Over the last 25 years, we’ve been involved in the start-up, scale up and exit of several successful technology businesses, that between them have realized close to billion dollars of shareholder value. But along the way we’ve also had more than our fair share of disappointments and have the mental scars and bruising to prove it. We’ve made mistakes and fallen in what felt like bottomless pits. But fascinatingly enough, we learned as much from the ones that didn’t work, as we did from the successes. It’s these lessons which we thought we’d share in this book.

So, who is this book for? We think there are three use cases here, so let’s expand.

Firstly, you could be a Founder who has raised seed money or achieved a Series A and who set off like a rocket in the early years, conquering all before them. But something has happened.

For some reason the business is not growing as fast as you’d once hoped. Without perhaps knowing why, sales have started to slow, and some air has come out of the tyres amongst key stakeholders. Renewals are harder to achieve, once automatically accepted upsells are being rejected and pricing is being squeezed. There’s a sense that the business needs a re-set and perhaps fresh ideas, and energy are needed to get the team back to smashing targets

What we’ve learned is that if things have started to slow, especially from a sales point of view, it’s generally down to one of two things. Either the core value proposition has become lost somewhere in the heat of battle and has shifted with or without your knowledge. Or the sales team have lost their way and need some fresh inspiration. We’ll address both these issues (and many more) in this book. Sometimes it’s a combination of both, sometimes it’s something different, but these are two most common reasons we’ve found. If this is you, we hope this book will provide some fresh inspiration.

The second use case would be a Technical Founder who has created some brilliant software but is unsure about how to go to market. Without trying to sound too like Liam Neeson, creating a highly effective sales and marketing plan requires a particular set of skills and experience.

You might well be thinking it’s time to invest in an expensive sales team, and that might be the right answer. But before you do that, it might be worth reading this book because it contains a set of workbooks that will significantly stack the odds in your favour of gaining repeatable sales traction.

Finally, this book is for Founders who are starting out on the SaaS journey and thinking about where to begin. You’ve come up with a great idea on how you might change the world for the better, but before you go all in, feel like you’d like to understand the Go to Market process more.

This book is made up of ten workbooks which we recommend you follow sequentially and take time at the end of each chapter to reflect and then take action. We’ll teach you how to prepare your pain statement and then test it on personas within your target market. We’ll discuss how to uncover your perfect customer and what an Economic Buyer looks like. We’ll build Market Maps and debate the best ways you can become famous in your chosen field. We’ll look at Product Messaging, packaging, and pricing and at the very end we’ll show you how to put together an exciting Investor Proposition for when you need to raise capital. At its heart, this book is a Go to Market Handbook for SaaS Leaders because there’s nothing more important than hitting your sales targets.

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