Building an Industry-Focused Go-To-Market Motion

The last twelve months have been the most exciting, challenging, and rewarding of my career. 

This year I've had the pleasure of leading Clari’s efforts to transform the revenue process across several new industries (Life science/MedTech, Professional Services, and Financial Services).

Our team's goal this year was simple but very important.

Help executives and their revenue impacting teams across these industries in the same way we’ve helped top tech companies worldwide reduce revenue leak and achieve revenue precision. 

I've learned a lot in the process.

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Here are my top 3 learnings If you’re looking to start an industry-focused Go-To-Market motion (or stand up any new business unit from scratch):

1. Be ok with a 60-70% confidence interval. 
If you have higher confidence than this, you likely waited too long to make the decision. Ryan Smith, Founder and Executive Chairman of Qualtrics and Clari customer, shared in Harvard Business Review that you have to know when something is a "two-way door or one-way door", then “train your organization to run as fast as it can through two-way doors.”

2. Make it easy to facilitate learning loops across all stakeholders. 
This likely needs dedicated program management to coordinate across all functions. Getting these learning loops right is crucial if you plan to actually drive investment decisions that will accelerate entrance into new markets.

3. Work the team, not the problem. 
When building a GTM motion from scratch, it’s important to have the right team of builders. You may be tempted to ask your best folks to go experiment, but it’s less about their experience and more about their desire to build and be a part of something bigger than themselves. 

I hope these tips are helpful. 

I’d love to trade notes and learn from you if you’re building a similar GTM motion. Give me a shout, or reach out in the comments below. 

Also, happy to share examples of how we’ve operationalized the industries GTM motion within Clari. Here’s an example dashboard I’ve been using.

Wishing you much success!