Customer Results 6 Simple Stages Of Goto Market Planning

Business success is actually simple; a good enough / great  product or service that addresses a need plus a heck of a lot of hard work, a lot of smarts and a little luck.

Much of my past month or so has been spent talking to companies looking to introduce products and services to the general market and how the Customer Results Advocacy Network can help them.

Much of that time has been spent working through the description of the 6 simple goto market activities, who is doing them now, who is going to do them, how will they are prepared, staffed, funded etc.

So to make it easy to share I dusted off an old document / blog post and include these 6 basic goto market steps with some short descriptions.

1. Market Specification – who is your target, large business, small businesses, government, consumers, community orgs / non profits, USA, North America, South America, Europe, APAC, which industries, which buyers in which industries etc?

2. Solution & Package – What problem do you solve, what is your proposition and how is it packaged. What market trends are you tapping into, are you creating a market trend yourselves (very expensive!). What materials do you have / need to successfully present your solution via social media, email, voice to voice, face to face, digital ads. How is it framed in terms of return on investment, business case. What is the pricing. How does it compare to competitors. What partnerships are required to be effective. What trends and messages are relevant and important?

3. Promote & Lead Gen – Activities to be conducted to generate leads through social media, telephone campaigning, face to face, warm networks?

4. Sales & Close – The actual selling process from lead generation to signing the contract. There are some products that can be sold virtually and globally but many that require local presence? Typically, the higher the benefit to the buyer and the complexity of the delivery and result and higher the transaction value (aka price) the more likely this requires local, highly knowledgable and culturally aligned skilled sales capability.

5. Delivery – How will the product or service be delivered. What resources are required. What must be local, national, global. What technical skills, customization, integration etc. Who is going to manage this. What is the cultural and organizational change and how will it be managed etc.

6. Post Delivery Service – So the launch party has been held, the prizes awarded, the worried brows mopped. Now what? Who will provide help, how, self-service, who will take calls, what about problems and what about upgrades including upgrades of other platforms and products that are impacted or integrated with the solution.

So there we go. Simple and straightforward. 6 steps. Make sure you have answered or at least thought about all 6. Just because your answer to any one of the 6 is “huh .. don’t know . no idea .. !” doesn’t mean you cannot be successful. My recommendation is you don’t know get help, the more experience the better. The Customer Results team can help.