People outside of sales often think the world of sales is glamorous — with sales people slapping high fives and banging a big gong when a deal comes in. Those of us on the inside know that the reality is quite different. There’s a quote from Thomas Alva Edison I feel is a more accurate portrayal of the work we do in go-to-market roles: “Opportunity is missed by most people, because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Success in go-to-market is built on a solid foundation of effort, discipline, accountability, persistence, and process. There’s a lot more overalls and elbow grease than shiny gongs and high fives.

In case you are unfamiliar with the term, “Go-to-Market,” or GTM for short, refers to the techniques that a company uses to find, acquire, onboard new customers, while retaining and expanding their existing customer base. In order to add value to a company’s GTM efforts, deep insight is not optional - it is required. Here at WestCap, our go-to-market team has a mandate: before we can offer advice or guidance, we must first understand our portfolio companies’ business as well as a full-time employee. From product knowledge, to customer use cases, and from the competitive landscape to the regulatory environment - we believe the deeper our understanding, the better we are positioned to make the right recommendations on tactics and processes to help them thrive.

GTM at WestCap

At WestCap, our framework for GTM starts with presales: identifying and engaging prospects, building awareness, sales development, and demand generation. A great presales function builds awareness and interest, high quality lead flow, and great pipeline. Without lead flow and pipeline, the most talented sellers in the world will struggle - so you ignore pre-sales at your own peril.

A mentor of mine had a simple, yet profound mantra: “Nothing happens, ‘til someone sells something.” Once you have that high quality lead flow and pipeline created, you need an effective and relentless sales engine to actually capitalize on those opportunities and bring them in as paying customers. This is exceptionally challenging, and energizing especially in the early stages of a company’s life cycle. Your sales team needs to be able to balance many competing tensions. For example, a growing company’s product offering is most likely incomplete - missing features or capabilities that more established competitors offer. In all likelihood, a growing company also has fewer referenceable customers, and may not have any customers in a given industry. How can you set your sales team up to succeed and win deals, without over-promising? There is a tension between wanting to compete and win on the one hand … and ensuring the prospect’s expectations are managed appropriately and accurately. Another example of the competing tensions that a sales team will face, lies in the tension between growth and margin. It’s crucial to add logos and show momentum. At the same time, it’s important to protect pricing integrity and deliver appropriate margins. Potential investors, your board, potential acquirors - will all be looking at both elements. 

It’s very important to remember that when it comes to Sales, that one size (or one GTM approach) does not fit all companies. For example, an enterprise software company selling to large, multi-billion dollar, complex global businesses will need to think differently about their GTM processes than a company that follows a freemium or product-led growth approach and targets small and medium sized businesses, or a company that sells directly to consumers. 

Over the past few years, there has been a ton of well-deserved focus on the post-sale portion of the customer life cycle. The true power of a recurring revenue model is unlocked when a company creates a virtuous flywheel of happy customers - who act as advocates and evangelists; who buy new products and additional licenses; who renew for long-term commitments; and who help shape and improve your product roadmap. A common theme for almost all of the most successful SaaS businesses over the past two decades is very strong gross retention and even strong net revenue retention. This does not happen by accident. You can’t hope and assume your way to net negative churn. It requires thought, planning, investment, resources, and intense, inveterate customer focus.

When WestCap partners with a portfolio company, our recommendations for tactics and processes to drive improvement are always supported with a foundation of technology and data. Most importantly, we don't just make a recommendation and walk away - we help implement those changes. We jump in where help is needed most. We have run pipeline calls, co-developed a quarterly business review process, and participated in customer renewal sessions to understand why a customer is, or is not, renewing. We even go to trade shows with our portfolio company sales teams, so we can see how new marketing messaging is landing, and how the competition is evolving. Because we're on the front lines, we're better able to measure the results of what we're doing. If something isn't working, we can pivot or adapt or change. And if something is working, we can pour fuel on the fire and accelerate it.

GTM Across the Portfolio

AI is having a more profound impact on GTM than anything I've seen in my career — and I've been in sales and sales leadership for almost 30 years. Several portfolio companies are arming their sales development reps with AI tools to be more effective at scheduling meetings, leading to twice as many meetings and doubling the amount of pipeline without increasing headcount.

In other cases, companies are streamlining sales onboarding by using AI avatars that mimic customer behaviors, allowing new sales hires to interact and roleplay, and cutting onboarding time in half. Others are using AI to cut down dramatically on research time in account planning and sales call preparation, bringing a process that used to take hours down to literal minutes, with better information and competitive advantage.

And last but not least, some companies are building AI agents to supplement sales engineers or solution engineering teams. That means they don't have to wait for a human to be available for a sales call. They can bring in an AI agent anytime, and in any language, to do a sales demo and answer deeply technical sales questions.

We are deeply committed to portfolio companies’ success and can help across the spectrum of Go-to-Market needs, honing sales and marketing tactics and separating the news from the noise. We make sure to engage where we’re needed and where we believe we can have maximum impact. Reach out on LinkedIn to connect with our team and exchange ideas.