1. 'Good' looks different every time
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The context is different for every business – market, competition, macro-economy, local factors
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This changes over time – through scale and technological change
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The problems faced by potential customers, and the most efficient ways to reach them, will be different
2. Businesses have finite resources
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Any business has limited resources to allocate to GTM. Much of this will be spend ‘doing’ rather than ‘improving’
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Change is time consuming, especially people change and big investment choices
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The stage of the investment cycle also influences risk appetite for big change
3. There is more to do than can ever be done
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Nothing is perfect
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Challenge to balance the ‘urgent’ with the ‘important’
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Investment context can create a bias for short-term wins vs long-term investment
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There is so much noise – LinkedIn, podcasts, agencies
4. It's hard to know what works and what doesn't
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Most investor-backed businesses collect much more GTM data than they use
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Understanding cause & effect in GTM is difficult and imprecise
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This creates temptation to ‘do lots’ and be busy as a proxy
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It's hard to disaggregate ‘the wrong tactic’ from poor execution
Our Go-to-market Accelerator projects focus on understanding the rate-limiting factors for growth, across 4 key pillars, surfacing and prioritising opportunities to transform your approach to GTM. We help to systematically improve a company’s commercial engine, often building a GTM data platform which ties together marketing, sales, and financial data sources to understand customer profitability, lifetime value (LTV), or the attributed return on investment (ROI) of marketing spend.
"Lots of people can tell you the what, but not the so what and the now what. Coppett Hill delivered on all three"
– Ben Hitchcock, Group CMO, Sharps Furniture Group
Go-to-market (GTM) improvements are a core part of organic value creation for investor-backed businesses. While private equity investors and management teams understand that finding, winning, keeping and growing your customers is critical to sustainable growth, ‘good’ can look very different depending on which seat you’re sitting in at the Board table. GTM is an evergreen opportunity for all businesses, for a number of reasons:
There are 4 key pillars of the GTM Accelerator DD scope that Coppett Hill typically deploys: strategic choices; operational execution; data/systems; and organisational capabilities/structure.
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Strategic choices answers questions on how well the business is set up to capture addressable opportunities, from a product, channel, and pricing perspective. How effective is the business at identifying, targeting and reaching its ICPs (ideal customer profiles) with its proposition? How well does a business understand its unit economics, and are these used to inform marketing decisions?
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Operational execution reviews and assesses the overall effectiveness of a business’ GTM activity. How good is the business at finding prospects and filling the funnel? At progressing and converting leads? At retaining, upselling, and cross-selling to customers? Is the organisation set up to do this in a repeatable and scalable way? Are budgets deployed in the best way to drive efficient growth? How can we improve execution to drive faster, more efficient growth?
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Data and systems covers how well the business is enabling and tracking its GTM activity. What marketing and CRM tools are in place, and how effectively are they being used? What visibility and leading indicators does the business have of its sales and marketing performance? How can we better leverage these to improve focus and decision making?
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Organisational capabilities and structure reviews the marketing, sales and account management organisation, its leadership, the effectiveness of key teams & third-parties, and the appropriateness of internal targets and incentives in driving performance.
Our GTM Accelerator work helps management teams move from insight to execution:
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Analysis of internal marketing and sales operational data;
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Identification of the GTM constraints that are limiting growth, informed by analysis and experience;
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A prioritised set of GTM acceleration initiatives;
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An analysis of the gap between the revenue plan and execution reality;
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A live GTM data platform and dashboards to drive day-to-day GTM decisions;
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Support and coaching for management teams operating within a private equity environment.
Example questions answered by GTM Accelerator Projects
Strategic Choices
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Which customer segments and ICPs should we prioritise to drive the next stage of growth?
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Where should we focus, and where should we stop investing, across products, channels and segments?
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Is our pricing and packaging aligned with customer value and unit economics?
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What strategic GTM trade-offs are necessary to accelerate growth?
Operational Execution
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What are the biggest constraints limiting growth today across the customer acquisition funnel?
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How can we improve conversion and pace across the sales process?
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Should sales and marketing budgets be reconsidered to drive more efficient growth?
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What changes are needed to make lead generation and pipeline conversion more predictable and repeatable?
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How can retention, upsell and cross-sell be improved to increase customer lifetime value?
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Are leads being prioritised and followed through in a way that maximises conversion and lifetime value?
Data and systems
Do we have the right visibility into GTM performance to help make data driven decisions?
How can internal GTM reporting be improved?
How can marketing and CRM systems be connected to maximise insights and drive action?
How can CRM and marketing systems better support execution?
Where do data gaps or inconsistencies slow decisions and create uncertainty? How can we address this?
How can we improve our short-term forecasting accuracy?
Organisational capabilities
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Are there any obvious capability gaps?
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Are incentives and commissions appropriately aligned with GTM priorities?
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Do we have the right commercial leadership capabilities and capacity?
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Where does decision-making lack clear ownership?
GTM Accelerator projects typically take 8-12 weeks based on the complexity of our clients go-to-market approach, and availability of information.
"They’re very strong at keeping projects on track and making sure the right people are involved at the right time… their data analysis capability is strong, and they’re not afraid to challenge us when it’s needed"
– Denis Crushell, Chief Commercial Officer, PreciseTV
We use a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to build a factbase, connecting directly to live management information systems to deliver rich insights.
At the end of a GTM Accelerator project, clients receive a set of quantified recommendations and acceleration plan, a GTM data platform (for example, live’ KPI dashboards, customer journey dataset), and an assessment of current capabilities and support required to achieve accelerated growth.
GTM Accelerator projects have proven valuable to investor-backed businesses looking to tranform their approach to go-to-market value creation. At Coppett Hill, our team is a combination of ex-investors, value creation professionals, and operators within private equity-backed management teams – our GTM Accelerator offering has been built with all three viewpoints in mind.
If you would like to learn more about the work we are doing with investor-backed businesses, please get in touch.
"You've really spent the time to understand how we operate as a business. You've taken the time to understand our processes, our systems, our nuances, our strengths, our weaknesses, and that has felt very collaborative"
– Tom Picken, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer, BIMM University
GTM Accelerator recommendations and outcomes from recent projects
Sporting equipment manufacturer
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Set product strategy, marketing strategy and sponsorship and partnership strategies to align with brand strategy
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Rationalisation of the product range
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Prioritisation of new product development, establishing clear ownership and building out a product management capability
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Channel prioritisation based on unit economics and ROI across own channels, third-party retailers, and Amazon
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New team structure and capabilities to continue driving insight and build on datasets and reporting dashboards
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Introduction of OKRs and quarterly focus areas
SME-focused business service provider
Identified distinct Ideal Customer Profile segments using business activity-level tagging
Reflected new ICPs in updated brand structure and mix of inbound and outbound marketing activities
Identified >1,000 keyword opportunities that fit with current proposition
Provided recommendations to optimise the customer journey across website improvements and sales team enablement
Furniture retailer
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Implemented GTM data platform and dashboards, including a rules-based attribution model to understand channel, campaign, and keyword-level ROI
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Optimised marketing channel mix across online and offline (incl. TV) spend
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Improved lead allocation and sales team effectiveness through sharing best practices and post-appointment follow-up
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Changed approach to sales funnel messaging to improve up-sell and cross-sell
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Facilitated move to tRAOS paid search bidding, based on expected lifetime value
Holiday lettings platform
Identified Ideal Customer Profiles based on LTV and conversion rates
Provided recommendations to optimise website conversion based on mystery shopping
Prioritised leads within the sales funnel based on ICP-fit
Reset sales team commission based on ICP-fit
Introduced marketing automation to improve lead nurture
Established consistent approach to deal conversion and closing
International franchise business
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Alignment on value proposition based on customer feedback
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Clarity of Ideal Customer Profile, operationalised through marketing and sales activities to improve quality of leads generated and conversion rate through the funnel
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Understanding of customer unit economics and marketing channel ROI, to enable Marketing to move from a cost centre to a profit centre
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Actionable plan to improve the approach to paid search
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Consolidation of CRM systems and new sales insight tools to implement
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New marketing and sales team meeting cadence
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GTM data platform and dashboard, connected to live marketing channel platforms and CRM systems