Strategy That Moves Your Business Series: Go-To-Market Strategy That Wins Business: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Nov 25, 2025

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In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re continuing our Strategy That Moves Your Business series with our 3rd episode: Go-To-Market Strategy That Wins Business. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

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Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business: Strategy That Moves Your Business Series: Go-To-Market Strategy That Wins Business

Today, we’re continuing our Strategy That Moves Your Business series with our 3rd episode: Go-To-Market Strategy That Wins Business. Specifically, how to bring new or existing products or services into existing or new markets and position yourself to win. We see many businesses underestimate the time and effort it takes to successfully execute these go-to-market efforts. Today you’ll learn what’s included in a comprehensive go-to-market strategy – and how to turn it into results for your business. a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

Repositioning yourself in a new market
Building wells before you’re thirsty
Go-to-market as an ongoing project
Why nothing is arbitrary
How to overcome activation paralysis

And as always, if you need Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

Strategy That Moves Your Business Series: Go-To-Market Strategy That Wins Business
- [0:00] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [0:30] Introduction: Go-to-market strategy (GTM Strategy) for new and existing products
- [2:23] Common mistake: Assuming go-to-market process is only for new products
- [4:15] The reactive trap: Why rushing to market backfires
- [6:38] Foundation matters: Rooting go-to-market in your business strategy
- [7:35] The three phases: Foundation, action plan, and activation
- [11:37] Foundation phase: Five key areas you must address
- [14:44] Real-world example: Repositioning yourself in a new market
- [16:04] Assessing relationships: The key to successful market entry
- [18:20] Setting up for success: KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), milestones, and timing
- [20:27] Go-to-market as an ongoing current, not a one-time project
- [22:46] Building wells before you’re thirsty: The relationship imperative
- [25:55] Action plan phase: Using “what must be true” thinking
- [27:48] Example: Tide Free & Gentle entering an established market
- [30:38] Nothing is arbitrary: Why fast-following doesn’t work
- [32:28] The organization piece: Right people in the right seats
- [36:13] Activation phase: Test, learn, and do something
- [38:45] Overcoming activation paralysis: Start small, then scale
- [42:31] Testing and learning: Finding relief in iteration
- [45:13] Sharing the risk: How proper planning protects you
- [48:30] Final recap: Foundation, action plan, activation
- Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

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Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it. Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast.

00:30
I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to tackle another topic in our strategy that moves your business series, and that is all around go-to-market strategy development. Specifically, this is all about how to bring new or existing products or services into existing or new markets and position yourself to win. So just to say that one more time, because people usually think go-to-market strategies is for new products.

00:58
or services and that’s it. But when you’re also conceptualizing your existing products or services and trying to enter new markets, it also encompasses that as well. So it’s basically everything you consider when you’re going to go to market. So we’ll just kind of say that. And when we say markets, we mean a new customer, client, consumer, or a new geography or a new industry vertical. So it’s encompasses again, just to

01:28
everything that you would do if you’re going to go into market with something that is not currently in that market. All right. We see many businesses underestimate the time and effort it takes to successfully execute go-to-market efforts. So we’re going to spend time today focusing on what is included in a comprehensive go-to-market strategy. Yes. And if you haven’t listened to our first two episodes in this series, one on strategic planning and one on organizational development,

01:57
we suggest you do so because a successful go-to-market strategy is contingent on being rooted in your business strategy and an organization that is built to deliver. So don’t compromise your success with a suboptimal business strategy or organization or both. So let’s jump into the third episode of the strategy that moves your business series, which again is all about go-to-market strategy that wins business. First.

02:23
As I mentioned in the intro, but it bears repeating, it doesn’t matter if you’re launching a new product or service into a new existing market or an existing product service into a new market. The process is actually the same. Now, how much effort and time you spend in each phase may be different, but don’t make the mistake of assuming you know what you think you know. This is the time to work on your business. You want to be curious and you want to validate all your assumptions.

02:50
In other words, you want to question everything at this time. So give the process the respect it deserves. So most Go To America strategies are contingent on relationships, for example, whether B to C or B to B. Relationships take time and intention to develop. And so many people want to shortcut that by doing something like overloading digital strategy, for example. They think that they can shortcut what the time and processes it takes in order to build relationships.

03:18
but your execution can’t overcome weak strategy. You have to build in the time it takes in order to do these things that are gonna help you enter the market and strategically position yourself to win. Yeah, and I think as everybody knows, I’m the people lens on all of these things, but I think that this is a place where people react out of nervousness because they wanna rush to market. And you heard Anne say,

03:46
by pure nature of having to build relationships, that’s the filter which you should take to get started. And just know and understand that it’s not gonna be something that is overnight because you’re dealing with people. So what we see people wanna do, and you also heard Anne say over index in the digital side of things, right? They wanna go and do things instead of thinking through logically as a human being what makes sense and then taking the time with intention uh

04:15
to react in kind and really set the proper foundation to do so. Yeah, I mean, I think you make a really good point April because a lot of times when we go to market, we might be going to market on an innovation cycle, but more often than not, we’re going to market because we’re reacting to something that we’re seeing. Yeah. Right. And so I think the point is very well taken that a lot of times we knee jerk into a go to market effort either because we’re trying to fast follow or we’re trying to keep up or we’re trying to

04:45
meet short-term wins or mitigate short-term losses. And we don’t necessarily think about the long-term implications of what this go-to-market could mean. And we sub-optimize then, because we are just trying to cut corners or we’re trying to make this happen as quickly as possible. But most of the time when we do that, what happens is that

05:12
It doesn’t happen as we anticipated or expected. And then we get frustrated. We want to close up shop too quick. We fail to give ourselves a runway in order to be able to accommodate. So all of those things are going around in your brain right now is what a go-to-market strategy is meant to actually address. The point of all of these episodes in this series is that

05:40
They set uh a foundation for you to be strategic and make the right choices from a proactive lens. Whereas some of the things you just talked about is where you get into a dangerous position of being reactive and then it’s further compounded by the fact that you try to rush a go-to-market strategy on top of that. So really being honest with yourself, best case is you listen to all the episodes, you’re really good students and you do all the things in the order.

06:09
At the very least, do not do a go-to-market strategy in reaction or response knee-jerk to something that’s going on. Make sure you back up and spend the time to get it right. I think it’s worth mentioning again, going back to your part of the intro, is that go-to-market strategies are rooted in your overarching business strategy. And so making sure that it does have a home, making sure that it isn’t just a reactionary effort that is… um

06:38
Sometimes the whim of the CEO, sometimes it’s something that you’re trying to solve for again in a shortfall. So make sure that it is rooted in your efforts that are going to build the business for the short term and the long term. Yes. So now I’m going to give you the overview and then we’re going to break down each section. All And we’re going to try not to get into the weeds too much because good on market strategies can take many, many different lenses depending on what variation of

07:06
product service slash whether that’s new or existing to whatever market context we’re talking about, whether that’s a new market, existing market. So there’s a lot of different variations of this. And so we’re gonna just try to kind of give you the foundations of this. And then you know that you can customize it based on your specific bent, okay? So here is the overview of the process, okay? And then like I said, I’m gonna break down each section with April.

07:35
So first is the foundation. So this is all about addressing all the questions critical to establishing the foundational basis for your go-to-market effort. And this is really fundamental. like I get, this is one of the sections that people tend to skip over because they think they know what they know and they don’t go back and they don’t re-investigate what they may not know. And then that usually comes back to bite them in the butt. And then on top of that,

08:00
We don’t spend enough time planning for what success looks like. And so that’s, this section is really dressing that and you’re probably going to spend a whole lot more time in this section and you really want to, because as April says, you’re going to want to get to actually doing the things because the things are the fun part and the things that make us feel like we’re making progress, even if we don’t know where we’re going. All right. So then the next part after the foundation is the action plan. So this is where we map out the activity. It’s going to take us to successfully go to market.

08:28
And this is where you connect the dots. Okay, so this is where you’re gonna ask that question and meet April love. And we’re gonna talk about it again in this section, which is what must be true. So it allows you to actually build the plan from point A to point B, which is not always linear that allows you then to have a action plan for how do you gonna go into market? Okay. And then the…

08:52
Final one, the final space here is the activation, is putting the plan in action. It’s everybody’s favorite part, but it also causes a lot of anxiety because it’s the part of where like the rubber meets the rope. So you have to start talking, stop talking and start doing, which then causes a whole lot of angst because that usually means spending money, assigning staff, it’s starting to… um

09:18
have to report back and be evaluated based on the bench that you’re making. So those are the three steps, the foundation, the action plan and the activation. Now you might be saying to yourself, there’s nothing earth shattering here. And I mean, you would be right. This is not something we’re inventing. What we’re doing is trying to bring a little bit of insight and a little bit of realization to what these phases actually mean, but don’t mistake simplicity for easy.

09:46
And don’t think just because you know what the steps are, you’re doing them to the fullest extent of the diligence that you need to be doing it in order to have a successful go to market strategy. Yeah. And I won’t add too much here because I know we’re going to go through each one, but I would just again reiterate that point that this is another place where we see missteps is that people think, oh, well, that’s obvious. Of course that’s how you do it. And then they just phone it in.

10:12
And that’s then when we start to see problems because they haven’t done the due diligence. And the last point I want to make is on the foundation point. You hear us talk all the time about working in and on your business. And I know we’re going to get into the foundation really specifically. But one of the things I think people do is they accidentally have blinders on because they’re so in the work of what they’re doing. I I was just having this conversation with someone last week where I was like,

10:38
Okay, we we can forgo that work for now, but just know that you’re being reactionary to what’s being asked of you instead of doing the planning that sets everything up for success that ultimately gets us to go to market to the right clients. Right. So just just be careful and be honest with yourself as you’re going through this about what you’re pulling because it’s quote unquote easy what you think you know and then just putting that down versus being critical and curious and just put in the right amount of effort. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s

11:08
Well said, because you’re right. mean, in a lot of this, it’s a way of streamlining the process. so doing again, like I said before, we fail to critically think about what it takes to actually be successful and if things have changed. yeah, and that’s really the big thing here is that again, it’s an opportunity to question all of our assumptions and make sure that what we’re doing is well intentioned and is going to be

11:37
something that we can continue to thrive off of for years to come. So, all right, so the foundation, okay, like I said, there’s a lot to consider here depending on what variation of go-to-market you’re in, but I’m gonna drill it down to five key areas and these key areas are essential no matter what variation you are in. All right, so very first thing you need to do is get clear on the business why.

12:02
Now, what is the goal of this effort? How does it support your overall business strategy? How is it connected back to your business strategy? What are the benefits? What are the risks? This is so critically important in order to get clarity on because it becomes the purpose for why you’re doing the work and your team needs it in order to align that this is work that they should invest in, right? If it starts to become just a semblance of tactics and nobody’s really clear on the why or

12:31
how is this going to build the business or how this is going to forward the business strategy, then you’re going to have a lot of trouble having people focus, being proactive as April said before, really being intentional in the work they’re doing, bringing out the best thinking from your team. So first and foremost, get very clear on the business why. Next thing you’re to do is you’re going to assess your landscape. What do you know? What do you not know about the market you’re entering? Again, don’t assume even if you’ve been in the market forever,

13:00
that you know what this market is going to, how this market is going to respond to whatever you’re putting into that market, right? Think again about the competition. Your competition might be a little different, especially if you have a new product or if you have a new service that you’re putting in. Think about the target. Again, how’s the target going to receive this? Don’t just assume because again, you’re in that market, it’s going to react the same to a new product, service or offering or.

13:24
On the other flip side of it, that if you have a product or service or offering that is a good one and you’re putting it in someplace else, that consumer customer client is going to react the same as the one that’s in your current market. So I’m going to give you a little bit of an example of myself in this. So when I was in P &G, P &G carries a lot of credibility. It carries a lot of reputation. When I left

13:51
PNG, I assumed that that credibility reputation would go with me. And it did, but it wasn’t always a good thing. Right? So what I found out outside of being in PNG was that a lot of people would question a little bit of my pedigree, right? Well, she’s going to come work on my small business. Does she know how to do small business branding or does she just know how to build big brands?

14:14
Right? That was a big question I got. Oh, is this going to be very expensive? Everything that P &G makes and everything they do seems to be very expensive. So there’s that mindset that had to be repositioned for me in a different context with people that I thought was like, Hey, they’re going to think I came from P &G and they’re going to just think I’m like, you know, badass when it comes to branding and marketing. And I’m not going to have to prove myself, but I did. I had to reprove myself over again in a new context with a new customer.

14:44
So that was a big surprise to me. So think about those in context of how you’re showing up in this landscape and how that’s gonna impact the way that your customer client consumer is going to see you. So next you need to assess your relationships. So the key to successfully go to market is to understand what relationships you have and what relationships you need to build. This is especially key if your product service is new or you’re new to a new geography. So a lot of…

15:13
our clients want to open new locations or they want to open new offices and they have a really well established presence in the current one that they’re in. And they’re like, oh, we’ve done some work in a new city. Let’s just go and establish an office in that new city. And then they go there and they try to do business and they realize it’s a whole lot tougher to generate business in a new city.

15:38
especially if you haven’t warmed the area first. But then when you tell them it could take a year to two years to warm an area, if you’re doing it right, they’re like, oh, who has time for that? Well, who really doesn’t have time for that? I mean, if you’re going to go into an area and you’re going to invest all that money, it’s important to do it right and know that it’s going to take other humans in order for you to achieve whatever your big thing is for that new geography.

16:04
You also then want to establish what success looks like as well as the levers and barriers to success. This is super, super important. A lot of people just be like, okay, we’re just going to launch this new product in this new market and we’re going to generate, you know, I don’t know, a million dollars to say. But is that what success looks like and how do you know then what success looks like along the way? How do you know you’re tracking towards a success? Right. So you need to put in those KPIs. You need to think about, well, is it just generating the revenue or is there more to it than that?

16:34
Then you also have to think about, oh where are we gonna be strong? Where are we gonna have those strengths that we can leverage and where are we gonna be vulnerable? Where are gonna be our headwinds and what are gonna be our tailwinds? So those are all really, really important just to make sure you’re calibrated across the board about what success looks like. Because remember success can look different depending on what seat you’re sitting in, right?

16:55
And then finally, and then I’ll let April talk because she’s probably like jumping, jumping at the bit over here. I don’t like being quiet for so long. And this is a lot longer than I like to talk, to be totally honest, which is establishing timing and budget. So what is your target timing? Work back from there. A lot of people will just set arbitrary timings and they’ll try to squeeze everything into that timing, which you might be able to do if you have enough money and enough people to go do that. But is it feasible? Is it going to be?

17:24
give you the time it takes to build relationships which aren’t always on your timeline. So you need to think about that and you think about what your working budget is. How long is your runway? How long do you have in order to make this work? Make sure that when you’re putting your timing and your budget together that it makes sense. And then plan it and if you need to go back and ask for more budget or more people or more staffing or whatever those resourcing looks like. I’ll have more examples to share but I think I need to take a break from talking.

17:53
Yeah, and I mean, I would say here, tackle these not all at one time. So we’ve talked about, and I don’t want to beat a dead horse about doing the due diligence and all of those things, but I think it is important to note that it’s not just about the time in, it’s also the energy and making sure that you don’t try to do all five of these at one time.

18:20
so that you have some space to go away and come back. So, you know, I’m going to play Anne for a minute, right? Where people Oh, this should be interesting. I know. The whole like strategy on a page idea, right? Or like going for a workshop for one day and knocking all this stuff out. And then it kind of goes in a drawer, right? And that’s usually because

18:41
it wasn’t created to be actionable. And I think the reason why that happens is because you do it more as an exercise versus a true go-to-market strategy, which goes back to having all those things to go and do. so, especially if you’re someone where this is new to you or you haven’t done this internal to your organization before, it’s been a long time or whatever, I would say it’s better to set up.

19:07
multiple sessions and potentially do homework in between and really do some thinking about each of these areas so that you’re very, very clear on the answers to all of these. And then the plan builds from there because otherwise I think things that happen are things are missed. There’s blind spots that we didn’t see or we make a crazy projection but that doesn’t really have any.

19:34
anything beneath it to say, that’s actually possible. Or like Ann said, the time you need to put into actually building relationships, like really thinking through this exercise pragmatically without fear and not feeling like you can’t go back and review something or tweak and change or get smarter as you go, all of those different things. Now, I’m not saying, you know, I want you to spend months on this. That’s not the…

19:59
point, but the point is just find the right amount of time and know when you’re getting fatigued or if there’s answers you don’t have and do the due diligence versus being like, oh, we answered all five questions in a day long session and here we go. Well, I think that’s really well said. And I think to build on that, when you’re doing go to market strategy appropriately, it’s part of your existing strategic business planning, but it isn’t the primary part.

20:27
It’s kind of like the current underneath the business, is always on. And you’re always doing something in spirit of it or to continue the productivity of it. But rarely is this something where you’re like, okay, we’re all in and we’re going to go do this in the next couple of months. Sometimes that’s called for, but really if you’re doing this appropriately as part of your overall strategic business planning, you have a section that’s like, okay,

20:56
What’s our innovation pipeline? What’s our scale pipeline? What’s our growth pipeline? What’s like, what does this pipeline look like? And let’s plan for that on an ongoing basis and work away at trying to address these things because you’re going to get stuck somewhere. mean, inevitably everybody gets stuck somewhere. They’re like, Oh, well, we really need a person who is skilled in this in order to go where you want to go do that. Okay. Well, then we’re to go find that person.

21:26
I mean, and so the timeline to find that person is not necessarily something again, you can control, right? So this should be an underlying current to all your strategic business planning because it’s essential to be thinking about that and building the infrastructure that’s going to help facilitate future of these. So for example, if you are ongoingly building relationships, if that’s not a critical part of every single thing that you do,

21:54
And if you only hear me, you say one thing today, just hear this, like building relationships is core to everything you do. So if that is not part of your ongoing, whatever your day-to-day looks like, that you’re not actively building new partnerships, socializing what you’re doing, building new awareness with other vendors or whatever your point of entries are, like whatever that looks like to you, if you’re not actively…

22:22
going out and always assessing what’s going on, building relationships is going to take a whole lot longer because you have to do it from a cold place every single time. do they, Jordan Harbiger said, and I haven’t used this quote in a very long time, it’s too late to build the well when you’re already thirsty. I knew this was coming. I was trying to remember exactly how it goes. Yeah, but it’s so, I mean, it’s so good and it’s so well said.

22:46
You should be building the wells and multiple wells all along. And that’s what your go to market strategy actually feeds up of. Yeah. Well, and I think it’s a good point to to I don’t think we said it until you just did tie back. I said before, the tools all build on themselves, but the lens that the strategic plan is the overarching and the go to market pieces kind of live and sit under there and are ongoing is a really good way.

23:14
to contextualize and think about it for people. Because I think the other point you made about getting stuck at some point is another place where we see clients get discouraged. Where it’s like, let’s just pick on the relationship thing. Cause we’ve been doing that all along, right? If you’re not building those relationships, like you said, Ann, proactively, and then you use the example of like, well, we want to enter a new market, but we haven’t been warming the area. So we’re starting from scratch. So that means two years, you know, one year best or whatever. That’s where people are like,

23:43
Well, we can’t possibly do that. Whereas if you’d had your strategic plan and said, we want to go to these different markets, you can start way sooner planning that seed, looking for relationships, showing up there, all of those different things that are important to that. Where then when you get to that point, you’re like, oh, OK, well, we’ve been doing a pretty good job on this. Right. But it takes all of the overalls plan and then the go to market work and the diligence associated with that and keep

24:13
pushing the ball forward, what would be the right metaphor? Here we go with my sports analogies again. To make sure that you’re making progress in lots of areas, not that it’s a fragmented effort to my previous comments about giving this stuff the right amount of time, but that you’re moving the chess pieces strategically, knowing that every single move you make is not gonna execute perfectly.

24:36
Or it’s going to not be the next move that’s going to be the unlock the key. Right. There’s a bunch of small moves generally. And so the other, mean, maybe we’re messed up. said the other big thing that usually gets people stuck is budget and money. Right. And so a lot of people are like, well, we’d like to do that now, but we don’t have the money for it. We don’t have the budget for it. Well,

25:00
this is where you start to look at your go-to-market strategy and then start to plan in when do we need to have that money? How are we going to generate those funds? Start to build that into your profit and loss statement and think about it within your balance sheet, especially if you want to take a capital investment. Well, what does that look like? When can I take that? How can I depreciate that out? So it’s a strategic exercise in multiple different fronts that takes the key people.

25:25
that have that knowledge to come together and to actually put that plan together. So that’s also like a point I think that’s worthwhile to say is that this is in it as a solo person exercise, right? This is taking the leader, this takes the people who are boots on the ground, who know, are in the front lines. It takes your CFO generally. It generally takes a new business development person. mean, so this is a core group of people that are needed in order to go execute this. Yes.

25:55
All right, so the next phase after the foundation is the action plan. And again, I said the key question is what must be true? And you’re going to ask yourself a lot here. So once you consider what you learn in the foundation, you start to then generate that what must be true mindset and ask that until you do something you can do now. Again, this is another place where a lot of people get stuck is they’re like, it feels too big. Well, if I want to go into, I want to launch this existing service into this new customer.

26:25
I don’t even know this customer. I don’t have any like connections to this customer. You you start to kind of build this up in your mind and it starts to feel impossible. Well, okay, if I don’t know who this customer and I don’t have any intimate knowledge of this customer, even though I think that they could be a good strategic target for me, what must be true enough for me to understand and know them? All right, well, I need to find out more about them, how they operate, what’s important to them, what’s their pain points. Okay, how do I do that?

26:54
Well, maybe I need to hire somebody in order to do a little bit of consumer research. Okay, well, who then can I go and find and do that? That’s something that I can do now. So just three steps later, I have an action that I can go take in order to start to break down what seems like a very big thing into something that now progressively, as I said, a bunch of smaller things gets me to that ultimate realization of being, of understanding how we’re going to go attack that new customer, attack in a nice way. So.

27:23
Okay, let me give you guys another example too, because I think some people think that, well, if I’ve been around a very long time, then I don’t have to really consider some of these things, right? I can kind of mix again some assumptions or I can kind of bridge. And in some cases you can, but again, this is an opportunity to challenge all of your assumptions. So when I worked on Tide, I mean, been around for a lot of years, right?

27:48
gosh, we’re probably getting close to, I think it’s been now a hundred years. It’s been like 75. We’re getting, so we’re working our way up to a hundred years, right? So huge legacy and a huge legacy in things like scent and clean, right? Everybody has that, knows that iconic Tide scent. So when Tide decided they want to launch something called Free and Gentle, which had no perfumes, no dyes in order to satisfy a specific consumer subset, it seemed like, oh,

28:17
Well, everybody knows, you know, the tie cleans great. Ask nine out of 10 people, they’ll tell you the tie is the best detergent. And we have this need over here for this consumer who’d want something that’s free of dyes and perfumes. Perfect. Should be easy, right? You just go launch it. Not so easy because one, there’s a huge entrenched competitor called All Free and Clear who’s been owning that space forever, right? And they have a huge credibility.

28:44
amongst this very discerning consumer who is super, like not even concerned. It’s like almost like a uh fear and not even an irrational fear, but just a huge fear of anything that could really cause their skin to break out or cause any kind of issues with their skin. So when you think about the legacy of Thai, which is all around scent and all around clean and the connotation that could have in that consumer’s brain about,

29:12
if it cleans so well and must have harsh ingredients in it, that scent thing, how they, mean, and then it just starts to kind of create a bunch of questions, right? So required to go in and understand this consumer again at a different level and understand what it was gonna take in order to build that relationship with them. Because again, very discerning consumer, lots of fear there that needed to be overcome, a legacy and all those things that they fear, it’s not as easy as what…

29:41
look like it would be on paper, right? So that’s where things like credentials and claims came into place. Like in order to build this relationship, we have to have them trust us. How do we have them trust us? Well, we have them trust us by being backed by the National Exxon Association, right? And things like that, or dermatologists or just ways a day in their brain could credential that yes, okay, well, the National Exxon Association believes that this product is…

30:08
free and gentle, then yes, I can believe it’s free and gentle too. So big brand having to do that thinking even 7,500 years later, it just goes to show that no brand in no business really is immune to this. Which means, mean, at least me to my next point here is nothing is done arbitrarily in a go-to-market strategy. and that means that nothing is done just to fast-follow others either because your situation is different, your context is different.

30:38
Again, you need to consider how you’re going to show up. Your competitor, the person you’re trying to fast follow has a totally other different set of situation, assumptions, expectations. So you have to really live within yours in order to be able to enter market successfully. And then April alluded to the tools and I’m going to just make another point on my Tide box here. Haha. Especially since I just talked about Tide is as tools are facilitators.

31:07
There’s no server bullets. Like I said, you can’t out execute bad strategy. So you can take digital media and you can’t just like do a huge SEO campaign and just hope you’re gonna flood the market. And then all of a sudden people are gonna know you and they’re gonna love you. It’s not how it works, especially with the attention spans and the amount of competition it is for people’s attention and the amount of discernment that people now have due to their access to information.

31:34
All of this needs to be part of a comprehensive marketing effort. You need to think about that, how you’re to position yourself in order to be able to show up well. And then you also need to have mitigation plans. This is plan A, B, and C. Something is going to go wrong. It’s not going to all go the way that you want it to go. So you’re going to have to pivot, consider what that’s going to look like. How are you going to pivot? And then actually when something goes right, how are you going to leverage that? A lot of people don’t think about that. Hey, if this hits and this does better than we think it’s going to do, how can we?

32:01
totally just go all in and make this as big as I possibly can if it goes right very, very quickly. So you have to think about all those things. And then this one I’m gonna turn over to April and then April, I mean, obviously comment on anything else I had to say, but like the organization, making sure the staffing skill capability, all that kind of inertia that’s needed in order to build a strong team to facilitate your action plan. Talk about that.

32:28
Yeah, so I’ll go back and say the same as we talked about your overall strategic business plan. Hopefully you did the organizational development work to set the stage and make sure that you have the right people on the team at that high level and that you’ve taken a look objectively to make sure not just here’s the people we have to work with, but this is actually the team we need to deliver on that plan. And you need to continue to do that evaluation as you go through.

32:57
Like I said, best case you did that, you did your org chart. You’re like, okay, here’s the strategic business plan. Here’s the org chart. We’re going to then plug people back in or get new people if we need to, or unfortunately let people go if we need to, all those things to get us as optimized as possible. When you’re going through and doing this work and where I would consider the rubber is meeting the road, right? You also alongside that need to be looking again at the people that are doing the work and the work that is being done. So there are things that,

33:26
will come to light like, oh, we need to enter a new market. But we look around and we’re like, nobody here has ever done that before. Right. So what do we need to go solve that? It could be going to find that person like and use the example before. Or it could be let’s take our best person at building relationships and support them in that market. Right. There’s lots of different solutions to this. But you have to make sure that you’re being just as intentional with the people as you are the things that are being done.

33:56
And the other piece about this is people’s roles and responsibilities can change. You just heard me talk about the skill based needs, right? Like someone could be a rock star and just not know how to do something, but they have the aptitude. So they just need to be trained. But all along the way, you’ve got to make sure you’re keeping an eye on the people too, because I’m, I feel like I say this every coaching session lately, what got us here won’t get us there. And that’s really often in conversations about the people that are in the roles.

34:24
But a lot of times I think what the organization does is they just make assumptions that because someone did this really well or up into this point has been a top performer or we seem to be able to just, this is my favorite one, add things to their plate and they just keep rolling with it, right? That’s not the right way to pressure test the system. And especially when you’re doing things that is an organization you’ve never done before or you haven’t done to this level of maturity.

34:50
or you haven’t done at this scale. All of those are times to make sure that the people feel like they have what they need in order to achieve all of these things and that they have the support of leadership if they don’t. Meaning they can’t be afraid to raise their hand and say, I was good until this point and now I think I need some additional support. I love all that. I’ll add a couple others that I’ve heard. One is, or that we’ve experienced in this process is,

35:20
Well, so and so did that in their other role. They should be able to do that in this role. Yeah. I just pluck him somebody up. mean, in putting him in that role and thinking that they can just do the job. And sometimes they can, sometimes the skills, especially paired with aptitude can translate, but it’s a very unrealistic expectation that if somebody, for example, has done sales in like a very

35:48
small business can all of a sudden then go into a really big business and then be able to scale up how to do sales and be able to do it like tomorrow, right? So watch the skill transfer and make sure it’s reasonable. um So I think that’s one. And then the other thing is just, as you said, the piling on piece, April, I just want to reiterate, that is a very real thing. When you’re going into activation,

36:13
you need to have a team that has enough capacity and enough bandwidth in order to go do this well. If you’re going to treat it again as a side piece or a side project, it’s never going to get the traction that you need to get. Now, I might sound like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth because I said go to market strategies in the foundation stage are kind of like that underlying current. When you start getting into the action planning, the action planning starts to set the timing, the resource needs,

36:43
And the capacity is, as April stated, for actual execution into the activation. And that means it’s an active project, right? So it switches in the way that you set up your organization and the way that your organization operates at that point. And so you also need to switch your people as well and make sure that their focus is on the work that needs to be done here at an appropriate measure that is going to define and dictate success.

37:13
Yes. Awesome. Okay. So that leads very nicely into the third phase, which is the activation in here. I almost preempted and I was like, Nope, don’t say anything else. So there you go. You just did it again. I know I did. You can’t help yourself. I just wanted to get credit.

37:32
And the truth comes out. right. Credit given, credit given. As April was saying, the next step is the activation. And the one thing that we always talk about here is testing and learning, which should come as no surprise, because as I alluded to at the very beginning, many people get paralyzed at this step because it requires action.

37:57
It is so hard to go for a lot of people from a theoretical exercise on paper, which is very safe. Yep. You’re actually having to spend money, assigning staff, hiring, allocating resources, whatever that looks like. And then add that to the overall vulnerability it takes as a leader, especially where there’s a fear of failure or your fear of doing something wrong.

38:23
It all kind of compounds yours and we see so many people, get up to that stage and they’re like, oh wait, oh no, I don’t know. Are we ready? Do we have everything? Do we have like, and they start to panic because I mean, flipping the switch, pushing the button, whatever like analogy or metaphor you want to use can be debilitating for a lot of folks. So what me and April say, and this

38:45
doesn’t work everywhere, but it works for like, I would say 90 % of the activity that you’re going to be going to do, especially going in the market is to test you and learn your way into it, which means start small and then see what works and then go all in, right? Now, the one caveat is you have to do it at a sufficient level that you’re going to get real results. So a lot of people will want to start small and they’ll be like, well, you know, let’s kind of test this with like 10 people.

39:13
when really they need a hundred in order to be able to get some good data or to get a good assessment, right? Make sure that your threshold is appropriate. That’s going to give you the data, the appropriate data so that you can make a good decision, right? Sometimes 10 people is enough. You don’t need a hundred, but just really consider that and do the right diligence to understand what it’s going to take in order to make a good decision, right? So test and learn your way into it. And then

39:42
Go do something. All right. So that’s what made people say, just go do something. People spend way too much time speculating, hypothesizing. Nothing is more useful than data. All right. And now we have so many different ways that we can test and learn. Digital A-B testing. You could test different social posts, see what people react to. So you can kind of get an idea of positioning. You can get an idea of if you’re trying to get people to sign up for something, you kind of see what tracks.

40:08
I mean, use all these tools. Like I said, these are tools, are facilitators. They’re not the slipper pool, but they’re facilitators and they’re gonna help you facilitate your learning or facilitate your path to understanding more about your go-to-market strategy and learn to optimize that. Build and execute the things here. I mean, this is again, what everybody’s like so excited about. They’re like, oh, I finally get to go build and execute my things. You get to do your communication plans, your collateral, your assets, your content, events. I mean, all these sorts of things. This is the time that you’re gonna start to build those things.

40:36
Again, built on the foundation and the action plan. So they are well intended and then be based on that. They have a better chance of being useful. This is why you don’t go just to build the things because what are you going to build the things based off of? This gives you a better chance that when you build the things, they’re going to work hard for you. And this is also where you’re to set up your KPIs and your milestone and your feedback loop and your reporting. So going back to your foundation and what success looks like, you start to then put that into a more

41:07
standard reporting or database system that allows you then to track. So you can see if you’re on track, if you’re not off track, but then also report back and socialize your progress towards that success. So April, anything to add here? No, no, I’m just That’s not true. If I start to close this thing out, you’re going be like, wait a second. I did have something else to say. Yeah, I mean, in all honesty, I would hope

41:37
that people would hear, and you hear the testing and learning piece from us all the time, but that that starts to feel like a relief as you’re pressing go. And also it indicates just naturally because it’s testing and learning that you’re not having to, or you’re not expected to find that silver bullet right off the bat, right? So I think sometimes,

42:02
people get in their heads and you said it, we’re like, we’re excited about doing all the things till we get to the point of the things. And then we’re like, I don’t know if I can press go. As long as you do the legwork, you follow these steps, you build the proper foundation, you do the action plan, when you get to activation, it should be far less of a quote unquote risk. And you should feel good about being at the point, it should be exciting where you can actually press go and go and see how things work. And then, oh

42:31
On the other side, it’s the grace of, like I said, knowing that it is never gonna be perfect the first time you’re doing something, right? The first time you do anything, there’s always ways to make it better. And so I think when the fear starts to creep in, that’s when people start to play small, like Anne said, or they try it once and it didn’t work, so then they wanna take everything back and say, we’re not gonna do that again, right? Or money’s going out the door or…

42:59
Someone raises their hand and says, I’m uncomfortable doing this and they’re typically a really confident high achiever. All of these things come into play. But what we’re here to always tell people is if you set the proper foundation, the quote unquote things that don’t work should be more like blips on the radar, not like, oh my gosh, everything just came crashing down. We see that.

43:23
when all of those bad behaviors we mentioned in the beginning happen, right? Like a me too strategy, we’re behind, we have to chase that person, we’re gonna just go into market and do the things. That’s when the danger starts to come in and we start to get worried. So, just worth saying that this follows a very smart specific way of getting here. And if you follow the steps, you should be able to lean confidently into testing and learning. And on the other side, learn, right? Like learn and optimize as go.

43:52
but it should be smaller optimizations or changes, not like, we spent all of our money in one spot. Now what do we do? Well, and I think you have more of a chance of doing that as you were saying, April, if you skip the foundation. Right. that’s, and that’s most of the time when me and April get people, they’re like, well, marketing doesn’t work. Yeah. Why? Well, we did a social campaign and it didn’t work.

44:19
Well, what was the foundation of social campaign? What do you mean? Right? And so when you, when you skip those steps, you basically are just throwing darts at a dart board blindfolded, right? You have no idea if what you’re doing has any semblance of having any hope of making it to the dart board. This is giving you a chance of making it to the dart board. You may not be the perfect dart thrower at the moment you’re going to market, but you have your eyes open. You have the right stance.

44:47
you have a good dart in your hand and you don’t have a blindfold on. Yep. The other important thing about this, and I’m glad you brought up risk, April, because it is the part that generally tends, like we said, to debilitate leaders is if you have done a really good job at the foundation, you’ve already started to share the risk. Yes. Because you have asked for resources, you’ve asked for budget, and you’re starting to lay out and socializing it with your stakeholders.

45:13
Hey, this campaign, we believe in it because of all these things that we’ve done. The research says this, we’ve done a competitive landscape, whatever all of those foundational elements are, but we don’t know what we don’t know. So the first 30 days are going to be this. It’s going to cost this much. This is what we expect to see. The next three days is going to look like this. You start to map it out. And so then you have your lining expectations and you’re sharing the risk.

45:40
Somebody could still say in 60 days, well, I thought we’d be further along. Well, let me pull out the plan. I can show you where we thought we were going to be. And then we can assess about whether or not we are where we said we’re going to be. And then we can adjust if we need to adjust. But it does like save your ass a little bit. And the fact that it gives you that foundation by which to have those conversations. So the conversations aren’t arbitrary. Because remember, we don’t do anything arbitrarily. But it also allows you to have something that is tangible by which to

46:10
monitor, evaluate, decide if you’re going to pivot or not, assess success, everything that’s needed to keep people focused on something that’s objective and not subjective. So when you choose to not put a stake in the ground, because a lot of people will do that, then they’ll just make everything very broad. They’ll choose to sandbag a lot of times. When you do that,

46:37
You leave too many things up to interpretation and the chances of you looking at being successful and being successful, it’s almost virtually impossible because it’s just leaving too much up to chance and too much up to interpretation. So the best way of making sure you share risk is by being very specific or specific as you possibly can, mapping it out so people are nodding along and they understand.

47:04
understanding who your dissenters are going to be or who your tough people are going to be, who understanding who your supporters are going to be and believing on them. So you have to think about that. And that’s part of the relationship piece is making sure you have those relationships and you understand how is that’s going to support and how it’s going to relationships are going to potentially get in your way as well. So, well, I mean, no single person should carry the burden. Right. Like

47:32
And I oversimplify by saying single person, but part of all of this is not only write people in the right seats, but write people to share ownership of what you’re trying to go and do as an organization and believe in it and help carry that torch alongside, fill in the blank, the leader, the CEO, the, you know, whatever. There has to be a team of people, especially, like I said before, when you’re doing things you’ve never done before, you’re trying to scale, you’re in new markets, whatever it is, it takes a team of people. That can’t be reliant on one individual, but you’re right.

48:01
where organizations get themselves in trouble is where there’s hedging going on. And there’s like a one foot in, one foot out mentality. And it’s like, well, maybe we’ll try this. Oh, that wasn’t quite right. Maybe we’ll try that, but there’s no groundswell or support at the organizational level because none of this foundation has been laid. Well said, well said. All right, April, anything else you think we need to add to this conversation? Nope, you’re free to wrap up. Are you sure?

48:30
I’m sure I just said my piece. Just to reiterate the key points that we had here, although, mean, obviously this is one where probably going to go back and listen to a couple of times. Yeah. This process is the process no matter how you’re going to market. Like I said, it just depends on how much time you spend in each, but don’t suboptimize the process for the sake of speed or because you think you know.

48:56
The process itself is the foundation, which addresses all those critical questions that allow you to be able to have a clear vision of what the business is going to profit or how the business is going to profit from this, as well as understand what success looks like. You have your action plan, which should be foundationally rooted in the what must be true so you can connect all the dots and know how to get from point A to point B and what’s going to take along the way.

49:22
And then you have your activation, which is the things, which everybody loves is the things, but also could be very uh heart wrenching and leaning forward into the things. So test and learn your way into it. All right. And if you guys have any questions or you need any kind of perspective on that, you know where to find us. It’s one of our core parts of forthright business. So reach out to us for additional consultation.

49:47
And with that, we encourage you all to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put into practice. Cause remember strategic counsel is only effective if you put it into action. we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!