How to manage multiple GTMs in SaaS (With Dave Boyce)

Is it time to add another GTM? Dave told us before recording "not until after $10M ARR". So of course, we discussed that and much more.

We went through the process of establishing different Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies - including the importance of testing and tailoring strategies to match audience behavior, considerations when transitioning from sales-led to product-led growth, and the significance of unit economics in assessing GTM fit.

Dave Boyce, a PLG and SaaS expert, shares his insights and experiences throughout the conversation.

Check out Dave's substack Product led GTM or follow him on LinkedIn.

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:58) - Meet Dave Boyce
• (05:20) - The downside of multiple motions
• (10:13) - Sequence of events
• (18:35) - Is it time? And how do we test?
• (25:12) - From sales led to PLG and vice versa
• (29:08) - Adding PLG to sales led
• (31:46) - When to pull the plug
• (38:29) - If it's broken, here's how to find a new one

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This episode of The Revenue Formula is brought to you by Growblocks. Finding and fixing problems in your GTM shouldn't take weeks. It should happen instantly.

That's why Growblocks built the first RevOps platform that shows you your entire funnel, split by motions, segments and more - so you can find problems, the root-cause and identify solutions fast, all in the same platform.

***

Connect with us

🔔 LinkedIn: Toni / Mikkel

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💬 Email: [e-mail]

Creators & Guests

Host

Mikkel Plaehn

Head of Demand at Growblocks

Host

Toni Hohlbein

CEO & Co-founder at Growblocks

Guest

Dave Boyce

GTM-focused SaaS Advisor and Board Member

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Mikkel Plaehn, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

[00:00:00] Toni: Hey, everyone. This is Toni Holbein from GrowBlocks. You are listening to the revenue formula. In today's episode, we are talking with Dave Boyce from winning by design about how to manage multiple go to markets at the same time. Enjoy.
[00:00:14] It's it's a really high bar
[00:00:20] right there,
[00:00:20] Mikkel: No. So yeah.
[00:00:22] Exactly. But so the the thing is, uh, last week, we're out for beers. And we have a new teammate, uh, on our team. And, uh, he's really into stuff like Pokemon. And I go like, really?
[00:00:33] Pokemon? And then you figure out that he's 10 years younger than yourself. And this weekend, I basically I've come to the point now where I've stopped counting, so I was actually not sure of my age. And I just decided, I'm just gonna ask ask ChatGPT, and it came back to me and said, you're 38. And I went like, you're wrong.
[00:00:51] And, no, I checked the numbers. It's correct. It's like, well, it wouldn't be the first time you're wrong. But then I was really happy about today's guest because I saw, and this is, fact check, you can always look up Dave Boyce's profile. It said, You have 20 years in SaaS.
[00:01:08] So when you were in SaaS, I was basically in school. So, you know, there's still time. There's still there's still time. Are you
[00:01:14] Toni: Shaming
[00:01:15] Mikkel: our guests? No.
[00:01:17] Dave Boyce: It's so true.
[00:01:18] Mikkel: It's it's also just experience level wise. He's like more I mean, It's not just the time you put in. It's also what you do. Right? But it's more than 2 x Yeah.
[00:01:27] My experience, which is just crazy to have that level of experience on the show.
[00:01:31] Dave Boyce: So
[00:01:32] I remember the first time I saw the acronym SaaS. We had a we had a company that we called at the time, they called it a, um, ASP at, like it was a hosted application, like, at a hosting center.
[00:01:47] There wasn't a cloud, really. It was just like we owned the hardware, but it was at a hosting center, and we served up the software, you You know, over an Internet connection, we called it an ASP. And then the first time I saw the word SAS, the acronym SaaS, big s, little a, little a, big s, I was like, that's not a thing.
[00:02:03] Toni: Yeah.
[00:02:03] Dave Boyce: just making things up now.
[00:02:06] Toni: So this this is the refreshing thing when you have people that have kind of seen this now for a while. It's like everything you enter into, right, where you're kind of new in a company, New in a new in a industry, new anywhere, you kind of look at all the things like, oh, okay. You know, you take everything for granted and it's like super serious about it. But when you have kind of growing with it, you have all of this like, no, you know, SaaS, that sounds terrible. It's never gonna stick.
[00:02:29] We shouldn't go with this at all. We should call it something else. And then, you know, suddenly kind of those 2 worlds crash. So it's a I love I love hearing those stories.
[00:02:37] Dave Boyce: It's good.
[00:02:38] Yeah. I mean, obviously, I believed in the concept. I just thought it was a goofy acronym.
[00:02:43] Mikkel: And we're getting more and more every day, by the way.
[00:02:46] Toni: The the latest, Yeah. The latest is GAAC, growth at all cost.
[00:02:51] Dave Boyce: Oh, right.
[00:02:52] Yes.
[00:02:52] Toni: small a, small a, capital c. Anyway, moving on from that maybe, Mikkel. So,
[00:02:58] Mikkel: uh, I mean, we have Dave Boyes with us on the show, so I've really been looking forward, really happy Yes.
[00:03:03] Uh, you said yes So hop on the show and share your knowledge today with us, Dave. Um, you are I so, again, I'm just stealing straight up from LinkedIn here because it's Easiest. You it's your words at the end of the day. You're a go to market focused SaaS adviser and board member. We already covered you.
[00:03:18] You have 20 years in SaaS. Uh, you've helped sell a couple of companies to companies such as Oracle and Amazon. Um, you've raised a lot of money, together with companies and, uh, working as executive chairman at Winning by Design. And then, you know, it seems probably as a side hobby, you also write on Substack, and you kinda mentioned you have, Uh, something on the way as well.
[00:03:39] Dave Boyce: Oh, yes. I've been very busy, heads down, writing a book on Product led go to market. I know we're gonna talk a little bit about this.
[00:03:48] And then hoping hoping I've been interviewing a ton of Growth executives, like big companies, small companies, uh, companies that launched product led growth after they already were at a hundred million dollars, company that launched product led growth from the beginning. Companies that run multiple GTMs at the same time. Just trying to figure out, you know, like, this is more than, You know, more than a a trend or a gimmick, what is it? Like, how does it fit how does it fit in the kind of pant pantheon of go to market. And we all know the big stories about, um, you know, Atlassian, they got to a hundred million dollars with no Salesforce and Slack that bragged about never needing a Salesforce.
[00:04:29] Of course, they do have a Salesforce now and Dropbox and Calendly and DocuSign. But then we know less about the stories, you know, uh, you know, stories of, like, Unity Software who added PLG kind of after they were at a hundred million dollars or MongoDB that did the same thing. And we think of, um, we think of HubSpot as a product led growth company, but they were not in the beginning. They were sales led. They were their inbound, of course.
[00:04:53] They were innovating on the inbound, But they did not have product led growth until after they were at a hundred million dollars, and then they added it. So I've been I've been going to school on that, studying it, writing this book, and we got, um, Just last week I'm really happy about this. Just last week, signed with, uh, Stanford Business Press to publish that book.
[00:05:12] Toni: Congratulations. And everyone who's listening, you heard it here first, the revenue formula.
[00:05:16] Dave Boyce: you go. It's 1 week old.
[00:05:19] Mikkel: Yeah. There you go.
[00:05:20] Toni: So but let's So I'm actually right into this. Right? Because, um, you know, when you when you when you think about this, oh, should we do inbound?
[00:05:27] Should we do outbound? Should we do PLG? Should we do, to, like, events and partners and whatever. everyone is always thinking, like, yeah, the more the better. I kind of we get more leads.
[00:05:36] We get more inbounds. We get, you know, more deals. We can, you know, close more business. We can grow faster. But that's kind of that's kind of the the the the problem set that we wanna talk about today is like, well, wait a minute.
[00:05:47] that's actually not true. Right? So kind of, you know, the the the question to kick us off here, so what is what is the downside of running multiple go to markets, or what's what's so difficult about doing this, and, then should you be doing this in the first place anyway. Right? So let's let's maybe kind of dive into that topic.
[00:06:04] Dave Boyce: my. Yeah. I think you've been reading my journals. It it's rough.
[00:06:09] I I know you guys have built companies. It is, You're right. It's very tempting. You know? You let me let me put 3 bets out there and see which 1 pays off.
[00:06:20] That that's kinda 1. And I had a, you know, I had a very early stage company where I was running 2 go to markets And, um, at the same time, and we were sub 1000000 dollars. Not smart. Like, I I mean, It's hard. Like, we were working so hard.
[00:06:35] We were showing up, um, you know, at 8 in the morning. We had a personal trainer who came and, like, worked us out, and then we were there till 10 at night, every night, we had 2 different go to markets that we were having to tune and test and monitor. And, um, and I was only 1 person, and our head of product was only 1 person, and our, um, head of marketing was only 1 person. There were a few and we weren't a big team. We're 15 people.
[00:06:59] so, you know, how are you gonna get kinda critical mass onto kind of 1 motion and tune it, um, to the point where it needs to be. It was hard and since then I've learned, you know, just rule of thumb. Yes. We're gonna add a second go to market at some point. But first, how about we get the first go to market, working well.
[00:07:21] And there's a there's a method to it. We can talk more about it, but there's, you know, there's a sequence of events that you would pursue around go to market fit and or sorry, product market fit and then go to market fit on a first GTM and then, a second GTM, You can add, I think, at about 10000000 dollars.
[00:07:38] Toni: Before before we kind of go into that, you should almost clean up what does it mean go to market motion. Right?
[00:07:44] Kind of what what what, you know, let's define that first so we're all making sure we're talking about the same thing, and let's take it from there.
[00:07:52] Dave Boyce: So, I like to think in processes and systems. Like, I think we are building a go to market motion is a system. that is comprised of a set of processes that are then executed by either humans or machines.
[00:08:07] But those processes that, define kind of how we're gonna support the buying motion for our customers. And we can and there's there's, you know, distinct versions. You mentioned some already. There's an there's an inbound go to market motion, which means I'm gonna put marketing Material out there, you know, value added kind of content marketing, uh, out there. I'm gonna let people engage with it.
[00:08:30] I'm going to let them kind of I'm I'm gonna track their engagement, and I'm gonna let them register interest. And then once they register interest, I'll follow-up on that inbound interest. And that and that's generally done, with a, you know, like, a SDR team, and then I will convert that interest into a sale. Okay. That's 1.
[00:08:49] That's an inbound motion. Separate from that would be like an outbound go to market motion, which might which might be, uh, account based marketing. That's where I'm identifying the companies and the humans at those companies who I think would be a good match for this, and then I'm going to actually target them, um, either through, um, you know, targeted advertising or or email or outbound calling. And I'm going to I'm gonna, for that ICP company and those target personas, I'm gonna make sure that they know about me and my solution. So when the time comes right for them, we might be able to start an opportunity there.
[00:09:24] That's an outbound motion. It's actually more expensive than an inbound motion. And then on the totally other end of the spectrum would be like PLG, product led. It looks a lot like inbound, but instead of me converting that inbound demand via with an SDR conversation, I'll convert that inbound demand by just letting them starting the product on a self-service motion. It's kind of a no touch self-service.
[00:09:47] So, yes, just get started. Let's, uh, let you experience impact before you make any financial commitment to me, and then it rolls from there. Each of those is very distinct. Like, you need a mix of of marketing and product and lead development and sales skills that are different on the ABM side versus on the self-service side and then somewhere in the middle on the, um, on the inbound.
[00:10:13] Toni: So now that we have to find this, right, and I think a couple of people are coming up with new motions right now. It's kind of very in. I think, You know, it it worked really well with PLG, and now you have people saying, well, events led, partnership led, you know, all bound, near bound, ABM, whatever. Some of them are probably not specific distinct motions. Right?
[00:10:35] But it's it's starting to feel like there's a there's a lot of optionality here. Right? So you know, kind of leave leaving that topic maybe behind for a second. Really, the the next step then here is trying to figure out, okay, What is that sequence of events? Kind of you mentioned this kind of previously.
[00:10:49] and many people listening here, Um, probably beyond the 10 or 20000000 on ARR. So they they might have not even been around when this organization was a million or was pre product market fit and so forth. But let's talk about those those sequence of events that you mentioned there, uh, and where it then fits into potentially then go multi GTM motion, right, which is really this This breaking point in a positive way that that we wanna kind of dissect here today.
[00:11:15] Dave Boyce: Okay.
[00:11:16] So yes. So we're sequence of events is great. That is, uh, you know, that's a process. I think we manage process manage systems With or processes, I could use those interchangeably, and we lead people. If we're trying to manage people.
[00:11:34] That's that's kind of difficult. You know, I want I would like to establish a system and then see if that system is performing for me. That system is gonna be a series of processes. It's gonna have a sequence of events just like you talked about. And if sequence of events a, b, c isn't delivering the output that I want, then I work on the process, not on the person.
[00:11:58] Now if the person's not executing a, b, c. Okay. That's, you know, that that's something different. That's a leadership challenge. But I I would like to test process a, b, c and see if it produces what I want.
[00:12:10] So you can think about, um, where the demo is in the process? Am I demoing on the first interaction, or am I not demoing on the first interaction? And there are different Different markets and different products and different eras where, you know, demoing used to not make sense in the beginning because it's something that I held back because it was kind of some power that I had as a seller. And then we and we've moved over time to where actually everyone expects a demo, so demo early on or demo as discovery. But I wanted to find what that is, and then I wanna test it almost like a scientist in a lab.
[00:12:45] Does this type of demo and these this this kind of a conversation at this step in the process produce conversion to the next step like a qualified a sales qualified opportunity, does it create the conversion that I would expect? If it's doing its job, great. Then I will, you know, endorse that as part of the process that works. And if it's not, I'll keep experimenting. And part of the issue here, uh, Toni is, It takes time to run these experiments.
[00:13:15] Toni: Mhmm.
[00:13:16] Dave Boyce: Like like, let me do it 10 times. Let me do it 20 times. Let me see if it's working. Let me see if there's any adjustments. Let me hear back from the front either from the product that's telling me because of metrics or from the humans that are telling me because of the results that they're seeing.
[00:13:31] And, also, now I can monitor some of these interactions through, uh, call recordings and transcriptions and even sentiment analysis, whether that's working the way that it was intended to and what adjustments I need to make to get it working. So I'm gonna test those kind of that sequence of events until I get something that works. And when we are when we're trying to get a go to market fit, like, we're trying to get a go to market process to work, quote, unquote, we're really we can do we can test that quantitatively. Like, what we're really looking for And a go to market fit is unit economics. We want and I and the unit economics that I like the best, because you don't have to wait that long to know if it's happening, is CAC payback.
[00:14:16] So here I gotta sharpen my pencil, and I've gotta, like, become, you know, become a rev ops, uh, you know, revenue architect. But I need to figure out What's the total amount that I'm spending in marketing and sales on average to acquire 1 new customer? And then how long will it take me to recoup that investment in months? And if that is 12 months or lower, I'm probably in pretty good shape. Of course, this changes by product and by industry.
[00:14:43] But if I spend Just pick a round number. If I spend a thousand dollars to acquire a new customer, will I get my thousand dollars back within a year. If I spend 10000 dollars to get a new customer, will I get my 10000 dollars back within a year? If it's gonna take me 2 or 3 or 4 years, You know, I'm almost a bank at that point. I'm, like, financing all of those activities and just waiting for those future cash flows to pay me back, and that's, um, that's a tricky spot to be in, and it does feed into this growth at all cost mindset.
[00:15:15] Toni: And and what do you say kind of the the sheer difficulty of figuring the stuff out and the volume you need to have in order to run through all the experiments. Would you say that that's the reason why you should be waiting with, You know, multiple go to market motions is kind of is that the is that the root cause? You know, if you break it all the way down, is that the reason?
[00:15:32] Dave Boyce: Uh, it's a yes asterisk.
[00:15:35] Toni: Yeah.
[00:15:36] Dave Boyce: It's 1 of them. 1 of them. Um, I I don't think it's as hard as people think. I mean, especially if you only have 1.
[00:15:43] I mean, this is a really good point, Toni. Like, if I'm trying to take, you know let's say I take a really tough spend category in marketing, like brand and creative. And I'm like, well, how much of brand and creative goes to GTM a versus GTM b? And then I have to kinda divide it down. I have to Somehow prorate allocate it.
[00:16:03] It's fine. Like, any answer is fine as long as you allocate every dollar, but it it does create arguments. If I only have 1 GTM, then Great. I could put all of grand brand and creative behind GTMA and just charge GTMA for everything I'm doing in marketing and everything I'm doing in sales and tune it until I get it right. But the other thing is, as I move through this experimentation, you know, building these processes, What's what's working in marketing for demand creation?
[00:16:29] What's working working in, um, uh, lead development? What's working in my close motion? As I as I move through that and optimize it, I wanna leave behind defined processes and and systems if I can. Because when I when I move ahead to the next frontier, like, let's say I'm gonna go do GTM b, I wanna know that GTM a is fairly programmed. Like, it's fairly like like, if I take my hundred percent kind of CEO or head of, you know, uh, revenue attention off of GTMA and start Focusing on iterating g t m b.
[00:17:07] I wanna know that g t m a is actually gonna keep going. Like, I don't need to be sitting next to each of those humans and Coaching them and doing deal reviews and doing call reviews. Not that my managers wouldn't be doing that, but they know what they're doing. Like, they know what they're measuring themselves against they're measuring themselves against a process that we define, we wrote down, we, um, we either put it into the systems and or we put it into their processes, and so It's it's fine tuned. So those are a couple reasons.
[00:17:33] 1 is just the complexity around analysis, but the other is I wanna define things in my wake and leave them behind as a defined process so I can move to the next 1.
[00:17:44] Toni: I think this is kind of a really cool key takeaway. Right?
[00:17:46] And I think, I'm not sure if you kind of mentioned this in the intro of this is, you know, some of the homework we did, but you're kind of, hey, you should be having 1 go to market motion until you maybe hit 10000000. Uh, and then you should be thinking about doing the next. Right? And I think that's a great rule of thumb for people to take away and kind of question like, oh, you know, we're doing inbound and outbound. We're not even 10000000.
[00:18:05] Is this the right thing that we're doing? But at the same time, it's actually also about the, the, you know, the confidence and the ability to Okay. We have that figured out. Now we can spend brainpower on the next thing we'll figure out. Right?
[00:18:18] Because that's kind of what he's saying there. And and to a degree, kind of the 10000000 is almost the, Well, rule of thumb, you'll probably have 1 thing nailed by 10000000, and then you have, you know, had space to move on to the next piece. Right? At least that's kind of how I'm hearing you explain it. Right?
[00:18:34] Yeah. There you go.
[00:18:35] Dave Boyce: Yeah. And 10 10 could be 8, 10 could be 6, 10 could be 12.
[00:18:39] You know? Look. If I could get to a hundred million and never have to change what I was doing, I would do it. But I might run out of market. I might run out of, You know, what I want is a scalable source of new customers that I can acquire, um, efficiently.
[00:18:55] And if If I'm not running out of customers and I can continue let's say I'm running SEM and SEO for inbound interest. I've got content marketing, and I'm running an inbound motion, And and I've got no signs of stopping, and I'm blowing through 10000000 dollars. Why do I need to add something else? Like, if if I'm still accelerating, why do I need to add something else? But I will, at some point, start to see that acceleration rate taper off, and I'm going to need to be ready for another motion to put in there because all growth follows an s curve.
[00:19:28] All you know, in in recurring revenue and all revenue growth, it follows an s curve. We're gonna accelerate through a certain period, and then we're gonna and then we're gonna attenuate. And, um, for me to kind of postpone that attenuation, adding another GTM is almost always, um, gonna be the right answer. But to your point, I don't wanna add chaos on top of chaos. If I'm gonna go figure out a new, um, a new GTM, I'd like the prior GTM to be pretty, uh, locked down.
[00:19:58] Toni: lot of people listening, we're so very Very guilty right now. Like, oh,
[00:20:02] he's he's looking at me
[00:20:03] Dave Boyce: Me too. Point at me.
[00:20:06] Mikkel: So I'm just sitting here thinking if there's 1 thing I think that defines a lot of SaaS startups is we're very impatient. We want, results now, and there's no room for failure.
[00:20:17] And so I'm just wondering, what are kind of the prerequisites when you start this test you mentioned in the sequence of events? I could see some folks Having their, you know, annual plan, which was just completed by a bunch of companies and then accidentally adding q 1, yeah, then the motion is kinda working, so revenue. Like, what What kind of, you know, almost safeguards do you need in place? How how do you think about that side of of basically running the test? How long do you let it run, for example, and so on?
[00:20:44] Dave Boyce: Yeah.
[00:20:45] I mean, we're playing scientists, we we don't have to you know, we're we're not looking for, um, you know, 10 significant digits here. We're not trying to prove this, you know, to get accepted in a peer reviewed publication. We we're just we're directionally trying to get this right. So you'll kinda you'll kinda know, like, there's some scientific principles that help. You don't wanna run multiple experiments at once.
[00:21:11] So I don't want to be experimenting on the sequence events and also the content of those events at the exact same time because then I won't know which thing moved to the needle. So we do need to sequence our experiments in a way that we can, you know, run an experiment, see what worked. If it worked, keep it. If it didn't work, kill it. and each of those takes a little bit of time, But I don't think I mean, most experiments you can run-in a couple of weeks.
[00:21:39] You define them in a couple of weeks and then run them in a couple of weeks and then decide, you know, whether it's part of your go forward or not. But it takes a little bit of time to string together, you know, a 2 week experiment, another 2 week experiment, maybe some sets of noncompeting experiments during the same 2 weeks and then another set and another set. I mean, now pretty soon we're in months. But the cool thing is every time 1 of those experiments resolves either to a positive or a negative result, I know more than I did before I launched that experiment. And every time 1 of those makes it into the process, It's in the process, like, kinda capital p.
[00:22:14] Like, it's been, um, coronated.
[00:22:17] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:22:18] Dave Boyce: Um, I don't have to think about it again. I'm not sure I'm answering your question, Miguel,
[00:22:23] Toni: No. I'm not Let me let me ask you the question the other way around, actually. It's and and maybe we're looking more for a rule of thumb instead of the what do you say? We're playing scientist here.
[00:22:30] I love that. That's like So true. Um, the, uh, it's really more about how much time should he be, you know, expecting for a new motion to maybe fall into place. Almost how long, you know, rule of thumb wise Is the the terrible part of the s curve going to take before it's like suddenly it's gonna be significant. Right?
[00:22:50] To have like a, Hey. Usually, you know, if you wanna roll out outbound, let's just say that. You start today. You roll outbound. Really, you know, this thing working out unless you outlier Crazy awesome.
[00:23:02] It's probably gonna take x. Do you have some of, like, a rule of thumb like this in the back of your head?
[00:23:08] Dave Boyce: Ish. Ish.
[00:23:08] But, I mean, obviously, every every 1 of those answers is gonna say it's it depends. But, um, But human human driven processes are generally quicker to update than processes that are, you know, programmed into code. that's just because training of humans, especially if you have a good leader, can result in kind of something new being in production tomorrow. Whereas if I have to design a user experience and then put it into the code and then, uh, test it and launch it. It takes more than just tomorrow.
[00:23:43] It might take, you know, a week or 2 weeks.
[00:23:46] Toni: So this is funny. Um, and obviously, for everyone who doesn't know this, Dave is a big PLG guy. Right? Dave is basically the PLG guy. so looking at this, so I've I've only dabbled my feet in on the operation side and kind of building up a PLG thing, but you're so right.
[00:24:01] Uh, but I was always so jealous of PLG because of this 1 other thing, which is, well, once you made the change, it kinda sticks. And that's different actually in the on the human side. Right? Kind of sure you can you can you can go into production, you know, as you mentioned overnight, But my big problem, and we actually had KD on the show yesterday, kind of that's
[00:24:23] Dave Boyce: Oh, KD.
[00:24:24] Toni: differently. And he has this like, almost human engineering, you know, leadership mindset.
[00:24:30] Right? which is also fantastic. But my problem was always, Well, you tell them the new thing and then they do it, but then you tell them another new thing the next day, which they will also do, but they stop doing the other thing. Right? So it's really difficult with humans, I feel.
[00:24:44] makes me sound like very terrible. I'm like, woah. And to kind of keep this, You know, keep adding change on top of positive change versus in the PLG land in the in the more, you know, developed coded, uh, basic kind of space. Everything that works, you can, you know, by default that stays, and then it can keep building on top of that. Right?
[00:25:03] So I was always super jealous of that. Um, And it's so funny to see the the other side of the coin, like, well, yeah, but it also takes longer to kind of put in code. Right?
[00:25:12] Mikkel: you kind of said that we have a PLG expert on the show. And I think maybe it's got a bit practical because you mentioned a couple of companies in the beginning where they went from, you know, a sales led to PLG and PLG to sales led. And I think we've, you know, we've heard quite a few companies now where it throws a lot of sand in the gears e either way. Right?
[00:25:33] think this can portray some of the challenges by going multimotion. So I'm pretty curious to hear, kind of your experience. What are some of the The challenges you see with going, you know, either from from sales side to also then having PLG and vice versa, because this makes it way more real all of a
[00:25:47] Dave Boyce: Oh my gosh. Okay. Perfect. Alright.
[00:25:50] So first, we'll start with my favorite if I were building a company from scratch today, I would start I would try to start with the self-service motion, a PLG motion. I would try to get that flywheel going. I would try Toni, to your point, I'd try to get things programmed into that GTM machine so I didn't have to think about it again. Um, and then I would try to get to 10000000 dollars, and then I would add on an inbound, add add on a sales assist motion, and then I might and then eventually, I'd add on a, um, an ABM motion. Here's what often happens when when and and winning by design, we work with a lot of companies that got to, you know, 10 or 20000000 dollars through PLG, and now they wanna add sales and winning by design is known as the GTM company and we're good at sales and good at sales training so great you know here's a technical founder, not Super thrilled about having to hire, um, you know, some sort of unicorn sales leader who's gonna do some black magic and do something that's not programmed.
[00:26:49] So Can you help me winning by design? 1 of the real struggle the real challenges, and we've been we've lived this is they think they're gonna build or or Let's just say we. I I don't wanna say they. Like, we've all made these mistakes. We think we're gonna build a separate GTM motion over there.
[00:27:08] Like, here's my current GTM motion over here, and then I'm gonna build another GTM motion over there. So I do PLG, which is a flywheel, and then I'm gonna do some sort of enterprise selling over there. You can do it, but but you lose all the leverage. What I'd rather do is build a sales motion right next to my PLG motion and leverage the flywheel that I've already built. So rather than me trying to sell million dollar deals, maybe I can sell 15000 dollar deals, and I can source those from the companies that are already starting in a self-service motion.
[00:27:48] And that that's a much more integrated, uh, that's sometimes called product led sales to your point, Toni, is All of these, you know, product led, market led, and events led, whatever. But product led sales, meaning I'm gonna leverage the usage of the product to tee up opportunities for sales, and that's called a PQL, product qualified lead, or, um, or a PQA, a product qualified account. And that's much, much more fun to engage with someone who's already with a company that's already experiencing success from the product than to be cold calling. Now the deals may not be as big. You know, I might have to work my way up from a 5000 ACV to a 10000 ACV to a 15000 ACV to a 20.
[00:28:31] But that's a much more methodical way of building than to just go all the way over there and expect million dollar deals. The other thing about trying to build all the way over there is super long sales cycles, super long hiring cycles, super long until you, uh, super long ramps until you decide, uh, can figure out whether someone is successful. And because it's so disconnected from your current GTM, you know almost nothing about whether it's gonna work until 2 years down the road when it either did work or didn't work. So that's the mistake I usually see when we're going from PLG to sales led is that I I build. I get try to go too big, too fast, and I don't get leverage for my current motion.
[00:29:08] In the other direction, it's, like, Wipe your mind of all of that because it's a completely different mindset. So now I've built a, um, now I've built a sales led business, and I'm used to selling 20,000, 50,000, , hundred thousand dollar deals. And now somebody comes up with the idea like, hey. We should do a free version of our product. Okay.
[00:29:31] So now you you've you've literally just waved the red, the red rag in front of a bull because all the revenue leaders are gonna say, no. No. No. No. No.
[00:29:41] No. No. No. You're not giving my product away for free. I charge for that.
[00:29:45] Not gonna put something on the website that says free. That's gonna mess me up. You're not gonna put something on the website that says 19 dollars. That's gonna mess me up. You're not gonna sell to those teeny little companies that are gonna churn.
[00:29:57] That's gonna mess me up. Um, so you have to do in this case, um, it was really interesting talking to Kip Bodnar, this, CMO of HubSpot. When they when they decided to do this, they knew that it was going to draw lots of fire from the existing managers, engineering managers, product managers, sales managers. They said, no. No.
[00:30:20] We're actually gonna take a team and put them off to the side, break all their former reporting structures. So, yes, I have an I have engineers on this team, but they don't report into engineering. Yes. I have, uh, performance marketing on this team, but it doesn't report into marketing. And in their case, they actually had, um, sales, but it was more like kind of like almost like a blend of service and sales.
[00:30:43] But they're not gonna report it to their former bosses. We're gonna create a team, and we're gonna put them off to the side we’re gonna give em separate objectives and we’re gonna let them work on that, in their case for three years. Took them three years to get to 10 million dollars in a self-service motion. But I guarantee you, they weren't doing anything impressive on in an ARR front in year 1. I'm sure they weren't. The only reason that team even survived is because the CEO cared about it.
[00:31:07] Brian was protecting them. But if they had been reporting to the former bosses, everyone would be watching and saying, well, you had a year. Sorry. Um, you know, we're gonna kill it now. It's just not enough time, though.
[00:31:20] So but after 3 years, there were 10000000 dollars, and then they and then they folded it back into the company. And then the core company started learning from from the motions that they had established in that. So very, very different challenges, um, depending on which direction you're going.
[00:31:36] Mikkel: It's almost like skunk works. Yeah. Like, you remember the classic Ford, right? Uh, when they built was it the GT, I think, or something like this?
[00:31:43] That was kind of, uh, also an amazing story.
[00:31:46] Toni: But that actually kind of triggered another question in me. Right? So obviously, the the HubSpot story, obviously, success, you know, and the the the survivorship bias and, you know, all of these things that you can assign to it. But it's like almost well, what what are signs where you should Kill some of those new go to market motions.
[00:32:01] Right? Maybe you have PLG running, um, and you wanna add product led sales or the other way around. do you have some, like, uh, oh, those are, like, red flags where You should probably abort instead of trying to keep pushing, because I think this is this is something that someone's in the middle of it, and they're seeing disappointing results, and they're getting pressure from all all different angles, maybe from the board, maybe from the CEO, maybe from the VP of sales. You know, what is the what is the rationale for them to keep pushing, uh, versus pulling the plug?
[00:32:37] Dave Boyce: Yeah. So yeah. Oh my gosh. I've made both mistakes. Usually, I give up too early, um, because I'm impatient.
[00:32:47] But the I mean, we're looking for unit economics. To me, that's the yardstick for, uh, go to market fit. I want a scalable source of new customers that I can acquire economically, and the way I would define that is, You know, CAC payback of less than 12 months, plus or minus, depending on your market. So how long am I gonna work until I can get that? 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months.
[00:33:18] In a human led motion, It also depends on your sales cycle, Toni. Like, if I've got a if I'm trying to add a, um, an enterprise ABM motion and it's a 9 to 12 month sales cycle, I can't give up in 9 to 12 months. That would be dumb. That would mean the very first effort that I deployed on day 1, I'm gonna expect to be paying off, you know, at the 9 month and 1 day mark. Well, that's probably not gonna work.
[00:33:45] I probably actually needed a little bit of time in there to do some hiring to do some training, to do some process definition. So that's gonna be a 2 plus year experiment, probably more like 3 years if I'm going if I'm adding a a big enterprise ABM motion. But if I'm adding something, you know, with, uh, with 3 month sales cycles, it might take me a year. and it also depends on whether I have the humans already hired or not or whether I have to go hire them and train them from scratch. So But I think we can be smart about it.
[00:34:16] You can pencil it out. It it's it's literally just engineering. Like, how long does it take me to hire? How long does it take me to onboard? How long does it take me to ramp?
[00:34:23] How long is my sales cycle? What would a reasonable expectation be for me to work through all of that and then start to see signs of of success? And maybe I and Maybe I would write that down in the beginning as, like, my experiment design so they don't forget it and get impatient at year at month 6 when, actually, in month 6, I wouldn't have logically expected this to be paying off yet.
[00:34:44] Toni: Yeah. How many teams do I actually see being so diligent about this process, by the way?
[00:34:50] Dave Boyce: I see almost every team being not that diligent on
[00:34:54] Toni: Yeah.
[00:34:56] Dave Boyce: I mean, we mean, I I can't tell you how many times I've sat in planning processes like the ones you just described that we all just finished and and p and, you know, you go you look at FP and A and they say And you say, okay.
[00:35:07] So how long what should our ramp assumption be for new reps? Well, historically, our our reps have gotten productive at month 11. Oh, no. No. No.
[00:35:17] No. No. No. No. That's too long.
[00:35:19] Well, I'm just telling you what history has been. 11. Okay. Yeah. But no.
[00:35:23] I mean,
[00:35:25] Toni: assume Okay, Dave? Let's assume Exactly.
[00:35:28] Dave Boyce: Exactly. Why are we doing new training? Well, you know, we lots of stuff has gotten better since, you know, there's almost no explanation. It's just like I can't stomach writing that number down, so I'm gonna write shorter number down. And then it goes in the spreadsheet, and then it becomes a thing that I measure myself against, but it was never reality.
[00:35:46] Toni: Yeah. Um, so maybe kind of 1 last question to kind of round that, you know, topic segment up a little bit. So, I mean, uh, you're in the US. Let's just call you US first.
[00:35:57] And then you have a bunch of people in EMEA, uh, that are, you know, basically Smaller market first. Right? So for them to break out of their existing market, um, that in itself is almost like a new go to market, I would actually say. I would love to hear your thoughts on this actually. Kind of would you put it more into the Well, it's kind of a it's kind of a whole thing.
[00:36:17] It's a new product market fit, a new go to market fit, or, um, you know, just how people need to think about it. Right? Because we are in Denmark. It's not like Small time. It's not like Growblocks is like a Danish kinda thing.
[00:36:28] So, you we don't necessarily have this problem. But many other teams start in their home market, and we have 6000000. Mean, fewer people than live in New York City, basically, live in Denmark. So, you know, very soon, you need to broaden out. Right?
[00:36:40] Is that also Almost like a new go to market motion from your perspective.
[00:36:45] Dave Boyce: Yeah.
[00:36:45] I'd that's I would say less and less a new product market fit, like you said. Like, we're developing generally, we're developing products that have universal appeal, you know, language aside, but And in some cases, like with financial markets or thing or regulated markets, that's not exactly true. But if and, generally, we're building products that are going to appeal to a global economy. But the go to market fit is different because I'm targeting. If I'm solving for CAC payback, what do I have to spend on what channels to get people into my funnel, that's gonna be maybe different in the US.
[00:37:26] I've I've gotta compete against different competitors for different AdWords, different targeting, I'm paying different rates. I'm in different auctions for that for those eyeballs, And it's just gonna be a little bit different. Okay. Well, then what can I you know, at what rate can I convert though that inbound interest into, like, an MQL? that point, if the markets aren't that different, I mean, the competition might affect my conversion rate, but but maybe I start to level out once I get somebody in there.
[00:37:56] Um, and then maybe I start and then maybe the sales cycle is almost the same once I get them all the way to a sales qualified opportunity. Um, but I do think I don't think we wanna take our planning assumptions and just assume that they're all gonna be exactly the same and and, you know, budget out a full year using those planning assumptions. I think we wanna build in some testing. You know? 3 months of testing in a new market, see see the same and what's different, and then, you know, extrapolate those across, uh, the rest of our year.
[00:38:29] Mikkel: So I'm slowly gonna start to to take us home now.
[00:38:33] I wanna end with, uh, 1 question because you Co authored, I believe, the has SaaS lost go to market fit, uh, we covered, uh, not so long ago. And I think this puts a lot of pressure on companies to go and Find that motion because 1 of them just it broke. Like, the unit economics doesn't work out anymore. And we've covered a bit of ground now. So if you can Kind of speak directly to the listener who who might be in that situation.
[00:38:58] Can you kind of sum All of them. All of them. you kind of Can you maybe, you know, provide, you know, some good vibes first and then, hey, here's here's what we covered and some of the steps you can now go and take and consider, um, to potentially find a new motion that does work.
[00:39:14] Dave Boyce: Yeah. Well, step 1 and most of us have done this. Step 1 is we gotta we have to secure, um, default to life.
[00:39:23] have to secure that we can stay alive. And for me, I would like 2 2 years of runway without being dependent on external funding. The financial markets are so unpredictable if my plan to succeed includes me getting funding from an outside source within the next year? That's a giant question mark. if I can a lot of us have done the cost cutting.
[00:39:47] We've gotten our free cash flow back. We figured out how to secure runway. So I'm let's assume that you've done that. If you haven't done that, that's what I would do. Do not depend on outside funding in a fickle and changing financial market.
[00:39:59] After that, then we gotta build to your point, Mikkel. We gotta build back And my recommendation let's say we're at scale we're over 20000000 dollars or over 30000000 dollars, is to look at each of your current GTMs as its own standalone business. and then go analyze. We talked a little earlier about allocating marketing costs. Um, you know, you can Also, think about allocating sales costs and overhead, but you wanna take all your sales and marketing, across your entire business, and assign it to each of your individual GTMs.
[00:40:33] Let's you have 3 GTMs. That's already something you gotta decide. Do we have 3 or do we have 2? I don't know. Do we have, uh, maybe we have 4.
[00:40:40] Whatever. Make that decision. Figure out where the lines are. Take all of your costs and divide it up. And then and then calculate your CAC payback in GTM a, in GTM b, in GTM c, in GTM d.
[00:40:53] This is a a good exercise for sales ops of strategy FP and A to collaborate on. You don't have to distract your frontline sellers or your managers or, you know, anyone who's actively, um, building the business. And then I and then just be really, Insistent that you understand the unit economics of each 1. 1 of them will be better than the other 3, and 1 of them will be worse than the other 3, and then there'll be 2 in the middle. That's just the way it's kinda worked out.
[00:41:19] So the 1 that's not providing you the CAC payback, then you ask the questions, Is this something I can save, or is this something that I want to wind down? Is it something I could fold? Could I serve the same market with a more efficient motion? My guess is you're gonna find that the long sales cycle motion, you know, your most enterprise motion, will have the most expensive people and will have the most, most expensive people. Like, you'll have sales engineers and value engineers and and salespeople and managers and, you know, RVPs, regional vice presidents.
[00:41:54] And once you kind of Put that all into the mix. You're gonna find, gosh, this is a 3 year CAC payback. Can I really afford that right now? My guess. You're gonna find and then you're gonna have some hard decisions to make.
[00:42:06] Like, can I serve those same customers? And and I've done this in a prior business, uh, and we've seen some Some of our clients do this. Can I serve those same customers on an inside sales model or on an inbound model or even on a, um, on a less expensive BDR kind of outbound model and do smaller lands? In other words, I'm not going after the million dollar first deal. I'm gonna go after a smaller land, 50000 dollar first deal, which I can do much more quickly, get myself through all the hurdles of approved vendor status and, and infosec and all kind of and legal and and all that stuff.
[00:42:44] And then from that 50000 dollar deal, go sell an expansion and then another expansion and then another expansion. It is possible to rearchitect pieces of this once and once you and the unit economics, you might find the motivation to do that.
[00:43:00] Toni: Dave, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for spending time and to enlightening all our listeners on how to really think about, you know, running those different motions, when to start them, maybe when to stop them, and And and then the current climate, how to, you know, refine and reestablish your go to market fit. Thank you so much. Uh, Dave Boyce, everyone.
[00:43:21] Dave Boyce: You guys are the best. Thank you for having me.
[00:43:23] Toni: It was a pleasure.
[00:43:24] Have a good 1. Bye bye.