DEAR STAGE 2: The pressure to inflect growth after a ‘slower than expected’ year is real, and the “do more with less” mantra is wearing thin with little advice on HOW. Any tips to help us efficiently cross the 2023 finish line, especially as we begin incorpoating ‘24 planning? ~FEELING THE 2H HEAT
DEAR FEELING THE 2H HEAT: It’s easy to say and harder to do, but a critical first step is focus. There are 2 strategies that I’ve seen work really well across the buyer journey to drive efficiency and improve outputs for GTM teams — segmentation and specialization.
Segmentation: How you divide your target market or customer base into smaller, more homogenous groups, based on specific criteria or characteristics. The goal of segmentation is to better understand and meet the needs and preferences of different prospect/customer groups.
Specialization: How you align your team and resources to these segments and optimize your org chart to ensure you are delivering a great prospect/customer experience in the most effective AND efficient way possible
These seem obvious when you read them, and you are probably nodding along, but it takes real work to get this right. Here are 3 examples of where segmentation and specialization can be used in practice:
Outbound prospecting
Start with your ICP, and then segment further to “like” groups where there is consistency of message. The most common ways I see prospecting segmentation done? Industry, buyer persona, and company size.
Maximizing your outbound motion is all about consistency. In many organizations the most junior team members (XDRs) are leading the effort on outbound. We should be striving to provide them with great training, target accounts, accurate contacts + contact info, and proven messaging.
The best organizations go a level further and think about how the email messaging and phone conversation can be grouped for consistency. For example, you might find that vertical/industry lingo is critical to engaging. Let’s say you sell a solution that can be sold to manufacturers and retailers. These industries have different lines of business, use different language, and want to know that you understand their unique challenges. Rather than send a generic email, you can highlight how your solution is specifically tailored to address the needs of manufacturers or retailers.
Once you have these segments defined, you can specialize your team. Each BDR can take a vertical (or buyer persona, or company size, etc…) so they can become an expert in the challenges, the language required to relate, and the specific customer examples that showcase your solution.
Don’t think your team is large enough to specialize? Think again. Even small organizations should be thinking about how to optimize here. Rather than specializing your team into particular segments, you can create campaigns for one team member to work through systematically. This month create a target list of buyers in retail, next month e-commerce. Or vary the buyer persona week over week within the same target account list. The key is that messaging and customer examples remain consistent to remove the context switching that slows us down.
Sales motion
For sales, segmentation can come in many forms. You’re probably used to hearing about territories. Most commonly, territories are formed around similar groups — industry, geography, company size, etc. Look for the common trends in the sales process and organize your team accordingly.
As with prospecting, the goal is to understand what commonalities matter the most. If your SMB buyer journey relies on 1-2 calls to close, while your enterprise buyer journey takes multiple months and a council of decision makers, it is very difficult for the same rep to manage both of these in parallel which would lead you to segment and specialize along these lines.
There are some businesses that benefit from geo segmentation. For example, in commercial real estate, there can be strong network effects between landlords, brokers, and tenant reps. Embedding in a geo, learning the key players, and building relationships can be critical to accelerating progress. Yet geo will not matter for many software tools with inside sales teams - you have to know your market!
Back to the point of focus — you can’t be everything to everyone. This is particularly important when you are a small team. You may need to say “no” more and determine that you are not going to sell deals below $X/year, in X vertical or geo, or above Z users. These decisions allow you to spend more of your time on the right deals. It’s hard to say “no” in the moment, but you’ll feel the acceleration in your pipeline when you stop chasing deals that are not an ideal fit.
Post sale
Many of the same segmentation ideas hold true in your post-sale org. If your product differs for SMB v. Enterprise, or if there are specific features relevant to the implementation of a customer in a certain vertical, you want to ensure that you group like customers and align your team appropriately so they can become experts in that motion or space.
BUT, for post-sale teams there is a new critical angle — opportunity. Let’s say you have 2 customers, each paying you 10K per year, and you sell on a per-seat basis. Company 1 has 10 users live and expect they will add 1-2 more this year. Company 2 has 10 users live and 3 additional departments totaling 100 additional users they could bring onto the platform if the initial roll out goes to plan. Where should you spend more time?
I know what you are thinking… “I want to provide the BEST experience possible to all of my customers.” I agree, but you need to reframe what best means. Right now, best probably means going above and beyond — getting on multiple calls with them, doing work for them, etc. What if instead, best meant removing all friction from their process to get them what they need fast? A self-serve knowledge base that can be leveraged for a quick answer is likely always going to be BETTER than waiting a few hours (or days) to get a support ticket or CS response.
You have to reframe your thought process here. Your goal should be to create scalable, automated processes for the low-end of your ACV, while aligning the bulk of your team’s time to the high-end ACV and high growth/opportunity accounts.
Segmentation and specialization helps businesses focus their GTM efforts and resources to drive better outcomes. This approach not only increases the likelihood of making sales but also improves customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing a more personalized experience.
See you next week!