Selling to Strangers: Some thoughts on B2B go-to-market and early sales

A simple way of thinking about b2b go-to-market is a simple series of stages you have to go through:?

1. Sell to warm "friendlies"

2. Sell to strangers

3. Train strangers?(i.e. salespeople) to sell to strangers

With GrowthMatch, we're currently in the transition from tage 1 to 2, and I have learned a lot in the last couple of months.?

First of all, #2 is a totally?different ballgame...but?I think if you work on it systematically, it's not that crazy.?

Study The People Who Love You

One of the most important exercises we've done to start making this transition is segmenting our current customers based on how much they like us.

I can explain exactly how we did this if you want to DM me, but the short version is we interviewed every customer and part of that interview was a series of questions aimed at helping us score how much they like us. This can't be like someone just affiliated with the account; it has?to be the buying decision maker.?

We then segmented the customers based on do they love us, are they kinda in the middle, or do they not really care for what we're doing (this is roughly inspired by the Rahul Vohra model).?

We then documented every conceivable?characteristic of the customers, from simple stuff like employee count and location to more conceptual stuff like most desired value prop and primary desired outcome.?

It's hard to overstate how impactful the results of this exercise were. It was immediately obvious that the customers who love us fit a pretty specific profile, while the ones on the fence fit a very different profile.?

Why early B2B GTM Feels Disorienting

This happens because when you are in stage 1 of B2B GTM, you're basically selling anyone who is a friendly. So you end up selling people who fit different customer profiles.

You end up with a kind of "mixed bag" of active customers, who love you to different degrees. This is part of why being in stage 1 feels really disorienting, because different customer profiles will treat you differently: some will be quietly content, others will be vocally disappointed; some will love your offering as-is, others will constantly request changes (and the types of changes they request will vary from one customer profile to another).?

From marketing to sales to product to support, everything feels just generally crazy.?

In stage 1, the things you do to get customers are, basically: sell everyone you and your team know in your networks; get your customers and connections to refer you to people; and form some partnerships to get more warm intros. There are other things you do, but they're similar to those three.?

So, you amass this core of customers, your revenue feels pretty good, although you wish it was growing faster. And so you feel like it's time to start trying to sell to strangers.?

What do you do??

Why Your Early Demand Gen Tactics Don't Work Very Well

You start out with some Tactics. Cold email. Paid ads. Hire some SDRs and do some calling. Usually none of this stuff works very well. There are two main reasons:

1. Your messaging (using that term as a catch-all for like your brand, your value props, outcomes you promise, etc.) is too broad; it has been developed up to this point to serve a wide range of customer profiles. While it's directionally right, it's not nearly specific enough to sell to strangers.?

2. Your targeting is too broad; you want to be able to sell any of the types of customers you currently serve (tell me you aren't currently serving both a small customer and big customer! everyone does it) so you target all of those types.?

Between #1 and #2 above, your tactics just won't work. Or they won't work nearly?well enough to get signal. To get results. To make the tactics repeatable.?

So, what should you do? The simplest way to figure out how to sell to strangers, repeatably, is to do this:

1. Do the customer segmentation exercise I mentioned above
2. Narrow your ICP to only?the customer profile that truly loves you
3. Define this ICP in as much detail as possible
4. Revamp your messaging to speak specifically to this ICP
5. Use LinkedIn Sales Nav to make a set of search filters that define this ICP
6. Revamp your tactics to target only this ICP with messaging crafted specifically for them. Your tactics will vary depending on where you sell, like microbusinesses, SMBs, enterprise, etc. Upmarket probably looks more like ABM, etc.?

A Brief Note on Thought Leadership

As you can probably guess from what we're doing at GrowthMatch , I believe that no matter where you're selling in the micro-to-enterprise spectrum, absolute table-stakes for making the transition from 1 to 2 is positioning your company and the leaders (personally) as not just authorities in the space, but as proactive voices that are raising conversations about issues that matter to the customers/industry.?

Selling to strangers requires that you build trust with strangers before?they are willing to speak with you. This is more true today than ever before.

Coming out of stage 1, it might feel like content/social/thought-leadership isn't table stakes because you've been able to sell friendlies, but friendlies trust you because they're warm, not because you appear trustworthy. But making stage 2 repeatable takes more than tactics, and for this, company+leadership thought leadership is foundational, IMO.?

Where Do You Go Next?

So beyond #6 above, there's more to do. One question you may have is, "Okay, but what if this doesn't work for us?"

The short answer to that would be, "Well, you'll have to figure out why it's not working." Easier said than done maybe, but feels like a solvable challenge.?

More likely IMO, this will work — at least, it will work significantly better than what you've been doing. You will then find new challenges, specific to this ICP.?

Last Thought

The bottom line here is that if you want to build a valuable company, you must make the transition at least from 1 to 2. If you make it from 2 to 3, you're rocking.

As you move to late stage 1, the most valuable asset your company has is a subset of customers who love you. Therein lies the secret, all of the information you need, in order to figure out how to sell to strangers.

IMO the simplest way to make it from stage 1 to 2 is:

1. Narrow your ICP down to only the person who you know will love you
2. Refine your messaging to speak only to this person
3. Focus on selling only to this person.

You can always expand to other ICPs later.

Agree with this? Disagree? LMK.

Hope this gives you some ideas.