like this.”
No fashion trend or expert recommendation would ever make me consider replicating “Silky style” on an Australian Shepherd because it is impractical. She would probably get sunburned and too hot, and TBH, she would look like an overweight lion. 🦁
Silky’s owners and I are not the same ICP. For instance, Silky’s owners' job is to have a great-looking show dog, while my job is to have a well-trained (and tired) working dog.
Understanding these 'jobs to be done' is crucial for creating products and services that truly meet your customers' needs.
There is no market such as “all dog owners”. But among dog owners around the globe, there are niche markets for nearly anything. You just have to find your niche and serve it well.
Your job is to “find your people,” but Rob Snyder added a brilliant component to the mix:
*Selling* is the only way to figure this out *for real*
This doesn’t mean “saying that they will buy”, nor “clicking on some fake gateways on the website to learn that a non-existing product is out of stock”.
They have to pay for it, use it, and keep using it. Hopefully, you can even upsell them, too, so your businesses will grow together.
Back to Michael Skok’s definition of Product-Market fit, which includes securing willingness to pay.
Rob argues that what’s most important is the post-sale “hell yes” - which for B2B software startups often means renewals and upgrades, but for consultants, it often means testimonials and referrals.
In simple words: start selling as soon as possible.
But how?
Figure out your ONE replicable case study that has intense demand!
Rob makes 3 arguments about case studies that are mind-bending.
First, he argues that the case study is *the* most upstream part of your business - it’s what defines your ICP, persona, market segment, differentiation, and everything else that matters. When you feel like a million things matter… you’re often focusing on the things that emerge based on the case study, not the case study itself. In this way, the case study model provides a powerful focusing device.
Second, he argues that a business is just a system that replicates case studies. It’s not more complicated than that. And you can look at all the things you do (marketing, sales, success, etc.) as components of the “case study replication factory” - and ask yourself, “where’s the factory bottleneck right now?” With this mental model, you always know exactly where to focus in your business.
Third, case Studies are your strongest sales and learning materials. Shockingly, just showing the case study to potential customers is a highly effective sales approach, which also helps you FIGURE OUT what case study you're delivering.
How to figure out your case study and find product-market fit
Startups should talk to 5-10 potential customers every week to get enough volume to earn an intuition about what the real replicable case study should be. This helps avoid getting “pigeonholed” - and then, as you serve customers, you can see the patterns emerge across customer conversations.
All this is done on the path to product-market fit. Here are 5 levels of PMF:
These levels represent different stages of product development and market acceptance, with the ultimate goal being to reach PMF Level 5, where your product is a perfect fit for the market and demand is high.
Case study: Parallel
Parallel is a growing startup that offers an AI-powered financial modeling tool. The market for such tools is competitive, with tons of options available for startups.
What Parallel found is that startup founders had often tried & failed to implement other financial modeling tools because those tools were meant for finance teams, not founders (who rarely come from a finance background). But founders felt like they needed ways to run hiring and fundraising scenarios, and wanted to be in the driver's seat for this vs. relying on an analyst or fractional CFO.
You can see their case study emerging based on this:
A founder looking towards hiring or fundraising, wanting to run scenarios and see cash implications.
This founder considers an excel DIY model, learning a financial-modeling-for-finance-people tool, or a finance assistant for founders (which is what Parallel offers).
A founder explores Parallel, and is quickly able to model scenarios and get confidence about when to raise, how much to raise, when to hire... and can keep iterating on their scenarios for every big & small decision that impacts burn and runway.
Parallel is uniquely suited to deliver a case study in an area of intense demand. They can focus on replicating this case study and getting every customer to say "hell yes" post-sale.
Why case studies work
Unlike a typical problem-solution-result structure of a case study, Rob’s framework acknowledges more realities:
<5% of the market is ready to buy now (and you know that from your conversion rates). A prospect is not always in a position or willingness to buy. You must recognize buying/sales triggers and nail the best marketing timing.
Good positioning = a promise to a client + why you. We are competing against alternatives and should, therefore, be laser-focused on DIFFERENTIATED VALUE. Why is your solution a better fit for the client than alternatives that they are considering? A buying decision is never made in isolation. You compete against other options and “do nothing” about this.
Focus on results - clients do not buy how (input) but what (output). Simply put, they do not necessarily care how many hours of research/development you put into your product; they care about what results they will get from using it and how fast. Double down on the promise and provide evidence (case studies) that you will deliver on this promise for them. Never neglect the emotional and personal benefits attached to the promise. Not everything is rational. Remember Silky.
Again, talking to customers is crucial. You just can't know what will work in advance and from a whiteboard. You figure out all of this - the case study, the product, the segment, the "when" -- all through sales and delivery conversations. Why do people say "hell yes" pre-sale? Why do people say "hell yes" post-sale? What does that tell us about the case study?
After you find your winning formula, you can repurpose this case study for your sales deck, and you are ready to win some new business. Now, let’s book some meetings!
Do not overthink - start doing ASAP
1 ICP +
1 Offer +
1 Channel
___________
1 million.
Learning by doing and staying focused is the answer to our Product-Market fit prayers, my friend. Distractions and FOMO tend to be the founder’s worst enemies. Here is how Rob describes the path to PMF:
You will likely get your first ten customers from your personal and second-degree network. If that is not available immediately, you can go on platforms where target customers are actively searching for solutions or send some personalized outbound.
How to book at least 5-10 relevant meetings a week:
LinkedIn + email is usually more than enough to get to 5-10 per week.
You can use automation tools (e.g., Sales Nav + Dripify; Apollo), but don’t sound like you’re using automation tools.
Get to 5-10 per week, then debug your case study, sales + delivery process and targeting
Eventually, your *scalable* pipeline source will emerge based on your case study
It does not hurt to publish your case study on social media, too, but it will take months to build a relevant audience if you have not intentionally done so before.
Later on your GTM journey, you will have to find 1-3 replicable growth motions and created processes so that they will repeatedly work well for you, but for now, your GTM Motion is:
Inbound → Have a decent social media presence and communicate results there.
Outbound → Build a list of 200ish ICP-like decision makers, present a case study, and invite them for a meeting.
Paid digital → Do not do it before you have validated your case study.
ABM → Start building relationships with 5-10 dream clients by value commenting on their posts.
Community → Create a value post about the case study in communities relevant to your ICP.
Partners → Do not do it before you have validated your case study.
Product-led growth → Sell a result of the case study. Do not code yet- show a prototype, do it manually or with some tweaked tools/automation to prove that you can deliver the desired result.
Action time!
Read through Rob’s epic presentation to get more insights and ideas.
Work on your case study using this framework - I did it, and it is great.
No excuse.
Let’s go to market!
One case study at a time.
- Maja
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This is one of the best newsletters I’m subscribed to. I unsubscribe often, but this one is packed with value.
Loved the part with Silky - such a good analogy! :)
Excellent post! Thank you!