Go-to-market strategy in B2B: From offering to first customer

What is a go-to-market strategy?

A go-to-market strategy defines how an offering finds its first customers. It answers four questions: who do we sell to first, why should that customer switch, which route do we use to reach them, and what does it cost.

That's less than a marketing strategy and more than a sales plan. A marketing strategy deals with how a market perceives you over the course of years. A go-to-market strategy deals with the first twenty customers. And they decide whether those later years happen at all.

You need one even when the company has been around for a long time. Every new offering, every new industry and every new country market needs the four answers again. An established sales force is no substitute: it's tuned to the existing business, and that's exactly what makes it slow with anything new.

What has to be decided before the first meeting?

The four decisions build on each other, and the order isn't arbitrary. Whoever starts with the channel has made three decisions implicitly, without testing any of them.

• Segment. What kind of company, what size, which role decides there. "Industry" is not a segment. "Series manufacturers with 200 to 800 employees where the technical director decides" is one.
• Value proposition. Why this segment switches, in one sentence and from the customer's point of view. If the sentence also applies to your competitor, it isn't one.
• Channel. How you reach the decision maker: your own sales force, partners, distribution, tenders, your existing customer network. The channel follows from the order value, not from preference.
• Price. This is about the level and about the model: one-time, per year, per unit, with or without service. The model also determines who has to sign off internally. A subscription hits a different budget at the customer than an investment does.

These four points fit on one page. If they don't fit on one page, at least one of them hasn't been decided yet.

How do you pick the first segment?

By urgency, not by size. The largest segment is almost always the one where the established players are strongest and where your argument lands least.

Three questions are more useful: where does the problem hurt enough that someone will move budget for it? Where is there a trigger that forces a decision: a contract running out, a new regulation, a generational handover? And where do you have access that doesn't start from zero?

A segment you can't name isn't one. The test is uncomfortable and quick: name five companies by name that fall into the segment, and the role that decides there. If you can't, you have a target group description, not a target group. And you'll spend the first few months finding that out.

Two segments at once is the most common mistake in this phase. It doesn't double your chances, it halves your learning curve: every piece of feedback can then be attributed to two causes, and no conclusion holds up.

Which channel fits which order value?

The channel is the only one of the four decisions you can calculate, which makes it the one with the least to discuss. Personal selling costs a certain amount per customer won, and that amount is largely independent of order size. So order size decides whether it pays for itself.

The thresholds are reference points, not laws of nature. In a business with a high repeat purchase rate, a conversation pays off even with a smaller first order, because the customer buys for years. What holds in every case: if you work a small order value with personal selling, you grow into a business that loses money with every customer.

How long does it take until the first customer arrives?

Longer than planned, and the reason is rarely the offering. In B2B, almost never does one person decide alone: there's someone who has the problem, someone who has the budget, and someone who owns a risk. These three need to be sorted out, not convinced. That takes meetings in which nothing happens except clarification.

As a rough guide: with order values in the mid five figures, three to nine months often pass between the first conversation and the order in mid-sized companies. With larger investments that involve management, more like nine to eighteen. If you build your plan around four weeks, you'll draw the wrong conclusion after three months: that the offering doesn't work.

So plan your market entry in two phases. The first phase has a learning goal instead of a revenue goal: fifteen conversations held, three assumptions tested, one solid conclusion on price. The second starts only once the first has produced a result. Do it the other way around, with a revenue target from day one, and the team will switch segments as soon as things get difficult, and afterward nobody knows why it didn't work.

How do you know you're working on the wrong segment?

From the kinds of questions you get in conversations. That's the earliest reliable signal, and it's available after a few weeks.

• Friendly, but no question about price or timing. The problem is recognized but isn't pressing. Conversations like that feel good and lead nowhere.
• Everyone wants a custom adjustment. If every prospect needs something different, you have a collection of individual cases, not a segment. You can make money that way, but you can't scale it.
• Your contact passes you along, and the conversation starts over from scratch. That means you're not talking to the role that decides. That's a segmentation error, not a sales error.
• The deal closes, but only with a discount. A price that only works with a discount tells you the value in this segment isn't big enough. Two deals like that are a signal, not bad luck.

Switching segments at this stage isn't failure. It's the outcome the first phase was designed to produce. It only gets expensive if you put it off for a year because the plan calls for revenue you can't otherwise hit.