Why I’m all-in on IndustryGTM

In January, as a bit of an experiment, I posted a high-level guide on “Industry Go-to-Market” on LinkedIn. I got tons of positive feedback, fresh ideas, and even some companies interested in working together. Today, with my business partner Rob Stella, we’re officially launching Industry GTM as the only hub to help you build and run your industry go-to-market strategy. In this post, I want to share why we started this and what you can expect from us this year.

Why we started Industry GTM

Not long ago, Rob and I were “finance bros” with 0 SaaS experience brought into Seismic (the sales enablement software leader now generating over $300M ARR) to help figure out how to build on the company’s success in Asset Management. We ended up spending a combined almost 6 years there. In that time, the financial services business went from ~8 FS reps to over 40, grew to well over $50MM in ARR, and can count 8 of the top 10 banks, almost all of the top 25 asset managers, and 3 of the top 5 wealth management firms as Seismic customers.

After I left Seismic, every so often I’d find myself in an interview process at a company that was trying to run the same play. SaaS companies were running out of TAM (total addressable market) selling to just other SaaS companies, and they wanted to break into “new verticals” – some combination of Financial Services, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Manufacturing, etc.

The problem – they were all looking for a unicorn to spearhead this effort. Someone fairly junior, but with industry experience. Tenured at a big corporation, but that could also thrive in a fast-paced tech startup. Someone customer-facing and strategic, but who could also roll up their sleeves and churn out content.

Not only was this nearly impossible to find, but they were also in dire need of this person. They’d already hired a few reps from some giant company like Salesforce (where there are already industry sellers), committed to proving success in new verticals to the board, and now their sellers were struggling – they had less pipeline than peers and a way harder sales cycle to run, and felt on an island with limited help from partner teams.

How to get Industry GTM right

So how’d we do it at Seismic, and what do we recommend to companies on this journey?

1. Hyper-specific ICP – Financial Services makes up 25% of the word’s economy. If you go to most SaaS companies’ financial services web page, it’ll list mostly FinTech companies. The simple exercise of whittling the universe of accounts down into the companies, divisions of companies, and titles that are a good fit focuses the entire go-to-market engine on where you can actually win. For example, at Seismic, rather than broadly going after “banking”, we outlined Business & Commercial banks as our ICP and spelled out all the job titles that would care about our solution.
2. Industry-specific messaging and use cases – Once you’re targeting to the right companies and people, you should have something unique to say to them. Even if the features they’d use are exactly the same, by communicating in terms of their specific use case and value, you tie to problems their business is actually looking to solve, rather than what you’re looking to sell. For example, at Seismic, rather than talking about “sales enablement”, which most banks hadn’t heard of, we talked about the impact if their relationship managers could be industry experts and differentiate from competition…using sales enablement.
3. Targeted Campaigns – Lastly, getting in front of these target buyers is much harder than getting to other SaaS companies. They aren’t as connected to the SaaS ecosystem and are far less likely to hear about you through your traditional marketing channels. So, you need to use different channels and content to reach them. It could be through their trade publications, events, or through partnerships with other SaaS companies that have a larger customer base, but putting thought behind this strategy is critical to generating demand and pipeline.

What we’re building

Whether you’re a seller, marketer, in revenue operations, or a generalist trying to do all of the above, there’s no doubt it’s overwhelming. You’re trying to run a business within a business, and when you seek guidance by joining communities or going to events, no one’s doing the same job you are. IndustryGTM is built for you. We’re still early, but there are a few areas we can help today.

1. Join our newsletter – Do you want to build an industry vertical but don’t know where to start? Subscribe to our newsletter to unlock our industry go-to-market playbook, join your peers in our our Slack community, and get real world examples monthly.
2. Access industry training – Do you need help understanding the financial services industry? We’ve led dozens of trainings for sales teams on the lingo, org structure, and personas in financial services to accelerate deals and increase pipeline. You can join the waitlist here.
3. Hire Industry GTM – Are you ready to take your financial services vertical to the next level? We work with B2B SaaS leaders – like 6sense, Responsive, and Dotmatics – to nail their positioning, messaging, and pipeline generation for financial services subverticals. Schedule a strategy to learn how.

Bottom line, we know from experience that running an industry go-to-market is hard, and it’s often exacerbated by a lack of resources to do it effectively. Our goal is simple – to help you on this journey. If there are ways we can help, beyond what’s mentioned above, please let us know, and we hope to see you in our community soon!