A Roadmap to Scale and Accelerate Your Startup Growth

By: Jeff Schaffzin and Sanjit Singh

Part 1: Introduction to the Marketing Roadmap

Introducing ICPs and Personas

While a company progresses towards launching their first product, their marketing organization should be diligently working to ensure the successful rollout of that offering. Prior to commencing development, the company should have defined their initial Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) as well as their personas.

As the name suggests, an ICP is a fictitious description of a hypothetical company / companies on which to focus your marketing efforts. In early stage companies, these organizations would be recognized for their high potential lifetime value (LTV) and would be less likely to churn, or leave your brand for one offered by a rival.

Some key attributes to consider when developing your ICP include:

• Industry (B2B)
• Company size (B2B)
• Business model (e.g. B2B, B2C, SaaS)
• Estimated revenue / budget
• Geographical location / region
• Pain points
• Tech stack (B2B)

These ICPs are often developed based on their level of pain as well as their willingness to acquire an offering to address their challenges. Depending on the stage of development, it’s important to experiment to validate this.

After defining your ICP/ICPs, you should also identify your personas. For the purposes of this document, a persona documents the ideal individual(s) who would either buy your product or even be involved in the purchase process, like an influencer.

Personas are defined by thoroughly researching key details of an individual such as:

• Demographic information — the “who” you are targeting (e.g. age, gender, income, level of education)
• Geographic information — the “where” (e.g. state, region, country)
• Behavioural information — the “how” (e.g. purchasing history, beliefs)
• Psychographic information — the “why” (e.g. lifestyle, social status, activities, interests)

This information is gathered through various sources like surveys, focus groups, landing pages, and other outlets to define a composite, or 360 degree, “view” of an individual.

Determining Product-Market Fit

Once a company defines their ICPs and personas, the results can be used to validate the proper market for your offering. This is also known as defining one’s “product market fit”. If a company fails to establish this, it will struggle to stand out from its competition. Typically companies go through four milestones to determine this:

1. Proof of Concept — when support is gained from internal stakeholders, this is when one part of a complete system is developed. Typically companies will have multiple POCs to test different components of the offering.

2. Prototype — when questions are answered such as how it will be accomplished, how it would look, as well as how it will be used. This usually includes some or all of the following:

• Wireframes / screens
• Product specifications
• Planned features
• User flows

3. Minimum Viable Product (MVP) — when the Minimum Viable Product is actually created which determines the answer to one crucial question — “Would consumers buy this product?” Typically this takes a three stage approach — build→measure→learn where iterations are used to improve the product’s functionality

4. Product Market Fit (PMF) — when you have an offering that addresses the need of your ICPs / personas. Depending on the complexity of the product, product market fit can be determined by something as simple as a survey given to a sample of your target customers, though this may happen as the company continues to evolve.

Product-Market Fit (PMF) has multiple definitions depending on who you ask. For example, Brad Felds suggests that year-over-year growth rates to be more useful than specific amounts. These include (in reverse order):

• > 100% YoY growth = high valuation / 10x revenue. You have absolutely achieved PMF.
• 50%-100% YoY growth = holding steady / healthy valuation. You are making solid progress towards PMF.
• < 50% growth = tripwire, bells, and whistles. Warning!
• < 20% YoY growth = investors…help!
• < 10% YoY growth = no semblance of product-market fit

Product-Led Growth vs Sales-Led Growth

As a company continues to evolve, its leadership team has a number of important decisions to make. One key decision, especially for SaaS companies, is related to their go-to-market strategy. This strategy helps you shape not just your product and customer experience, but your business and sales processes as well.

One popular approach is a Product-Led Growth (PLG) strategy. As the name suggests, a PLG-centric strategy uses your product to drive business as well as revenue generation.

Using such an approach typically offers customers a self-service model — one where prospects experience and learn the products on their own through free trials or even a “freemium” offering. A freemium product is one where a company offers basic features for free and are heavily incentivized to upgrade to paid versions of their product. This approach is ideal for companies at the Product-Market Fit stage as it can boost growth and build your brand while providing ample opportunities to collect user data as well as opportunities to get a larger audience to test your product. Companies like Dropbox and Slack (now owned by Salesforce) use this method to bring their products to market.

There are a number of benefits associated with using a Product-Led Growth approach. These include:

• Larger Top of Funnel (TOFU): Companies that use a product-led growth strategy often attract larger numbers to your product who sign up via landing pages to start their trial. That being said, it’s important to remember that having a high acquisition rate does not ensure high retention so the product needs to be engaging enough using mechanisms like in-app messaging or a guided tour to aid in upselling to a paid version of your offering.
• Lower Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): It’s hardly surprising that the cost of using various marketing channels to attract, nurture and convert users continuously increases over time. When you couple that with the fact that customers typically don’t enjoy being sold to, using a freemium approach provides a frictionless acquisition strategy that also helps with experimenting with and tracking different marketing strategies.
• Higher retention rate: By providing your consumers the ability to actually be “hands on” with your product, they can quickly discover the value versus a more sales-driven approach. While this can be a strong benefit, it also forces a company to constantly innovate to motivate these individuals to actually purchase an enhanced version of the product.

On the other hand, companies that offer more complex products and target enterprise organizations likely use a Sales-Led Growth (SLG) approach. When companies leverage SLG, customers are guided via a formal sales process such as what’s described below.

There are a number of benefits associated with using a Sales-Led Growth Approach. Some of these include:

• Simplified onboarding: Since a sales-led approach requires the use of someone like a Sales Development Representative (SDR) or Business Development Representative (BDR), prospects are guided through the functionality of the product, avoiding potential issues which may arise when using a product-led (self-directed) approach.
• Facilitated large-scale (“enterprise”) sales: When using a sales-led approach, companies can leverage their sales teams to target larger groups of users or even different groups inside the same company. When done effectively, this can make selling to larger organizations much easier — especially if they have similar needs.
• Improved engagement / feedback gathering: Due to the interactive nature of a sales-led approach, sales teams are able to gather feedback much more effectively as opposed to waiting for individuals to provide feedback. As a result, a company’s marketing and product organizations can make the necessary changes and share the results faster than through a more product-centric approach.

Part 2: Introduction to the Sales Roadmap

Business Development

No discussion of growth is complete without a mention of business development. Founders often overlook this approach as they contemplate their Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy. Business development is the activity of pursuing strategic opportunities by cultivating partnerships or other commercial relationships, or identifying new markets for its products or services.

So, for example, a large company in your space with a complimentary product might be a good candidate to distribute your offering. This scenario might be a strong win-win since you have a hot new product they lack and they have hefty sales and marketing muscle that you lack. Before pulling the trigger, just remember to weigh the pros and cons and carefully define all aspects of the partnership. So pursuing business development opportunities helps you build multiple sales channels to help you grow faster.

The Handoff

Congrats! You’ve set up the basics of your marketing pipeline and now have leads coming inbound to your website. This is the official “handoff” point from marketing to sales.

Inbound — Speed to Lead

The next thing you need to do is ensure that every inbound lead automatically triggers an immediate notification to a Sales Development Representative (SDR), alternatively called a Business Development Representative (BDR), or to you if you haven’t yet hired an SDR. A critical metric that you’ll want to monitor for this step is how fast your SDR responds to the lead, aka “Lead Response Time” aka “Speed to Lead”. It is very important to keep your Lead Response Time as short as possible and definitely less than 5 minutes. Why? Because sales conversions increase by 391% if you respond in the 1st minute and decrease by 80% if you wait longer than 5 minutes. Also, 78% of prospects buy from the first responder.

Book a Sales Appointment!

Inbound

When responding to a lead inquiry, an SDR’s goal should be to book a sales appointment for an Account Executive (AE), or “closer”, any lead that is suspected to be worth $3K+ ARR and to send all other leads to a self-service pathway (see earlier discussion of Product-Led Growth (PLG). Why? Because unit economics generally don’t pencil out when you involve an AE if the annual revenue is less than $3K. Ensure that SDRs are properly trained in the art of booking a sales appointment. Here’s the crux of this art: the SDR needs to resist the natural temptation to start answering questions and instead focus on booking the sales appointment. You may ask, “Why should the SDR not answer the prospect’s questions?” The answer might seem counterintuitive. It is possible to answer just enough of the prospect’s questions to put them in a position where they feel like they have enough information to make a buying decision when, in all likelihood, they do not. For example, the prospect may ask about price and the presence of one or two features. Your SDR answers their questions to which they respond “thank you” and hang up. Then they visit Competitor A who does a full discovery of their needs and timeline, shows them how they can meet each one of those needs, and books a follow up call with their key decision makers. Knowing this, are you happy with the way your SDR handled this prospect or with the way Competitor A handled this prospect?

Build and Use Your Network

What do you do if you don’t have enough inbound leads to meet your goals? Don’t worry as this is often the case for early stage companies. Also, if you’re pursuing large enterprise accounts then they often won’t drop into your lap conveniently as an inbound lead.

The best solution to start with is by intelligently using your network. First, ask yourself, “Have I connected on Linkedin with everyone I know?” If you’re in an incubator, you need to connect to everyone in your cohort, Slack group, mentors, and advisors. Second, you’ll want to get a subscription to Linkedin Sales Navigator. Once you’ve maximized your 1st level connections on Linkedin, that means that you’ve dramatically increased your 2nd level connections. Since the average number of connections for someone on Linkedin is 750. So this means that every 10 people in your 1st degree connections yield 7500 2nd degree connections. We’re now going to leverage these connections to make sales.

The first thing we need to consider is whom to pursue with this approach. In an earlier discussion, Jeff wrote about finding your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). If you’re pursuing companies (B2B), then your ICP would include firmographics, i.e. filters for target companies, and personas, i.e. filters for target people at your target companies.

You can set your filters on Linkedin Sales Navigator (see illustration above) to search for target people at target companies who are 1st or 2nd degree connections. 1st degree connections are easy — you simply reach out to them directly. If they are 2nd degree connections, you can ask for an introduction from your 1st degree connection. This is also the best way to connect to your target investors. There is nothing better than a warm introduction!

Outbound

Another solution to insufficient inbound leads is by utilizing outbound methods such as “cold” Linkedin outreach, “cold” email outreach, and “cold” phone outreach. “Cold” means that you have no warm introduction so you’re approaching them from out of the blue. Some might put this method in the category of marketing and others might call it sales. As with many growth methods, the line between marketing and sales has increasingly blurred over the last few years.

If using Linkedin, you would simply follow the same process I outlined earlier only without the benefit of a warm introduction. If using email, you can utilize tools like Outreach to manage this process. Phone outreach is the least optimal since it’s become quite difficult to reach people directly, especially post-pandemic. When approaching people over Linkedin and email, it’s best to follow a “cadence” where you write a series of 8–10 messages over the course of a month or two. Also, it is best not to start by trying to sell your solution, but rather to spend the first 80% of your messages to provide thought leadership or educational content that would be of interest to your prospect. Then you can send a note giving them a chance to schedule an appointment if they would like to have a deeper conversation about solving some of their problems.

Like Marketing, Sales is a big topic so I’ve only covered the basics here but feel free to check out my free YouTube channel , free TikTok channel , or Sales for Startups course that includes 1-on-1 coaching sessions.

If You Need Help With Day-to-Day Execution

We hope that this roadmap playbook has been helpful. If you still need help, both of us have “fractional” practices and can help you with developing strategies or leading day-to-day efforts. Feel free to reach out to us using our contact information below. We wish you all the success!

About the Authors:

Jeff Schaffzin

• Fractional Chief Marketing Officer & Corporate / Product Strategist
• Genysys Group (Silicon Valley)

Sanjit Singh

• Fractional Chief Revenue Officer and Fractional COO
• Boltt