5 ways strategic planning has failed you

We have 3 frameworks that might help!

Does this sound familiar?

A new revenue target has been set, and the CEO and board want 3x revenue next year for a particular product or segment.

So you do the math.

You start with the end in mind – how many MQLs and SQLs do you need to get 3x revenue? How many new salespeople will need to be hired? What kind of marketing budget do we need?

Well, what if we told you this is the wrong approach?

Achieving an ambitious revenue target requires a holistic, integrated GTM strategy.

Unfortunately, you can’t just “math” your way out of it. If you try, chances are slim that you’ll hit your target without cutting a lot of corners that will come back to bite you later.

“Mathism is one of 5 “isms” we’ve identified as biases that can hurt you in the planning process.

Annual planning should start with strategy conversations and the trade-offs that must occur at a company level long before you ever discuss how many new reps you need or how much marketing needs to spend on ads to generate x number of MQLs.

Remember, the goal of GTM is to acquire, keep, and grow customer relationships.

That cannot be done in a spreadsheet or a funnel (or an inverted funnel or a double funnel).

So what is the right approach?

Modern GTM complexity requires new models and approaches to annual/quarterly strategic planning, goal setting, budgeting, and plan execution.

Namely, we need to embed holistic GTM thinking and considerations into the overall strategy and planning process, using it to both inform and be informed by it.

At GTM Partners, we have many methods and methodologies, but we primarily use three frameworks to plan and set goals.

We’ve written before about MOVE.

We’ve written lots about the GTM Operating System.

Today, we want to talk about CAT.

CAT: Clarity, Alignment, Team, and Technology

Over the course of our experience at GTM Partners but also as GTM professionals over the last 20+ years, we find that many GTM issues are due to misalignment challenges between leadership, teams, and individual functions.

Teams are made up of busy people with their own departmetal agendas. Without getting alignment, different groups can go months "doing" in silos, only to find out that they have failed to "accomplish" the actual goal. It is frustrating both for individual contributors and team leaders.

That’s where CAT comes in.

Clarity

Clarity is more important than certainty.

Clarity means ensuring that your team understands the strategy, decisions, and corresponding goals for the business, along with a comprehensive understanding of what those goals mean within the context of their role.

While you can rarely be certain about what will happen today, next week, or next year as a business, you can and must be clear about what you are going to do and not do, and about the order and timing you will do it.

Having a north star allows teams and individuals to make better decisions in their day-to-day to stay the course for your strategy

Alignment

Alignment is more important than perfection or getting it “right.”

Clarity is about big picture strategy.

Alignment is about the details and in-the-trenches decisionmaking.

Agreements need to be made in a way that everyone can follow.

Being aligned is better than being right, as it allows you to execute, learn, iterate, and ultimately transform as you go with everyone in lockstep. It allows you to get to the “right” answer faster (or more likely, one of many possible right answers.)

The project list, prioritization, and deliverables that result from this methodology provide the relief and direction that your GTM team is craving.

Team

Functioning well as a team is better than individual heroism.

Scale, repeatability, and efficient growth are only possible with a team mentality.

With clarity and alignment in place, relying on "heroes" in the organization in order to hit goals will no longer be necessary. You’ll be able to mobilize all resources effectively to maximize output and efficiency.

Having a good team also mitigates the risk of an A player leaving. The entire team needs to be able to connect their work to the goal and feel valued.

Whether you run your own CAT session or ask GTM Partners to help you do it, it’s an important part of the 2024 planning process.

New ROI Study: hot off the presses

One of the things we do at GTM Partners is third-party, analyst-validated ROI studies. We do them using customer interviews, GT data, and other resources.

You can read all our ROI studies here.

But our latest is for Partnerstack. Read the ROI study to learn how PartnerStack:

• Increases partner-sourced revenue

• Makes it easy to find and manage partnerships

• Automates pay-out at scale

If you want to learn more about the significant impact partner-led strategies have had on B2B companies, you can join our chief analyst Bryan Brown for a webinar on November 8 at 2 p.m. EST. He’ll be joining Tyler Calder, CMO at PartnerStack to talk about:

• The power of partnerships

• Getting started with partner-led growth

• PartnerStack’s ROI as detailed above

We will be in Los Angeles for our GTM Made Simple Roadshow this Thursday and Friday! Hope to see many of you there.

Love, the GTM Partners’ Team