#92: How To Map Out Your GTM

Read Time: 4.5 min

Today, I will discuss how we think about mapping our GTM for clients. A GTM can be a confusing term. The Acronym gets thrown around a lot, and there is a lot of confusion attached to it.

The simple way we define a GTM is a roadmap that will get your product into the hands of the right people who are ready, willing, and able to buy it if you can show how it can solve their problems.

Let me share a use case of a call I was just on with a YC founder who is at 40k MRR. Her ACV is 15k. All her deals were closed through warm inbound and intros. She has tried cold outbound (email LI), with no results, and now her inbound channel has dried up and they’re stuck at 40k ARR. I asked her to walk me through her GTM, and she really didn’t have one. She’s got to this place by hustle and grit without a proper GTM, and now she’s realizing they need to do this right to scale to the next level.

This is not an isolated incident. It’s incredibly common. This is a textbook Rampd client use case.

The mistake we made was thinking that we could just ‘do sales’ when we needed to. In reality, sales is an engineering discipline; it requires building a system that scales.

~ Ben Horowitz

When it comes to GTM, I like to break it up into two sections.

1. Product

2. Sales

1. Product Build.

   • Are you solving a bum knee or broken leg problem? The latter wins.

   • Can your customer afford your product? If not, price is the objection.

   • Do you know who your customer (ICP) is? This is part of mapping.

   • Are you building in a growing market or a saturated one? The latter is a race to the bottom. The former is how you build a moat.
     
     

2. Sales GTM.

   • How quickly is your “time to wow?” Customers want instant gratification.

   • How much more efficient is your product than what currently exists?

   • How much effort is required for them to onboard? The less, the better.

   • What is the cost, and does the value justify the cost?

Now, let’s go a step deeper. For this issue, I’m going to focus on sales GTM. Let’s assume you built and shipped your MVP. There are preliminary things you need to understand as you GTM. Many of these will be speculative but with a good approximation. We then test these with a sales process to validate if our hypothesis on both product, positioning, and ICP is accurate.

Let’s take a look at those questions and how we map this process out.

Foundations & Preparation

This is designed to establish a strong market foundation by clearly defining your target customers (ICP), their problems, and how you uniquely solve them. It ensures that your positioning, messaging, and marketing collateral are aligned before shipping.

1. Define Your Target Market & Buyer Personas

   • Identify the most valuable customer segments.

   • Understand their pain points, needs, and decision-making processes.

   • Develop customer personas to guide messaging and outreach.
     
     

2. Refine Positioning & Messaging

   • Craft a compelling value proposition that differentiates your company.

   • Address key customer concerns.

   • Develop messaging frameworks tailored to each customer segment.
     
     

3. Develop Core Marketing Collateral

   • Build a website and landing pages optimized for conversions.

   • Create sales one pagers, pitch decks, a quick loom video.

   • Develop thought leadership content (white papers, case studies, posts, blogs).
     
     

4. Establish Competitive Differentiation

   • Research where traditional methods and competing AI (tech) tools fall short.

   • Highlight how your company has a unique advantage in your market.
     
     

5. Set Up Tracking & Analytics

   • Implement tools to measure website engagement, email outreach, and conversion rates.

   • Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to track early traction.
     

Value Props

This is designed to create high quality marketing and sales collateral that effectively communicates your company’s unique value to potential customers. The goal is to ensure consistent, dialed in messaging that resonates with the verticals/markets you service.

1. Speed: Faster Execution, Smarter Decisions

   • Automates specific processes your product improves.

   • Cuts (ask or process) time by X–Y%.

   • Processes (specific data type) in (timeframe), reducing delays and improving efficiency.

2. Accuracy: Reducing Errors & Improving Reliability

   • Reduces manual errors by X–Y%, ensuring high quality output.

   • Cross-validates data from multiple sources for consistency.

   • Flags inconsistencies in (specific data type), preventing costly mistakes.

3. Compliance & Traceability

   • Provides complete data traceability and source backed insights for confident decision-making.

   • Ensures compliance with (industry standards or regulations).

   • Generates customizable, editable reports that adapt to your workflow.

4. Security & Protection

   • Complies with (relevant security standards: SOC 2, GDPR, etc).

   • Offers on-prem, private cloud, or hybrid deployment options for data control.

   • Ensures end-to-end encryption to protect sensitive information.

5. Key Differentiators

   • Enables teams to handle X–Yx more (tasks, deals, transactions] without increasing headcount.

   • Identifies (opportunities, risks, and insights) that traditional methods might miss.

   • Delivers deeper, faster insights that provide a measurable advantage.

Customer Acquisition Channels

This is designed to launch and optimize customer acquisition efforts through outbound and inbound marketing channels. The goal is to generate TOFU, engage potential buyers, and drive conversions by executing a well structured marketing and outbound campaigns across multiple touchpoints.

1. Cold Outbound

   • Cold Email & LI Campaigns

     • Build a targeted list of high-value prospects.

     • Craft a mix of cold and personalized messaging addressing key pain points.

     • Implement a multi-touch follow-up sequence.

     • Track open rates, reply rates, and demo conversion rates.

     • Consistently update content by TLI (testing, learning, iterating).
       

2. Cold Calling

   • Develop a call script based on value props and industry pain points. If applicable. For some industries, cc is not suggested.

   • Know the prospect’s objections and how to crush them with rebuttals.
     
     

3. Content & Thought Leadership

   • LinkedIn Content Strategy

     • Post regularly on LI. Discuss industry trends, pain points, etc. You should be posting at minimum 3x a week.

     • Share white papers, success stories, and industry insights on the company page.

     • Make sure to comment and engage with the audience on your posts.
       

4. Podcasts & Media

   • Get on relevant podcasts.

   • Discuss real-world use cases/ pain points related to what’s happening in your industry.
     

5. Industry Groups & Associations

   • Join and engage in relevant industry groups. These are huge and untapped resources. This is a group of your potential customers.

This is how you begin to map out your GTM. We can unpack each of these and discuss it at length, but you need to be scrappy and go.

Here’s the thing about all of this. Without a repeatable sales process, a lot of this almost becomes useless because you won’t be able to consistently convert opportunities into paying customers. You might generate interest, get demos booked, and see engagement here and there from your ICP, but without a structured, scalable sales process, deals will fall through, follow-ups will be inconsistent, and revenue growth will be unpredictable. I see this play out frequently.

Rampd acts as the growth algorithm ( I hate the word hack) that takes you from founder-led sales to a predictable, scalable GTM motion. Think of it as shifting from a single-threaded process to a parallelized, multi-channel acquisition system, where outbound, inbound, and partnerships work in sync to drive pipeline velocity. This is how we roll.

If you’re ready, let’s get to work! Book a call.

That’s it for today!

See you all next week.

Darren

P.S. If you’re a Venture-Backed company interested in coaching, book a call here.

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