leadership
Lessons Learned from GTM Consulting
For the past two years, I have performed part-time, contract go-to-market consulting. My wife had a surgery that had gone wrong 18 months ago, so I needed something that would allow me to take care of her, stay sharp, earn money, and help companies grow.
Most of the work was with small to midsize companies, but the problems and needs mirrored what I have encountered at larger companies. The main difference is that large companies tend to look to software to address problems. In contrast, smaller companies lack the budget for what they view as an unproven solution that increases complexity.
Here are my Top 5 findings:
- GTM plans are often developed at the highest levels, often in isolation, without market testing and validation.
- Sales teams are pitted against one another, rather than working together to help everyone achieve more (i.e., “A rising tide lifts all boats.”)
- Sales teams are focused on selling features rather than solving business problems.
- CRMs are not consistently used and often reflect idealized fiction rather than reality.
- Sales management and teams are not leveraging AI to help focus their efforts.
Here are the related Lessons Learned:
- Identifying common business problems and describing how your product or service solves them should be the foundation of the plan. Perform market analysis. How do companies describe those problems? Their terminology, often found in job ads, can help create effective messaging that resonates. Work to become the natural fit for what your prospects are seeking.
- Individual contributors get paid to win, but sales management needs to create incentives for collaborative efforts that lead to wins.
- For one company, I convinced them to implement a 2% SPIV (like a SPIFF, but team-focused) for every team member who actively contributed to team improvement. SPIV payments were quarterly, and there was a running total so the team could see the fund growth. Initial indications of a positive impact are good.
- Another benefit of collaboration is that it helps teams focus on approaches that work due to ongoing testing and refinement. Collaboration also helps teams focus on a more accurate ICP (ideal customer profile). Sales management can then feed their findings back to Marketing to improve and tailor their efforts.
- Selling is a byproduct of problem-solving. You can’t solve problems if you don’t know what they are. Every interaction with a prospect should focus on gathering information, building trust and relationships, and leveraging prior interactions to demonstrate that your solution will solve their problem and ease their pain.
- CRMs often either lack information or are full of wishful thinking. They focus on activities, and not progress and next steps. Using MEDDIC/MEDPICC as a foundation for reporting is a much better start. Sales managers need to independently validate the information to ensure their teams are being upfront and honest. Trust, coaching, and collaboration work together for the win.
- AI is not a panacea, but it is very effective for research, market validation, prospecting, and meeting preparation. Going in prepared builds respect and credibility, saves time, and lets you quickly qualify prospects in or out. There may be a nurturing program for some of the prospects qualified out for immediate deals, but your time is valuable, and you will go hungry chasing deals you can’t close.
So, what are your thoughts? Have you seen some of these problems yourself? How did you handle them? Let me know in the comments below.
And if you are looking for a Consultant to help your business grow or someone who can add immediate value to your team, then contact me.
The Power of Storytelling
The discussion of data and goals in business is very common. Unfortunately, it is so common that it becomes routine. There is no heart, no excitement, and, generally, a lack of real motivation that limits the likelihood of success.
Stories evoke emotions, and emotions often trump logic when it comes to getting buy-in and creating excitement. Stories also help with visualization, and visualizing success is proven to enhance goal achievement. That leads to mutual success. Just think about the power of TED Talks to help with the understanding and retention of ideas.
Steve Jobs realized that people are drawn to engaging stories that evoke emotion. He created relatable scenarios that helped people understand the benefits of a technologically advanced solution without having to dive deep into the technology. He spoke about things that were fun, exciting, and useful. He was visionary, but just as important, he was able to share that vision and create demand. Relatability and engagement, when done right, create an emotional attachment that drives action.
When my team and I were selling a leading-edge vector analytics database years ago, our Marketing team and other experts wanted us to focus on what later became known as “speeds and feeds.” Our product was more advanced than the competitors’, but our message was undifferentiated. That is not a good place to start when your competitors are larger and better known.
I created a weekly webinar that we called “Why Fast Matters.” We started by discussing common issues around the complexity and inflexibility of Star Schemas, Fact Tables, pre-aggregation, specialized hardware, and more. The focus was on agility that created a tangible business advantage while saving money. One of the stories I would tell was around a beautiful, multi-layered cake. It is a thing of beauty, taking a lot of time and skill to create. It was also fragile and expensive.
The story concluded like this:
“Now, picture yourself taking a bite of that amazing cake with your eyes closed. Think about how rich, flavorful, and amazing it is. Then someone hands you a fork, and you take another bite. It is just as amazing. You open your eyes and see a plated piece of the amazing layer cake alongside a cupcake. They were both delicious, and with your eyes closed, the results were the same. But one was complex and fragile, and the other was simple, quick, and inexpensive. There is a time and place for each, but when you are betting your success on an outcome, do you really care how you get there?”
We closed with a brief explanation of the technology, real-life proof points, and a call to action to prove its effectiveness in their environment using their data. The close helped demonstrate that this was not just a made-up story, but rather, something that could become their own success story. This was a straightforward approach to getting people to try something they might never have considered otherwise.
Essentially, you are shifting the audience’s mindset from how something gets done (means objective) to what matters and why it needs to be done (fundamental objective). People tend to have preconceived ideas about how the solution should work, often based on what they are familiar with. Once the audience begins to visualize a desirable outcome, they become more open to different approaches.
I have successfully used these approaches with more complex products, such as an advanced Kubernetes platform, object databases, a multi-platform data integration product, and the world’s first commercial JDBC driver. It is also an effective way to motivate teams. Create a vision of the successful execution of a plan, how good it feels to achieve your goals, and what it could mean for each person—an area they develop as their minds elaborate and personalize the story.
Some of the most effective and engaging people that I have known are skillful storytellers. Not everything has to be a story, but when leveraged at the right time, it can mean the difference between moving closer to your goal and being just one of many ideas or solutions.
You may not be the next Steve Jobs (I’m certainly not), but you could easily stand out from your peers and competition. Share your story in the comments below!
Getting your Piece of the PIE
Whether you are selling, consulting, or managing, there is a foundational approach that has consistently helped me succeed. I call it PIE – an acronym that stands for Perspective, Insight, and Experience. When applied effectively, these three elements provide a robust framework for solving problems, winning clients, and leading teams to remarkable outcomes.
Over the years, I’ve taught this methodology to my teams, and it’s been a critical driver of their success. While I usually reserve it for a small circle, I believe it’s time to share it more broadly.
As an aside, years ago, I wrote a post about some of the negative aspects of the “reckless” application of PIE.
Perspective – Broaden Your View to Stand Out:
To truly differentiate yourself in any field, you need to develop a broad and informed perspective. This involves understanding the larger environment in which you operate: the market, competitive landscape, customer needs, technological advances, and regulatory shifts. A dynamic perspective evolves as you gain new experiences and encounter different approaches to solving similar problems with other businesses or in other industries.
This requires a broad understanding of the environment, market, competitive landscape, legal and technological changes, and more. It also grows and changes as you experience new and different things—especially when different approaches to similar problems are taken. It is how you start to stand out in the eyes of your prospects, customers, and team.
Earlier in my career, I taught technical courses. Two or three people usually stood out. At least one wanted to prove they were better and smarter, and usually, one discussed strange approaches to solving problems. When digging into those strange approaches, you would often identify something creative and brilliant coming from a different perspective on the problem. Curiosity and a desire to improve drive innovation.
In business, perspective becomes your differentiator. When you can see things from a broader, more holistic viewpoint, you position yourself as someone who can offer more than just solutions—you offer foresight, adaptability, and creativity. You become the lighthouse that guides your clients around tricky situations and to a better destination.
How to Apply This:
- Stay informed about industry trends, not just within your niche but across related sectors.
- Engage with diverse thinkers, challenge your assumptions, and be open to unconventional ideas.
- Regularly reassess your strategies in light of new information or shifts in the business environment.
Here is a post that discusses perspective as the starting point.
Insight – The Power of Seeing What Others Don’t:
Insight is one of the most valuable assets you can bring to any business interaction. Too often, people are trapped by existing tools, processes, and perceived constraints. Insight allows you to pierce through these limitations and identify opportunities for improvement that others miss.
Here’s where perspective plays a role in insight: the broader your view, the better your ability to generate actionable insights that can transform a business. My most successful deals and projects were not won because I followed the status quo—they were won because I brought fresh ideas to the table. By reframing the problem and presenting a path to a better solution, I created value that competitors cannot match.
How to Apply This:
- Question assumptions and typical approaches. Ask yourself, “Is this really the best way to solve the problem?”
- Look for inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas of waste in processes. These are often hidden opportunities for innovation.
- When engaging with clients or teams, offer insights that reframe their challenges and provide a path to improved outcomes by initially focusing on the “what” instead of the “how.”
Here’s a post that delves deeper into insightfulness.
Experience – The Foundation of Wisdom and Credibility:
Experience is the foundation that supports both perspective and insight. It’s the repository of lessons learned—both successes and failures—that shape your approach to problem-solving and innovation. The more varied and in-depth your experience, the better equipped you are to offer valuable insights and strategies.
Consulting, in particular, is a fertile ground for gaining diversified experiences. By working with multiple clients across industries, you gain exposure to a wide array of challenges and solutions. In sales, this experience translates into powerful stories that illustrate your ability to help clients achieve better outcomes. The more experience you accumulate, the more confident you’ll become in your ability to deliver meaningful results through transferable competence (taking skills and lessons learned from one domain and applying them to another).
How to Apply This:
- Reflect on your past experiences—what worked, what didn’t, and why. Use these lessons to guide future decisions.
- Build case studies from your experiences to demonstrate your expertise and credibility when engaging with clients or stakeholders.
- Continuously seek out new challenges that stretch your capabilities and expand your knowledge base.
As Albert Einstein wisely said, “The only source of knowledge is experience. You need experience to gain wisdom.” But it’s not just about accumulating experiences—it’s about leveraging them. Your past successes build confidence in your abilities, while your failures provide invaluable lessons that help you avoid costly mistakes in the future.
“Acting Like a Startup”
Over the years, I have heard comments like, “We operate like a startup,” “We act like a startup,” and “We are an overnight success that was 10 years in the making.” These statements are often euphemisms for “We are small and not growing as quickly as we would like.”
There are numerous estimates of startups in their first few years. One of the best descriptions I have found is from Failory, but Investopedia and LendingTree have similar but differing take on the statistics and root causes. All three articles linked to are worth reading. The net result is that the outcome of failure is much greater than success, especially over time. So, “acting like a startup” is not necessarily good, even when true. You want to act like a successful startup!
Understanding the data and various causes for success and failure are great inputs to business plans. I have been a principal with successful startups, both early employees and founders. Understanding the data and various causes for success and failure are significant inputs to business plans focused on long-term success. As a Founder, there are a few points that I believe to be key to success:
- You have specific expertise that is in demand and would be valuable to an identifiable number of prospective customers. How would those customers use those skills, and how would they quantify the value? That understanding provides focus on what to sell and to whom.
- A detailed understanding of the market and key players is needed to hone in on a niche to succeed.
- Understand your strengths and weaknesses, then hire the most intelligent and ambitious people who complement your weaknesses and strengths.
- Understand how to reach those potential customers and the messaging you believe will compel them. Then, find a way to test and refine those assumptions as necessary. Marketing and Lead Generation are very important.
- Have a plan for delivering on whatever you sell before you get your first sale. A startup needs to develop its track record of success, beginning with its first sale.
- Cash flow is king. It is far too easy to run out of money while looking at an excellent balance sheet because of receivables. Understand what matters and why.
- Founders need to understand the administrative side of a business – especially the financial, legal (especially contract law), insurance, and taxes. Find experts to validate your approach and fill in knowledge gaps.
- Consistency leads to repeatable success. You standardize, optimize, and automate everything possible. Wasted time and effort become wasted opportunities.
- Finally, there needs to be sufficient cash on hand to fund the time it takes to find and close your first deals, deliver and invoice the work, and then receive your first payments. That could easily be a 3-6 month period.
Those are the foundational items that are reasonably tangible. What is not as concrete but equally as important are:
- Having or developing the ability to spot trends and identify gaps that could become opportunities for your business.
- An agile mindset allows you to pivot your offerings or approach to refine your business model and hone in on that successful niche for your business.
- Foster a sense of innovation within your business. Always look for opportunities to deliver a better product or service, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your business, and create intellectual property (IP) that adds long-term value.
- Focus on being the best and building a brand that helps differentiate you from your competition.
- Become a Leader, Not a Manager. Create your vision of success, set expectations for each person and team, and help eliminate roadblocks to their success. Trust your team to help you grow and replace members quickly if it becomes clear they are not a good fit.
Steve Jobs once said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
Winning is hard, so focus on the journey. Making your customers’ lives easier and allowing your employees to be creative while doing something they are proud of will lead you to your destination. But when things start going well, don’t sit back and convince yourself you are successful. Instead, continue to focus on ways to improve and grow.
Success means different things to different people, but longevity, growth, profitability, and some form of contributing to the greater good should be dimensions of success for any vision.
Never Panic!
Panic is not a good problem-solving tool, regardless of your position or role. It is especially bad when you are in charge of people or brought in for your expertise. Panic leads to a myopic view of the problem, hindering creativity.
The point in my career when this became readily apparent was when I was working for a small software company. We had a new product (Warehouse Management System) and were launching our third deployment. This one was more complicated than the rest because it was for a pharmaceutical company. In addition to requirements like refrigeration and lot control, there was a mix of FDA-controlled items requiring various forms of auditing and security and storage areas significantly smaller than previous installations. It was a challenge, to be sure.
A critical component, “Location Search,” failed during this implementation. About 10-12 people were in the “war room” when my boss, the VP of Development, began to panic. He was extremely talented and normally did an excellent job, but his reaction negatively affected the others in the room. The mood quickly worsened.
I jumped in and took over because I did not want to be stuck there all weekend and mostly because I wanted this implementation to succeed. I asked my boss to go out and get a bunch of pizzas. Next, I organized a short meeting to review what we knew and what was different from our prior tests and asked for speculation about the root cause of this problem. The team came up with two potential causes and one potential workaround. Everyone was organized into three teams, and we began attacking each item independently and in parallel.
We identified the root cause, which led to an ideal fix a few days later and a workaround that allowed us to finish the user acceptance testing and go live the following day. A change in mindset fostered the collaboration and problem-solving needed to move forward.
But this isn’t just limited to groups. I was a consultant at a large insurance company on a team redesigning their Risk Management system. We were using new software and wanted to be sure that the proper environment variables were set during the Unix login process for this new system. I volunteered to create an external function executed as part of the login process. Trying to maintain clean code, I had an “exit” at the end of the function. It worked well during testing, but once it was placed into production, the function immediately logged people out as they attempted to log into the system.
As you can imagine, I had a sinking feeling in my gut. How could I have missed this? This was a newer system deployed just for this risk management application, so no other privileged users were logged in at the time. Then, I remembered reading about a Unix “worm” that used FTP to infiltrate systems. The article stated that FTP bypassed the standard login process. This allowed me to FTP into the system and then delete the offending function. In less than 5 minutes, everything was back to normal.
A related lesson learned was to make key people aware of what happened, noting that the problem had been resolved and that there was no lasting damage. Hiding mistakes kills careers. Then, we created a “Lessons Learned” log, with this as the first entry, to foster the idea of sharing mistakes to avoid them in the future. Understanding that mistakes can happen to anyone is a good way to get people to plan better and keep them from panicking when problems occur.
Staying calm and focused on resolving the problem is a much better approach than worrying about blame and the implications of those actions. And most people appreciate the honesty.
As the novelist James Lane Allen stated, “Adversity does not build character; it reveals it.”
Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 