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Clearly outlining your Go to Market plan goals gives you the opportunity to set your launch vision and present an overview of your plan. At a minimum, your GTM plan business summary should address the core business drivers behind your decision to sell cloud services, highlight the key performance indicators you’ll use to measure your success, and identify the primary competitors along with differentiators you’ll focus on to compete in defined markets. More mature plans may also include detailed forecasts and specifics about market behaviors. Here in greater detail are the key components of a successful GTM plan summary: 1. Identify Business Drivers: There is a wide range of cloud services to launch, several ways to launch these services, and many potential markets to target. Documenting the reasons your business is introducing cloud services in the first place can keep the team focused on the task at hand, and remind you to say no to what may be good launch ideas, but which may not match your core strategy. 2. Define KPIs and Establish Benchmarks If you sell cloud services, value added services or similar products now, the GTM Plan Summary presents a great opportunity to benchmark key indicators so you have a defined basis from which to measure success for new services. Once you’ve benchmarked KPIs for your current value-add or cloud products, you can apply those findings to set realistic forecasts for the cloud services you’re about to launch. Of course these projections can, and will likely, change as your plan matures, but it’s valuable to set targets so post-launch results have context and are meaningful. 3. Identify Your Market and Target Customers There are a number of resources you can turn to for data about your specific market—both paid and free. Defining customer segments you will target is important for defining your product offering, building promotions, and defining your channels. For many hosting providers, their current customer base is a key market: demand is defined, a relationship exists, and customers are accessible. Many providers, both hosting and telecom, are also looking to diversify their customer base with new services. Targeting new markets offers a host of both opportunities and challenges, and requires more investment. 4. Poll Your Customers Polling your customers helps you find out what services they are already using or plan to add in the future. 5. Identify Your Competition Launching new Cloud Services to your portfolio will likely broaden your market, introducing new competition. Discussing and collectively identifying competitors—and documenting them in your GTM plan—will help keep product and marketing teams focused when defining product pricing and service levels. It will also help your channel teams to develop targeted scripting. For multi-service providers, competitors identified for cloud services are likely to differ from competitors identified for traditional products. A natural place to start investigating competitors is online. For more detailed product information, you may want to call and even become a customer yourself. Annual reports, if they have them, can also offer an important high-level perspective of your competition’s metrics, positioning and product portfolio. If you plan to sell cloud services online, perform an online search using key words that match your intended products. What brands display first? Who is paying for advertising? What do their landing pages look like? What is their checkout experience? By conducting a thorough competitive review, you can gain insights from those who have already entered the market, identify opportunities to differentiate your offering, and prepare your sales team to compete more effectively. 6. Define Your Cloud Service Value Proposition Considering your identified competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, how will you stand out in your market? What will be your unique value proposition? Will it be price? Service? Product diversity? The answers to these questions will help you to define your Cloud product, along with your marketing tactics, sales scripting and more. Of course, you can make your plan as simple or sophisticated as you need, and each plan should be flexible and customizable to your specific circumstances. But, by following the basic steps laid out in these posts, you will have a solid foundation on which to build your successful launch Cloud strategy.
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