1.- Define your ‘why’

Your why is going to be important. As a company,it is key that you have a well-defined, well-structured, crystal clear why. Hopefully that is the case. Then, my question would be: Why are you launching this product? What is the benefit you will bring for human beings? What is the reason for your buyers or consumers to believe in your new proposition? Write the sentence down.

2.- Plan your plan work

Developing a plan is not something you’ll do in a couple of hours. Therefore, it is important that you create a plan to build your plan. Your building steps should be integrated in your personal schedule, so that you make sure you allocate some time behind your plan development. Leave a few weekends, if possible, to make your ideas rest in your brain and come back to them later on with healthy scepticism, so you can make they better. If possible, ask some of your trusted colleagues to review a few ideas and come back to you with constructive criticism. Ideally (confidentiality allowing), run one or two ideas with uncontaminated people outside of your market. I find kids are great for this, as long as your idea is understandable to them. Build your timeline with a line and a deadline by task, ideally broken down by days. Leave buffer time by task to be on the safe side.

3.- Create your funnel steps

I love adapting the inbound marketing methodology to GTM plans, it suits every single type of buyer or consumer. The inbound methodology has 3 key decision steps:

• Awareness: This is the stage where there are symptoms related to the need you will cover with your proposition (for instance: I feel bad)
• Consideration: Now your potential client or consumer has given a name to their problem (for instance: I have a headache and need to fight against it)
• Decision: Your potential customer has defined their approach to solve their problem (I need a drug)

Now, in your plan, answer the following questions:

• How will I fulfil my potential buyers needs in their 3 decision steps?
• How will I take my potential buyers needs from one step to another? What are the tools I will put in place in order to help them go through the decision process?

Another important aspect is that you need to build your purchase flow. What is the typical buying behaviour? What are the touchpoints I will be able to activate?

4.- Define your overarching goal

There has to be one key goal, that should respond to the following question: what is that needs to happen with this plan? For instance: ‘sell 1.000 devices in the first 3 months’. Or: ‘achieve visibility in 100 stores’. This has to be one crystal clear goal, not a long sentence that integrates many goals. Therefore, the following does not work here: ‘sell 1.000 devices in the first 3 months achieving visibility in 100 stores’, because this is a 2 different goals combination. It is key, as we will see in the next paragraph, that you only have one overarching goal

• Awareness: This is the stage where there are symptoms related to the need you will cover with your proposition (for instance: I feel bad)
• Consideration: Now your potential client or consumer has given a name to their problem (for instance: I have a headache and need to fight against it)
• Decision: Your potential customer has defined their approach to solve their problem (I need a drug)

Now, in your plan, answer the following questions:

• How will I fulfil my potential buyers needs in their 3 decision steps?
• How will I take my potential buyers needs from one step to another? What are the tools I will put in place in order to help them go through the decision process?

Another important aspect is that you need to build your purchase flow. What is the typical buying behaviour? What are the touchpoints I will be able to activate?

5.- Define a subset of SMART goals

Take your overarching goal, and align a number of secondary goals to it. Don’t write down more than 3 subgoals, creating a list of 4 goals maximum where there is one key goal.

Coming back to the inbound methodology, your goals have to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely). You can get more information on SMART goals here.

Your key goal cannot be compromised. But the others can. So, compromise your goals between them, writing down sentences that, based on your overarching goal will represent a good scenario. These are not your ideal scenarios (which is the one where you meet all your goals), but they are good enough. For instance, if you set that you have to sell 1.000 devices in the first 3 months, a compromising scenario would be ‘sell 1.000 in the first 3 months, achieving at least visibility in 50 stores’. As contradictory as this might sound and counterintuitive it is (How can you compromise your goal before building your plan!), this can help you.

Define your investments (which can be economical, time investment, or any other kind of resources) as follows: put 80% of your resources behind your overarching goal and your other goals, but only when connected to the overarching one. Allocate the remaining 20% to the other goals when not connected to the overarching one. 

Allocate 80% of your resources for the activities you have forecasted in your GTM plan, and leave a 20% for adaptations based on your tracking data.

6.- Define your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

There has to be one single KPI that will pass the elevator pitch, which has to be directly related to the overarching goal. Let’s call this your master KPI. In the example we took, your master KPI is the number of devices sold. 

Now, define your other KPIs, following the fact that when your GTM plan is related to indirect channels, you will have Sales In (sales to your distribution) and Sales Out (sales to your final buyer) KPIs.

7.- Define clear incentives for every stakeholder

When you launch new proposition, you’re changing the status quo. We human beings do not tend to like change. Even if you’re launching a great disrupting, never seen category, product or service, you have to get people on board. Define the profiles of the people you will need to get on board. Write down as many as you think they can be involved in your GTM. For instance: my account managers, the distributor sales director, the retailer store sales representative, the advertising agency account director, my CEO, the retailer CMO, and so. Build a table with a line by profile, insert an incentive column and fill the empty cells with one driver incentive for each one of them, according to what is that you can afford. The incentives, such as the resources, can be of many types: monetary, social recognition, alignment with the person type assigned KPIs, in-company recognition, and so on.

8.- Define your list of blockers and work on influence

Now that you have your stakeholders list with incentives, cross that by organization (you work for one company, but, might, for instance, launch your product with 2 different distributors), and define your list of supporters and blockers by organization)

Once you have done that, work on the blockers influence, write down ways to persuade them, identify common interest areas and work on your milestones to make them switch to supporters. This milestones should have specific timelines which have to be reflected in your plan scheduling (See Point number 10).

9.-. Define the organizational aspects of your plan

Who is going to be on charge? Are they prepared? Will they act based on common interests? Will they be able to get rid of their preset mindset and create great delivery? How will they report? How will they embrace the plan in terms of their relationships with their retailers, resellers, distributors, and so on?

10.- Create a schedule

Work on a Gantt plan diagram, building your plan dependences and key milestones. Write down as well in your personal schedule, the key milestones and time allocations.

11.- Pre-test and fine-tune

Regardless of how good is your plan so far, it is only paper. It is important to make it step up from paper to reality. If you can afford it carry an end-user survey before the launch. It is important that this survey is carried on the plan and not on the product. For instance, a wrong question would be: how likely would you be to purchase this product? (because it is related to product itself, and it is not related to the way you will market it, which is the object of your GTM plan). A right question would be: how likely would you be to buy this product, at this price, packed this way, and in this particular store. You have to pick a great market research company, as most of them will come back to saying they won’t be able to isolate the factors, as your questions will be too specific with too many caveats, they will say there is no way to understand what can work and cannot. However, remember you have one overarching goal that is the one you have to deliver. Therefore, you need to know if you GTM can work or not. You cannot finish you pre-test knowing aspects that might work and aspects that might not work, because that would not allow you to take any corrective actions.

Other ways to run a pre-test is carry some representative stakeholders interviews before the launch.

Now that you have your learnings from your pre-test, consolidate and fine-tune your plan.

12.- Launch

Launch your GTM. It is key that at this stage, you stick to your plan. Do not fine-tune anything during the launch phase, just focus on executing your plan. A strategy can be right and fail because of execution, so do not make that mistake, just stick to your plan. Roll it out as you have locked it down.

13.- Track

Build a simple, effective dashboard with your KPIs and track on a regular basis (more often better than less often). For many markets, the ideal regularity is one week, but you might well need a daily or a monthly tracking.

Track your conversion funnel, ideally based on market data (how many end users can I impact, how many in the awareness / consideration / decision stages? How many of them will I be able to impact across their journey?)

Other ways to run a pre-test is carry some representative stakeholders interviews before the launch.

Now that you have your learnings from your pre-test, consolidate and fine-tune your plan.

14.- Adapt

Based on your first relevant tracking data, adapt your plan. For instance, you might have one specific funnel steps or specific buying flow steps that are not working. Put in place corrective actions, with the resources you have previously allocated for that.

You might wonder how can you adapt if I recommend, in the launch phase, to just stick to the plan and execute, and you can well have a rolling out launch, meaning you will launch and track in parallel. The idea is that all activities and actions in the final launch plan are executed as they are written down in the plan, at least for a market test. Once this test is passed, then you can start adapting, but no before that.

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