AMA: Salesforce Head of Product Marketing - Security, Integrations, Mobile, Harish Peri on Go-to-Market Strategy

1. I always come back to the fact that each segment in your GTM plan needs its own launch approach. This is why there's no one-size fits all 2. E.g. if you have a target segment of self-serve customers, the best launch tactics would involve in-product marketing, guided help, short videos, blog posts, social engagement, really using tools like Intercom to push information contextually to where your users are 3. E.g. if your target is large enterprises, the launch tactic would be more of enabling the account teams, creating FAQs to help customers with migration, pricing questions, technical enablement etc. Its more about alleviating risks than trumpeting what's super new 4. For highly regulated customers, the best launch tactic would be to showcase other customers who have adopted successfully with no additional risk It all depends.

This was a product I helped launch more than a year ago. It was a product that had high market demand and was long overdue for the target buyers. If you reference the question I answered on 'GTM blueprint', this launch had everything in reverse. 1. Unclear Target Segment - we didnt have alignment on who the exact segment was based on launch-day product capabilities, use cases, company size, etc. The broad feeling was the target was 'everyone', which is always a recipe for failure. 2. Misalignment on strategic intent - there were mixed messages around the strategic goal of the launch. Some thought it was capturing broad market share, some thought it was playing catch up on competitive features. This also led to conflicts around pricing, which led to pricing too high and competitive 3. Mismatch of positioning and buyer - we ended up going after the wrong buyer/decision maker in an attempt to 'look cool'. Our target persona was actually more of an influencer/user that the buyer would have looked to with trust during the sales process. By not targeting them, we ended up in competitive bakeoffs that didn't let us shine to our fullest 4. Stakeholder alignment - we ended up in a place where product and commercial stakeholders were misaligned quite a bit leading to delays and conflict All in all, launches are hard. Launches make you question your strategy, your values, your approach to marketing - everything. So best to spend more time upfront aligning than rushing to launch.

Making the assumption here that vertical = industry. 1. Industry definition - which taxonomy are you using. NAICS, SIC, propietary, DUNS, Clearbit? This is important because there is a lot of nuance hidden in sub-verticals, so getting your language aligned is key 2. TAM - what is the actual addressable market for your product or portfolio or launch? This can be based on historical win rates by industry/sub industry for an existing product, or can be based on focus groups/survey data of your prospect base (how likely are you to buy X) 3. Product market fit - what are the core use cases for each vertical that you're thinking about? Can you actually satisfy them? How complex is the buyer? Is the cost to serve higher than the actual revenue you can make (bad margins)? You can figure this out again by looking at competitors (the good ones will showcase what matters via their websites), looking at analyst reports and again first-had research

1. Making assumptions about pricing and not vetting them with sales VERY early in the process 2. Assuming that its a 'handoff' to sales enablement vs in reality its an ongoing partnership where PMM needs to lean in quite a bit to help 3. Not factoring in global requirements VERY early on and discovering late in the game that its not just a 'localization' issue that will handled by the 'local' teams 4. Not factoring in migration or EOL requirements and just focusing on the new, shiny products. Customers have more heartburn about migrations than marketers account for. Be ready for that, and factor that heavily into operationalization

1. How does your company think of its 'market'? This is essentially a segmentation exercise but sometimes the hardest part. This requires alignment between sales, product, and marketing and is a great starting point for PMM to make an impact. Decide on the GTM 'vector' early - ie. verticals, company size, revenue band, geo, use case, needs based. Decide on the definitions of each and write them down 2. For a given release or launch, what are the priority segments?. Not everything is going to be equally important to every segment and the core of GTM is to make those prioritization decisions. E.g. a launch that's aimed at Financial Services companies vs. Health providers or a major release that's targeting Enterprise customers vs. SMB. For this exercise, you also need to understand product intent. Are we trying to capture new share, fix bugs and rescue CSAT, open up a new market, etc. This will help to determine the opportunity value that a given segment can provide for a given release or launch 3. For those priority segments, what is the segment-by-segment positioning? This is the 'art' of PMM where you write down the basic value prop for each target segment. Remember, what matters to an Enterprise buyer is very different from a vertical-specific buyer. Trying to be all things to all people is a recipe for failure 4. How does the positioning translate into execution? Sales enablement, campaigns, website updates, social/blog/content plan 5. Stakeholders - the above points address what, how and why. But you also need to loop in the 'who'. Product, sales, support, documentation, sales engineering and the entire village required to make your GTM successful. Ultimately you need to start with the launch or release date, and create a 'work back plan' that addresses all of the above questions.

It comes down again to segmentation, target and positioning. How critical is the new release/features to your target segment? Alternatively, it might seem like a small feature but can unlock a new market. Depending on the answer to these, you need to decide how big a deal you want to make of it. The right amount of information for your GTM teams is based on their sales process. If they need a datasheet, a demo, a first+ second call deck, and supporting landing pages to match their opportunity stages, then thats what you create. But never create content for content sake - that is the source of content bloat.

Success is only as good as the definition of success. So in the early days of the launch you need to have a aligned defintion of what the launch goal is. Market share, awareness, competitive takeouts, upsell/cross-sell. Define it very clearly and define what the metric is for success. Also define the expected timeline for success, and ensure you have the actual instrumentation to measure it. Then the launch leader should commit to regular updates to the launch stakeholders on success metrics, and should call quarterly or monthly reviews in case the launch goals are not being met (in order to course correct)