Developing a Go-To-Market Plan By Tom Basile and Al Pines Part 2 of 3 In Part 1, we discussed “communities of interest,” where every product or service has a place it fits best. These are the people, places and/or families of programs that share a common interest in what you offer, and can be defined in a way that allows you to make your presence known in an efficient manner. Think of it in terms of maximizing your leverage. No matter how clear the goal, you still want to have a plan. When you know where you need to go, you make your presence known while preparing for the right set of opportunities. By targeting the right agencies and programs and putting the right vehicles and teaming relationships in place, you are positioning your company to win. This positioning involves a complex set of activities that need to be carefully orchestrated. As with any serious endeavor, if you want it to go right, you better plan. A Go-To-Market Plan should consist of the following: Company Profile Can I tell what your story is? Does your value proposition stand out? Do you have a particular offering that matches a growth area in government purchasing activity? Do you demonstrate that you know their language, what they do, how they do it and what their interests are? It does no good to develop a set of hard targets if you do not have the material to attack them. For example, if your corporate capability statement is a PowerPoint presentation, you already have something you need to fix. But do not fix it yet; first you want to pick exactly who you are going to go after, because this will also drive the development of your materials. Discovery The government is a vast ocean of opportunity. It is far easier to drown than to survive. The cardinal rule: Focus where you can leverage your presence, which allows you to also leverage your resources. To do this, you need to answer some questions: Who is buying what you are selling? To answer this question you need to look at both historical buying patterns and forecasted opportunities. You may find there is a small set of agencies that regularly purchase what you want to sell. Or you may find the buying pattern is spread out, but focused within a certain set of “like” organizations within agencies. Or you may find that there are certain programs across a group of agencies that have a common set of needs for your services. There are a lot of possibilities, but if you have done a reasonable job of building your company profile you should begin to see a “community of interest” that you can relate to, starting of course with those that you have done business with before. If you are new to the government, then you will need to make some hard choices to narrow the field, which should be driven by who will be the easiest to approach and provide the largest concentration of opportunities. How are they buying what you are selling? Every program office is assigned a contracting office to take care of its procurement needs. Every contract office, over time, develops certain habits around how they like to buy things. Some will use GSA schedules, or multiple award agency vehicles or single award small business set-asides, etc. Often you will find they do not directly buy what you sell, but procure it as part of a larger program and integrated into the solutions the government seeks. You have to know how they are likely to procure your product or service so you can put into place the appropriate vehicles and/or teaming relationships that will provide you access to your targets. Are your competitors being successful? If so, how? When you begin to look at a specific community of interest you must also identify who is already selling to it. This research, which must look beyond the prime contractors to the specialized subcontractors that are providing the same service you are, will almost always turn up competitors you never knew you had. Once you find them, learn what they have been doing, where they have been selling, and when/how they either succeed or fail. Discovery should result in a defined community of interest, and in the necessary insights to establish what you have to do to gain access. What vehicles will you need; what partners will you need and who will you be competing against? Approach Based on the findings from the Discovery phase, define a detailed “game plan” with specific objectives, activities, timelines and milestones where applicable.  The plan should focus on qualified target organizations that make sense based on your offering, your discriminators, and your resources. Components of the game plan should include: 1. Target agencies, programs and partners where your solution and value statement fit best. 2. Strategy for utilizing additional contracting vehicles. 3. Differentiators to position your solution. 4. Key sales objectives and milestones. 5. Identification of resources to support the plan. 6. Defining lead-generation activities to continue supporting the opportunity development effort. Now develop a calendar of events and establish milestones for all target agencies, programs, contracting vehicles and partners and prioritize all activities based on available resources. Determine the sequence of activities over the next six, 12 and 18 months along with timelines and expected outcomes. It is best to define activities at the general marketing level, at the community of interest level, and at the program pursuit level. The implementation plan should be integrated with your organization’s current pipeline management process. In Part 3, we will discuss how to implement the Go-To-Market Plan. For more information, contact Tom at tbasile@govbusdev.com or visit www.govbusdev.com.