Use-Case Based Go-to-Market: A Five-Act Play
Geoffrey Moore
Author, speaker, advisor, best known for Crossing the Chasm, Zone to Win and The Infinite Staircase. Board Member of nLight, WorkFusion, and Phaidra. Chairman Emeritus Chasm Group & Chasm Institute.
Use-case-based go-to-market is a core tactic for complex-systems businesses seeking to penetrate new market segments where they have yet to establish a strong reputation. This includes start-ups who are crossing the chasm as well as established enterprises entering a new geography or spinning up a new vertical.
The use-case-based playbook is often not familiar to many of the go-to-market team members who may be better acquainted with either a product-centric play for established markets or a project-centric play for early adopters. Use cases provide the bridge between the two, but only if you can get across it. Here in outline form is what it takes to do so.
Act 1: Attract and qualify the prospect
-Thought pieces focused specifically on the problem use case
-Deep dive into the problem state, with empathy and insight
-High-level description of the solution leverage—what has changed that now makes this problem more tractable to solve
-Explicit prospect qualification:
- Does this problem apply to your organization?
- Are you the person accountable for solving it, or part of an accountable team
- Can you sponsor a meeting to discuss this opportunity more deeply?
Act 2: Build the relationships and develop the proposal
-Present the problem statement as a conversation starter
-Dig into the reality (or lack thereof) of this problem. (If the problem is not there, pivot out of this play.)
-Explore the economic consequences of the problem (what is it costing?)
-Explore the economic gains of solving the problem (what trapped value would be released?)
-Propose a services-led, product-delivered solution as a starting point for tailoring it to the specific realities of the prospect’s world
-Capture the voice of the customer with respect to both the problem and the proposed solution
-Write the proposal following a consultative framework:
- Our understanding of the situation
- Proposed approach
- Products and services to be delivered
- Milestones and deliverables
- Role and responsibilities for both the vendor and the customer
- Technical acceptance criteria
- Business value to be achieved
Act 3: Close the sale
-Build a coalition of the willing
-Keep the proposal open throughout the process so that each approver has a chance to put their fingerprints on it
-Continually surface objections and respond to them by modifying the proposal in some way
-Create a forcing function to drive things at the end
Act 4: Implement the project
-Build a “current state/future state” roadmap that highlights the operating model changes to be achieved
-Establish objective metrics that align with achieving the desired state change
-Lay out the technical roadmap with milestones and deliverables
-Lay out the change management roadmap in parallel with its milestones and deliverables
-Continue to operate and evaluate both streams in parallel until all metrics are met
Act 5: Confirm business value realization
-Focus on operating model metrics, Before and After
-Investigate value realization around three types of ROI
- Hard dollar: direct cost savings
- Medium dollar: productivity improvements that free up resources to be used elsewhere
- Soft dollar: competitive advantage achieved through better experiences and positioning
-Involve the economic sponsor of the sale in confirming that the business value realization is real
-Engage that sponsor as a radiating reference for future sales of this use case
This playbook is a work in progress, so I would very much appreciate any feedback you may have.
That’s what I think. What do you think?
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Geoffrey Moore | Zone to Win | Geoffrey Moore Twitter | Geoffrey Moore YouTube
Action-Oriented Revenue Enablement and GTM Leader
5 年Completely agree that sales plays are critical for both salespeople and customers Geoffrey Moore!? Based upon use cases, they simplify complex?sets of requirements and features.? At a high-level, I think of plays as having three components: (1) Customer challenge(s) and/or goal(s) (2) Solution (3) Collection of assets to execute a deal When training sales teams on how to use sales plays, I believe it's important?to do it in the context of solutioning overall.? Sometimes those solutions are cross-product (a retail sales play that includes connecting commerce, service and marketing), or within a product (e.g., sales productivity or smarter forecasting within sales).? We train that sales play can be used in two ways: proactively as a way to have a POV to start a conversation with a prospect, or reactively when you've done discovery and have to identify the solution that meets the needs you've uncovered.? And then, in the context?of focusing on the customer?and letting their needs and goals guide you, you have three options as an account team: (1) Run the sales play as-is (2) Adapt the sales play (3) Build your own solution because there are not any pre-made plays that match the final use case you are targeting
GTM360 Marketing Solutions - Founder CEO; Oracle - ex Head of Business Development; Author Amazon Bestseller List Book
5 年Geoffrey Moore?: Totally subscribe to Use-Case Based GTM. We use what we call Marketable Items to express the use case in the form of problem-solution statement. One difference is use-case resonates with internal pain areas whereas Marketable Items additionally resonate with industry hot topics. For ready reference, I've shown a few Marketable Items we've developed for our customers who are midsized IT product / services companies. ?
Supporting companies to achieve their sustainability commitments.
5 年Hi Geoffrey Moore. My team pursues just this type of approach to build understanding of how to use Autodesk solutions to achieve sustainability commitments. About half of our customers don’t release us to disclose the case study details or want to protect the use-case solution as their own. Most often our use-cases are POC projects with their research divisions instead of their revenue generating projects or product lines. Is there a way we can overcome their reticence?
CISSP
5 年Good article.? A key component of this - while technology is important, understanding the business problem in terms of objective metrics is critical.? How much will this problem cost us if we don't act?? What is the timeline?? Is it dollars we care about most, or is it SAIDI/SAIFI, JDPower consumer satisfaction, a better PUC relationship to get rate cases approved, etc.? Clear metrics for the problem translate to clear metrics for the solution to it.?
Advisor to the Middle Market
5 年A truism in my business reading is to read everything that Geoffrey Moore?writes and everything Brian Nejmeh?recommends.? This article checks both boxes!