SaaS

Go-To-Market
Blueprint
Brass tacks tactics to grow your SaaS
business with a differentiated GTM machine.

By TK Kader
SaaS
Go-To-Market Blueprint
Brass tacks tactics to grow your SaaS business
with a differentiated GTM machine.

By TK Kader
Hi. I’m TK. I’m a SaaS Founder turned SaaS Coach &
Advisor to some of the most exciting early-stage SaaS
businesses today.

Prior to Unstoppable, as a solo founder, I started ToutApp,

a Sales Engagement platform. I raised over $20m in capital
from a16z and Jackson Square, two of the best venture
capital firms in the world, and built it from $0 to a multi-
million dollar business. And at Marketo (after selling
ToutApp to them), I worked with one of the best SaaS PE
firms in the world, to deliver one of the biggest and
quickest SaaS transactions with its $4.75bn sale to Adobe.

Through my journey, I learned how to start, build, scale

(and exit) SaaS businesses. At age 37, as I reflected on what I
wanted to do next, I found that I was happiest when I was
in a room full of SaaS founders building incredible
businesses. This is why I took everything I've learned and
distilled it down into a framework that I teach the SaaS
Founders I work with. Here is some of my latest thinking on
building a scalable Go-To-Market machine to accelerate the
growth of your SaaS business.
G
reat SaaS businesses are built on three key pillars.
Market, Product, and Go-To-Market. Ignore any one
of these and you will fail. Optimize on three of
these and you will be unstoppable.

With almost every Founder I work with as part of my SaaS

Go-To-Market coaching program, they usually come to seek
my help because they have a great product, some revenues,
but just can’t quite get distribution going.

As soon as we start to look at their SaaS business together

through the lens of Market + Product + Go-To-Market,
growth starts to unlock. It feels like magic, but it’s not, its
simple business principles that the best of us forget to
implement because we got into this business as Inventors
first.
 If you’re reading this book, chances are you already have
a product in the market, people have started to pay for
your product, but you’re wondering… what’s next? There
was supposed to be a Ka-boom! Where’s the Ka-boom?!

If that’s you, chances are you’ve already started to hone

in on a hot market and a great product (although you may
need more customer feedback to really hone it in).

A Ripe Market

Great markets are ones where there is an urgent +

important + frequent problem (that your product solves)
and they are severely underserved.

Great markets are also ones where an urgent + important

+ frequent problem is being solved by a legacy solution, and
you’ve developed a way to do it faster, better, or cheaper
and therefore you can disrupt that market.

If you’ve started to generate revenues, chances are you’re

in a great market.

Here’s the thing about great markets though… they’re

huge. And they have different segments, different ways of
doing business, different levels of competition — and as you
look to drive growth, you’ll want to hone in on the most
ripe segment of your market to serve through a sound Go-
To-Market strategy.

“Amazon started by selling books online. Now

they sell everything, everywhere.”
A Great Product

I’ll never forget the first piece of software I ever sold. I

was about 16 at the time and I built a custom piece of
software for my Dad’s clients to help them calculate the
optimum way to set up a Pre-Paid Calling Card rate
structure to maximize profits. Talk about specific! I sold the
first license for $50. It felt incredible. But after I sold that
first license, I didn’t get any more revenue because I
delivered it on a floppy disk.

This is why SaaS is so great. We’re able to create

incredible software, deliver it as a service, and charge a
recurring fee.

After starting and exiting two SaaS businesses and

helping grow and exit two more (the ones that bought my
startups), I learned that great SaaS products solve an urgent
+ important + frequent problem and have these three key
attributes:
• Easy to adopt
• Easy to use
• Hard to replace

Entire books can be written on how to accomplish this.

But, that’s not the focus of this book. The focus of this book
is to help you get into more customer conversations, land
more customers, and serve them in a BIG way, so that you
can use their feedback to strengthen your product every
quarter (so that they never leave). How do you do this?
With a sound Go-To-Market strategy.
A Scalable Go-To-Market Strategy

It is said that only 6% of Seed Funded Startups go on to

graduate from the Seed stage. That means that 94% of
Startups, after building a product, after raising money, after
creating a slick website, after doing “content marketing” —
fail.

CBInsights recently analyzed 101 Startup Post-Mortems

and tallied the key reasons that Startups Fail. As I looked at
the Top 10 reasons, one pattern stuck out — 6 of them had
to do with the Startup’s ability to build and execute on a
differentiated Market & Go-To-Market strategy.
So… Here’s the BIG Question

Hopefully by now you’re realizing one thing: you’re not

one more feature away from massive growth. In order for
your SaaS business to thrive and grow, in order for you to
avoid being part of the 94% of companies that never
graduate from the Seed stage, you need to hone in on
Distribution with a differentiated Market and Go-To-Market
strategy.

But how? That’s the Billion dollar question right?

Undoubtedly, those startups that failed invested in a fancy
website, did “content marketing,” and maybe even spent 40
cents of every $1 they raised on ADs. What do you do
differently to win?

Glad you asked. This is what we’ll dig into in the rest of
this book step-by-step by covering the THREE most critical
components to your Go-To-Market machine.

Onwards!
I
often speak to Founders who are about to join my SaaS
Go-To-Market coaching program — and I’ll hear some
variation of the following: “We’re posting blogs. We’re
running ADs. We’re cold emailing. But it doesn’t seem to be
working.”

I’ve been there! When I started my last SaaS company

ToutApp, we started generating revenues the first week. I
knew we were in a ripe market, and the product solved a
core problem in a wildly differentiated way. BUT. As I
started to “execute” on the common Go-To-Market
activities, growth didn’t increase. “Where’s the Ka-Boom?!”
I thought.

Now, ToutApp went on to grow, we went on to raise a

Series A from JSV, and a Series B from a16z, and then sold
the business to a market leader (Marketo). But none of that
happened until I realized this ONE core lesson.

Before you start executing on your Go-To-Market

machine, you have to get your Market strategy right. This is
something easy to graze over, easy to get wrong, and easy
to check the box on, but if you don’t spend the time to do it
right, the market will not pay attention to you.

Here’s the thing. It’s SUPER easy to “market” today.

Facebook will gladly take your money even if the AD
doesn’t convert to revenue. Email Automation tools will
gladly blast out thousands of emails on your behalf. And
your blog? Sure you can hire that “content person” to post
4x a week. They’ll gladly do it.

BUT. If you don’t get the strategy right, it’s the equivalent
of loading up a machine gun with BLANKS and firing away.
It won’t work.

I learned (the hard way) that I needed to explicitly work

on two critical things to build out my Market strategy:
• My Ideal Customer Profile & Dream 100
• My Strategic Narrative & Messaging

Once I hunkered down and really fleshed out these two

critical things — EVERYTHING changed for ToutApp. We
drove from some revenues to $1M ARR, and we then grew to
$3M in the following year — and onwards we went.

As a Technical Founder, it was only when I stopped

focusing on “one more feature” and embraced GTM — my
business grew and thrived.
Your Ideal Customer Profile & Dream 100

Your Ideal Customer Profile is a clear articulation of the

specific segment of the market you want to serve and a
clear understanding of why that part of the market badly
needs your SaaS solution. Your Dream 100 is a specific list
of companies that fit into that ICP that you will turn into a
customer over the next 12 to 24 months.

Every time I start working with a Founder in my SaaS Go-

To-Market Coaching Program, I’ll hear “Oh yeah… we
already have an Ideal Customer Profile..” Oh yeah? It’s only
when we dig into our step-by-step process — do Founders
realize what a real ICP looks like and how powerful it can
be to power your GTM machine.
 “Your Startup is a Movement” — David Sacks

ToutApp started as a general email productivity tool for

power email users. By the time we raised our Series B from
Andreessen Horowitz, we were a Sales Engagement
Platform for Enterprise Sales Teams. Same product. Same
vision. But a highly specific Market segment, ICP, and
Dream 100. And by the time we raised our $15M Series B,
we were just coming off the heels of a year of driving 300%
growth following a very differentiated Go-To-Market
machine using the same playbook I am teaching you here.

But going back to before all this happened, as I hunkered

down and developed our ICP and Dream 100 — I
wondered… How do we get the attention of these target
customers? How do we compel them to take action? How
do we turn this into a massive movement so that VPs of
Sales without a Sales Engagement Platform would feel like
they were going to be left behind?

This is where the second part of the strategy came in. We

worked to develop an extremely compelling Strategic
Narrative around why every VP of Sales needed a Sales
Engagement Platform.

Here’s the thing. We weren’t making anything up. This

was a real need. Our software helped automate the touches
needed to turn an Inbound Lead to a real Opportunity.

But here was the catch. It requires 8 to 9 touches to cover

a Lead to an Opportunity. And most sales reps weren’t
doing it.

And so we created a Manifesto with this very specific

strategic narrative. Out of this Manifesto, we crafted our
messaging which fed into every single Go-To-Market
touchpoint, our Website, our Lead Magnets, and our Sales
Presentations.

Everything changed once we got our Message right. And

our Manifesto spread like wildfire across VPs of Sales in
every Software Company (our Dream 100).

All because we got specific on our strategy first. Armed

with our ICP, our Dream 100, and our Manifesto, we then
started to ramp up our Go-To-Market activities in a very
specific way.

Growth ensued.
E
verything changes when you have focus. When you
have a focused ICP, a Dream 100 list of customers
that NEED your solution, the way you operate your
Go-To-Market machine completely transforms. It now
becomes a game of getting attention.

There are FOUR key ways of getting attention around

your Strategic Message, Your Manifesto, and to engage with
your Dream 100 for your SaaS business:
• Inbound (SEO or LinkedIn)
• Outbound (Email or Phone)
• Channels (Larger complementary platforms)
• ADs (Facebook, SEM, LinkedIn)

Now here’s the thing. When you look at the marketing for
most SaaS businesses, it’s scatterbrained. They blog about
20 different things, they run ADs, they have 50 different
Lead Magnets — what they’re doing is essentially getting
together every week and asking: What do we share THIS
week?! (to hopefully get attention).

There’s a better way. With a Manifesto, you end up with

one job. You spend every day, every week, on specific
marketing activities to get attention on your Manifesto.

Your Manifesto does the work in making your Ideal

Customers realize their need for your solution — and they
take action.

And essentially you run ONE smooth Marketing & Sales

motion every week to drive awareness around your
movement. We call this a Broadway Show.

Why? Because instead of trying to create a random show

every week, you create one great, amazing, persuasive
Broadway Show and you run it every week to drive
awareness around the problem, the opportunity, and your
solution.

Every week at ToutApp, we worked to promote our

Manifesto. We created a Movement around why every VP of
Sales needs to have a Sales Engagement / Acceleration
platform so their reps can do the 8 touchpoint needed to
convert Leads into Opportunities.

“Great marketing is when more people know

about you today than yesterday. Great sales is
when you get those people to buy.”
 I work with Founders inside my SaaS Go-To-Market
Coaching Program to craft their ICP, their Dream 100, their
Manifesto and then to run their Broadway Show.

At first it can feel daunting. But it’s really not because I

guide Founders in doing it in bite-sized phases.

We always start with Inbound using a very specific

strategy that works brilliantly to attract buyers using
LinkedIn. As we start to amp up on customer conversations
using this strategy, we inevitably learn more about the
Market and the Customer which allows us to strengthen our
Manifesto and Strategic Message.

As the Manifesto straightens, we then scale to Outbound,

Channels, ADs and then SEO — one step at a time.
I
nside my SaaS Go-To-Market Coaching & Advisory
program, I work with SaaS Founders directly on this
exact system.

After having worked with Founders countless times to

drive success for their businesses, I’ve battle hardened this
system and broken down the process into three simple
steps:
• Ideal Customer Profile & Dream 100
• Strategic Message Development
• Broadway Show

If you’re a SaaS Founder with some revenues and you’d

like to build a scalable Go-To-Market machine, I invite you
to Schedule a 1on1 Strategy Call with me to discuss how we
can accelerate your path to the next stage of growth.