How To Prevent Failing Like Budweiser – Validating Your Sales or Marketing Plan

Before you launch your new sales and marketing campaign — have you validated all aspects of your plan to ensure you are going into the right market with the right message?

This is one of our specialties that probably 95% of businesses aren't aware that they need to do or just skip it altogether.

Think we are exaggerating? Perhaps you've heard of the recent Bud Light controversy? A validated marketing plan would have prevented a huge drop in sales.

The best way to prevent lost time and money is to validate your GTM (go-to-market) strategy before you invest too much in it.

We were recently approached by a coffee manufacturer in India who was looking for help on this topic. You probably do software/SaaS in the US or IoT, but the exercise is still applicable to your business.

The CEO and VP Sales wanted some help deciding where they should start their sales efforts. As part of our preliminary free consultation, we asked them the following questions to help them decide what they wanted.

Looking to Enter A New Market? Ask Yourself These Questions.

Sales

• Where are you going to sell your product? Locally because it is easier in a lot of ways, or abroad? Where to — the US? EU? Asia? And why?
• Which market are you looking to sell to? If it's B2C, how will you reach them? An online store? Or a store on Amazon/Shopify? An actual store? What's the total addressable market online vs in person? What MRR are you going to need to cover the bills? Who are your ideal customers? How are you going to bring in customers?
• How about B2B? You could sell directly to retailers — but where? How? Which ones? How are you going to sell to them? Cold calls to buyers? Emails? Tenders?
• How about B2B2C? Finding a distributor that will sell to final consumers for you?
• How about B2B2B? Finding a distributor that will promote your products to retailers?
• How about B2B2E? Finding a distributor that will sell online to final consumers for you?
• Where do you start? A mix of all the above? Focus on only one? How about opening several subsidiaries, each focusing on a different direction?

Marketing

• Who is your ideal customer?
• Does your target audience know about your brand? Do they have a favorable or unfavorable impression of you?
• If you are trying to change your core consumers, why?
• Can you appeal to more than one demographic at a time?
• Do you need to educate your ideal consumer on the value your product or solution brings?
• Do you have research validating what marketing channels your clients can be found on?

By the end of the conversation, the founders were a mixture of terrified of all the unknowns and thrilled at the prospect of finding someone who can help them navigate these challenges.

It's VERY easy to get a few salespeople, give them phones, laptops, and scripts and let them "do their job." It is as easy to hire a marketing company to run ads for you. It's easy to spend tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on a sales and marketing plan that yields zero results.

We hear from dozens of companies a year asking us for discounts on our already reasonable rates because they just spent $100,000+ without results and they need help fast before they get fired or the company goes under. It happens because the businesses didn't validate their plans before they started. They didn't have a business coach to guide them through the questions they needed to answer before they launched.

It happens because they worked with someone else and not with us.

Don't invest a penny until you've figured out the right questions and gotten reliable answers.

Talk to us today to get started on the path to success.