At this point, everyone has heard about product-market fit, the critical point where you’ve got sufficient evidence that your product meets a market needs and you’re ready to scale up. Simple enough.
But product-market fit is only one piece of the puzzle.
With due credit to Bob Tinker, founder of Mobile Iron, I would argue that an equally important milestone is go-to-market fit. This is the point where you know what message, delivered by which channels, and sold in which packaging, at what price, will allow you to truly scale.
There are a myriad of variables here that bear thoughtful consideration including target markets, messaging, pricing, marketing channels, routes to market, sales rep profiles. Where companies often go wrong is by attempting to do too many things.
Take routes to market. Your company’s customer acquisition strategy can be sales-led, marketing-led, product-led, or channel-led. You can aim to be high velocity (low average contract value, high number of customers) or enterprise (high average contract value, low number of customers). Your sales team can be inside sales, field sales, or channel account management driven.
In the early days, many founders want to believe you can be all of these things. Allow me to save you some time — you can’t. And you may not figure it out perfectly the first time. Experimentation is likely necessary and you’d be well served to be structured in the way you approach this. Your available capital, the size of the market, and the competitive environment will inform how aggressive you want to be in testing various G2M theses in the early days.
Your company’s G2M Fit will inform who you hire, where you spend money, and ultimately how quickly you can grow. Scaling before you have have G2M fit can be disastrous. In the best case, this type of premature scaling will waste time and money. In the worst case, it can stifle your company’s potential.
Your Sales VP and CMO are your thought partners in figuring this out. Be sure that these individuals have the flexibility and experience to help you arrive at G2M fit.