Renaissance Man, he can do most anything, Renaissance Man, paint, sculpt, design and sing – @historyteacherz Youtube
Go to Market Leadership is hard because it requires so much of a person. Especially in today’s fast paced, technology driven market, a true go to market leader must be a Renaissance Man (or Woman). Today’s go to market leader must do most anything, she must paint a picture (messaging and positioning), she must sculpt (a set of programs and automation) she must design (a coherent offering) and sing it all out to an ever skeptical internal and external marketplace. You must be a Go to Market polymath!
In my last post, I covered the knowledge needed to be a great go to market leader, a true Jedi Master like Yoda. An in my next post, I will cover the “sing” part, how you need to be a evangelist, like MLK. But in this post, I will focus on the broad set of doing skills needed to lead a go to market initiative, team and strategy.
Paint a Compelling Picture
It’s critical to get messaging and positioning correct. Without a compelling message that answers not just tactical ROI questions, but strategic, why should I care ones, the fit and effectiveness of the offering and the programs just won’t succeed. Great automation may mean my offering can reach a lot of people, but if messaged poorly, then the value will likely go un-tapped. Great go to market leaders have awesome messaging and positioning skills.
Sculpt Effective Programs and Automation
Today, go to market is as much about method as message. I need to build a scalable and efficient machine, and feed that machine with creative and effective content, demand generation and enablement programs. I need to measure and tune both the machine and the programs I run. Great go to market leaders have excellent skills at building, tuning and perfecting automation and programs.
Design a Coherent Offering
My success in the market also means I must have a coherent offering across my pricing, packaging, product and channel. Each decision is dependent on the other. Great go to market leaders not only understand how to design the right offering, but how each piece of the total solution plays together.
To be able to paint, sculpt and design is a high bar of skills needed to run an effective go to market organization, initiative and team. Great go to market leaders build themselves and their teams to deliver across all three of these disciplines.
So, the bar continues to rise on being a great go to market leader. not only must you have depth and breadth of knowledge of a Jedi Master across the competitors, customers and market, but you must have deep skills of a Renaissance Man around executing go to market initiatives. And as we will see in the final post of this series, you need to have the influence skills of a true movement leader, to move not only your sales team, but your product team, and the customers. But the rewards are great, and most leaders will say, worth the efforts to get to mastery.
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Ken Rutsky is a Marketing Consultant and B2B Market Leadership “Ninja”. Ken helps organizations and individuals climb the ladder to market leadership. His upcoming book is entitled; Launching to Leading: How B2B Market Leaders Create Flashmobs, Marshal Parades and Ignite Movements (Morgan James 2016)
I coach and mentor go to market leaders in B2B Organizations. Let me know if I can help you grow your business and your career.
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