Building a Local GTM Machine
Selling local, creating a sales playbook, and leveraging what's unique about your business.
A few important considerations when it comes to selling local:
- It's all about TAM. You need to break TAM into the smallest parts to truly understand where you can go to work. Understanding your territories down to the zip code provides direct guidance and a data-driven deployment framework for an efficient GTM model.
- When initially starting to scale, depth trumps breadth. Toast doubled down in the most important US cities before branching out. Going deep in fewer territories augments the benefits of social proof (more on that below).
- TAM density and social proof are the most important factors in selling locally. Because restaurants are located so close to one another physically, there is an incredible local ecosystem within a territory. While Toast specifically benefits from a high density of restaurants, similar rules can be applied to other verticals. Local businesses often don't have the resources or time required to conduct research the way an enterprise buyer might, so they’re relying upon the tools and products that the people they admire are using. TAM density also allows you to decide where to leverage a field-based sales model vs. an inside-based sales model.
Sales leaders should be thinking about leveraging the unique TAM makeup, social proof, and density of their business when creating their sales playbook. Once you’ve laid out your local strategy, how do you stay disciplined? Toast integrates a data-anchored framework. Here are a few tips from JV:
- Think about the GTM organization as a manufacturing factory that happens to produce contracts. When the assembly line is not functioning optimally, sirens should go off. Quickly find the issues so the line is running smoothly again.
You need support from a strong data team. The hardest part is building the dashboard and identifying what metrics matter in the right context. Missing a target is an output signal that an input is malfunctioning; focus on the inputs when the sirens go off.
- Clarify a framework of “what really matters.”
Don’t only measure the common output signals just because they are the flashy numbers. Identify the inputs that matter for your business model and measure them vigorously, with the same definition across the company. If you can do these two things, you can improve them over time.
Finally, JV touched on the people side of a successful GTM organization. We dive deeper into this topic in our next session summary, which is coming soon; in the meantime, here are a few key items to consider.
- Paint the right picture up front to your team. For example, certain territories are going to be more difficult than others. Communicate that there are quantitative measures to promotion, clear development paths, etc., to ensure your team members are all on the same page.
- Human capital is the biggest driver behind ARR, but hiring is always a challenge. Hire based on “DNA,” not experience. We will unpack this further in our next summary.
We hope you enjoyed this brief recap of JV’s awesome first Chalk Talk. If you would like to be considered for participation in a future live session, please email us at knowledge@tidemarkcap.com.
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