A strong Go-to-Market strategy is what turns a great product into a great business. Vertex's Matt Weinberger sat down with Dakota McKenzie of Dynamic Growth Partners to talk through his best advice for founders as they start their GTM journey -- and avoid some of the most common pitfalls.
Some highlights from Dakota's advice:
1) Take advice from the right people: There's no shortage of GTM advice available online, but it's probably not helpful unless it comes from somebody who went through the same growing pains at the same stage you're going through now. Someone who helped scale a business from $10 million to $100 million won't necessarily be able to help much in taking you to your first million.
2) Find the pain before you build the business: Don't scale up your hiring before you've really zeroed in on the customer pain you're trying to solve. Spend time with customers, come up with a solution that actually helps them in their day-to-day as much as possible, and then you can start chasing big deals.
3) Do the work: Not all founders are natural salespeople, but most have the capacity to get skilled at it if they roll up their sleeves and do the work. If you treat the sales process as homework, you'll stumble. But if you look at it as a way to better understand the needs and demands of your customers and end-users, it can become a powerful part of the feedback loop as you build the product.
4) Know your market (and your product): A lot of founders will rush out of the gate, trying to close big enterprise deals as soon as possible. Very few products are ready for that kind of deal from day one, however. Start small, focus on the value you can provide today, and take feedback from your earliest customers. Over time, you'll build yourself up to being a lot more competitive for those larger deals.
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