From the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and the embrace of hybrid work models to a new focus on skills-based hiring and alternative career paths, tectonic shifts in corporate life have dominated business headlines over the past few years.
Less noticed, but no less important, are the major changes affecting sales and marketing. The consumerization of business-to-business sales, new revenue technologies, an increased focus on commercial productivity, and rapidly evolving coverage formations are just some of the recent developments that are transforming—or that could transform—how companies go to market and achieve their growth targets.
Yet, as vital as a company’s go-to-market (GTM) engine is, at many companies, it’s fallen badly out of synch or, worse, has rusted in place.
Companies often sense that the engine needs a tune-up, but when they try to make repairs—for example, by introducing new roles, deploying new software, realigning teams, or simply throwing more resources at the problem—they discover that these narrow moves fail to account for the complex, interconnected machinery of their GTM model.
Now, as companies set ambitious targets for organic growth, they are realizing they need a new approach. Rather than focusing on a single fix, companies should embrace a holistic approach that answers essential questions:
- Where, precisely, does opportunity lie?
- How can we move quickly and gain momentum without incurring a variety of risks to revenue, customers, and sales rep attrition (among others)?
- How do we effectively align our GTM organization with our strategic objectives and with other business functions?
- How do we allocate resources and energy within our GTM organization?
- How do we effectively deploy AI and other digital technologies?
When you address those issues effectively, you can achieve remarkable results in relatively short order. Companies with clear visibility on performance, alignment on opportunities, and a solid execution roadmap see substantial gains in just 9 to 12 months, including a 10% to 20% improvement in sales rep productivity and a 200- to 400-percentage-point improvement to margins from smarter pricing.
Going holistic
Best-in-class companies avoid the micro-improvement trap and instead run holistic diagnostics against their commercial models to spot and capitalize on major improvement opportunities (see Figure 1). Our Commercial Excellence 360 Assessment is designed to do exactly that. It comprises a suite of proprietary diagnostic tools and benchmarks, supported by interviews and workshops, to transform GTM performance (see below).
This approach takes away the guesswork and enables senior leaders to make complex decisions based on quantitative insights and inputs from a broad cross-section of senior executives, facilitating the buy-in so critical to success.
Figure 1
Business-to-business commercial models are complex
Our approach begins with our battle-tested Commercial Excellence X-Ray, a self-assessment diagnostic supported by a proprietary database of commercial best practices from more than 850 companies that evaluates 50 core commercial capabilities of your GTM model and compares them to high-performing peers. Powered by the latest digital and advanced analytics technologies, it can help you discover fresh insights from leading companies within and outside your industry.
We also apply comprehensive GTM performance benchmarking, leaving no stone unturned across 10 or more of the highest priority GTM metrics. For software-as-a-service companies, our OPEXEngine platform provides detailed metrics on GTM measures, along with key performance indicators on finance, operations, and expenses.
How we tune up your go-to-market engine
How we tune up your go-to-market engine
Business-to-business Commercial Excellence X-Ray
- Surveys commercial leadership team to identify commercial excellence strengths and
weaknesses - Compares commercial excellence capabilities against best practices identified among more than 1,000
business-to-business companies
Commercial excellence key performance indicator benchmarking
- Compares client’s key performance indicators against peers
- Around 50 metrics evaluated against data from Bain’s proprietary database
Management
interviews
- Interviews with C-Suite and key commercial leaders across functions for qualification
- Focus topics include:
- Business point of departure
- High-level view on pain points
- Growth opportunities and ambition
Once this critical fact base has been established, we work with senior leaders in a series of prioritization workshops to identify strengths and opportunities in your current commercial model, assess where you could be at full potential, and create an execution roadmap to help you generate more value as quickly as possible.
Our Commercial Excellence 360 Assessment enables you to quickly pressure test your current GTM model and identify the steps that will change your trajectory. It can be used at companies of all sizes, across all industries—including private equity (PE), in which firms have relied on it to identify actionable plan-to-value strategies for portfolio companies.
Unlocking a new segment
Consider the case of a $200 million PE-owned software company we recently worked with. It had grown quickly, primarily within the midmarket segment. To reach its growth targets, the company knew that it needed to penetrate the enterprise market, but its initial efforts had fallen short. The company mistakenly hypothesized that the source of its subpar performance was inconsistent quality among its sales reps, a theory that led to turnover, low morale, and declining rep performance.
We were asked to apply our Commercial Excellence 360 Assessment, and this comprehensive approach enabled us to quickly identify five critical actions that would turn things around:
- Address the blind spot that was preventing the company from identifying its target buyers, personas, and factors influencing the propensity to buy. Our MoneyMap℠ diagnostic was invaluable in helping the company properly assess the potential spending, segmentation, and prioritization of enterprise accounts.
- Develop and codify an enterprise-specific sales playbook, integrate it with its customer relationship management system, and revamp sales enablement, including new training and tools for frontline reps.
- Define customer deliverables and measures of success, and change standard contract length from one year to two to three year so that it’s in line with industry standards and allows for more time to deliver value.
- Revamp its offering (both the product itself and the sales packaging) to include messaging for target buying personas and key selling points/return on investment, standard objections, and value proposition.
- Prioritize and optimize its data and tech resources to identify buying triggers and compelling insights, orchestrate sales play definitions and collateral, ensure correct and repetitive frequency of reps’ contacts, and give management visibility into actions taken by the field.
This approach enabled the company to uncover and act on key value drivers, design a new future-state model, and accelerate growth in less than 12 months. It’s just one of many examples we can share that highlight the value of a holistic assessment of your GTM organization. If you’re unsure about the current state of your sales and marketing engine and whether it’s operating at the level of performance required to meet your growth targets, a comprehensive assessment of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks is an essential step that will give you a winning edge.