Decoding B2B GTM: What the C-Suite Needs to Know with Bryan Brown

Bryan Brown: Go to market literally is what separates the winners from the losers. It's it's, you got to have a great product. That's just table stakes, but, um, it's go to market that's going to separate.

John Common: Welcome to Growth Driver. We're the best minds in B2B or redefining growth. Hello everyone. John Common here. You know, go to market as a term, as a concept. has exploded in the last couple of years. You know, you see the term GTM everywhere you look these days, you know, and whenever a term or a concept or a strategy blows up in our field, I always ask myself, one, what is this really?

Like, what is this? Just a basic definition. Secondly, Is this hype, this thing, or is it real? And if it is real, what makes it valuable for driving B2B growth? Why does it work and how does it work? That's what I always wonder when I get confronted with, uh, the latest thing in our industry, and that's what we're going to unpack today.

We're going to define B2B go to market. We're going to unpack its major components and we're going to share some really fresh. research and trends about the current state of B2B go to market. And I have a true B2B go to market expert with me today. Bryan Brown is a founder and a chief analyst at go to market partners.

He has had an amazing career as a software executive and advisor. And a real innovator in the MarTech industry. He helped create, this is a true statement. He helped create the marketing automation category at Vtrends, Silverpop, IBM. If you've been around, you know what I just said. Uh, he's also helped create the ABM category.

for years and years at Terminus. He is one of the smartest, tallest, and most low ego people you will meet in our industry. Welcome to Growth Driver, Bryan. 

Bryan Brown: Oh man, that's a big intro. Thank you, John. I'm super excited to be here. 

John Common: Oh, I'm so glad to have you here. I, obviously you and I have been planning this episode for a while excitedly.

And, uh, ever since I met you years and years ago, I remember I was at a, uh, I think it was a Terminus partner and customer event. And I was standing next to some really tall, smart dude who had just talked about the product roadmap. And I was like, who, who is this person? That's what, that's the first time I, I met you.

And then, and then Sanger walked up to me and gave me a pair of custom tennis shoes that said a B2B is ABM on the shoes. And I was like, all right, I got to get to know these people. Who are they? 

Bryan Brown: That pretty much sums us up right there. She got to have shoes with the, with the story. 

John Common: I know it is kind of a chocolate and peanut butter that you and Sangram Vajre, but, um, all right, I want to dive.

So one thing I saw in your background, I saw that you spent a couple of years in Ireland before you got into this crazy technology stuff. Do you have any cool stories? Have a, do you remember anything cool about being in Ireland? 

Bryan Brown: It was a unique, I was there as a, as doing service missionary kind of work, um, you know, c Christian work, if you will.

Um, but I was 19 and in fact, my son is 21 right now and he's doing the same kind of missionary work in Ventura, California right now. Um, but I mean, it was transformational for me. Uh, I, I mean, at 19 to have to like. Stop, you know, your life and stop thinking about yourself and learn to, to learn to not think about yourself, like, you know, cause like, you know, so just to be in a different country, um, immersed in a culture, spending every day, literally just walking.

streets of a town, finding people in need, literally like just who's in need today, who can we help? Uh, you know, and, and we would just spend time trying to lift people up. Um, it was just one of the best things that ever happened to me. I mean, it's super hard, intense, like, you know, you're, you're grinding it out, you know, I think that's pretty cool.

Probably, probably why I like B2B. 'cause it's like, it is just a grind all the time. You're just getting stuff done. But yeah. But, um, yeah, I, I just, uh, I loved it, man. Thanks. Thanks for asking by the way. Um, yeah, and you know, I learned leadership, I learned, um, to have empathy for others. I learned how to resolve people's challenges and concerns and just, you know.

And by, and you just see life in a different way. You come back home and you're like, wow, I took all this for granted. I have so much to be, to be grateful for is it, it was a huge blessing in my life. 

John Common: What a cool experience, especially at that time in a person's life. Uh, that sounds really meaningful. Well, all right.

So let's dive in to go to market and I want to start right at the top. Let's define. Go to market, right? So what is go to market strategy? Why has it become so important and relevant in B2B growth? 

Bryan Brown: So before I define it, let me just say this, um, lot of companies today feel like marketing's broken. Or they feel like sales is broken or they, they're not getting the retention and renewals, so they feel like customer success is broken.

Um, and so I think as business leaders, we've kind of trained ourselves to point to find a department and be like, that department's the problem. Let's maybe we've got to like overhaul it or fire, you know, like think of tenure, CMO tenure, CRO tenure. It's, it's like people don't get to stay in jobs anymore.

Right. Very long. And it's insane. And so I think we've been looking at it incorrectly and we've been looking at department problems rather than go to market problems. And if marketing's not doing well, my, my opinion and experience working with hundreds of companies, it's more likely a go to market Uh, it could be clarity on the go to market, it could be alignment around the go to market.

It's less likely a marketing problem. Or if sales is missing quota, it's, it's like we can try to enable and train sellers and send them through a medic and all this stuff. And that's good, it'll help. But it's most likely that they're out of alignment. With the rest of the org. Um, and so if we wanted to define, so, you know, we have the shirt and slogans everywhere, but it's like, you don't have a marketing problem.

You don't have a sales problem. You don't have a CS problem. You don't have a product problem. You have a go to market problem. And so when we step back and define go to market. You know, um, it's not a one off like, Oh, let's have a, a two day offsite and define our, our go to market and come up with go to market.

Go to market is a process. And you know, this like ID, you guys do this, you come in and you set up a process, a way of working for people and go to market is a way of working. and a process that, that connects strategy to execution. And it does so for all the cross functional teams that are going to touch and interact with customers.

And that's, that's the new way of thinking about go to market. 

John Common: This is why, is one of the reasons why you and I are friends and why we geek out so, so hard about this stuff. Well, I was just gonna say my journey, my intellectual path into go to market, the way, exactly the way you're defining it, my path. was spending now coming up on 15 plus years of working down in those departments that you just talked about.

Working and finding ways to help marketing, sales, product, customer success, connect their investments, their processes, their talent, their people, connect those departmental efforts to the thing that the organization actually wants, which is growth, profitable, sustainable growth. And after 15 years of working in that.

What started to dawn on me is exactly what you said, which is why we're friends, I think. And which is, wait, you know, we could spend another three, five, 6 percent making the product better or making the, like you said, like make the SDR scripts better or tweaking the nurture program in the middle of the funnel.

And it will make things better. We can adopt medic or, you know, challenger or whatever. But what dawned on me over time is that the elephant in the room is this go to market strategy layer that, to your point, is not a product manager's PowerPoint deck at the sales kickoff. It is an operating model. It is a way of blending the, the, the various lanes of genius across That's your phrase, uh, across go to market to achieve specific growth goals.

And that dawned on me and I was like, you know what? I didn't say it the way your t shirt says it, which is really eloquent, but, but it just dawned on me. It was like, we need to be putting our next unit of effort, not trying to squeeze 3 percent more out of marketing or sales. We need to get together in the go to market space.

And recognize finally, once and for all, the B2B growth is a team sport. And I think go to market is the playbook for that team sport. That's, that's my way of saying what you said. And I think why we're, we're, we're buddies. 

Bryan Brown: I love it, man. I mean, think, here's a good example. Think how much time and energy a company might, an exec team might put, or a CFO might put into, uh, Ensuring that marketing has attribution of their campaigns, right?

Wouldn't it be better if they were all debating, are these campaigns aligned to the ICP that sales is trying to sell that product is building for, and that CS can actually renew versus asking, versus asking 

John Common: which PDF offer drove the pipeline. And you're like, what? What? Why are we? No, don't do that. 

Bryan Brown: Yeah.

It doesn't make sense. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. I think we've just like lost focus in a way, um, because like, like maybe just a little tangent here. Um, yeah, hit it. We had some pretty, we had some pretty frothy years with a lot of money flowing and companies could get their next round and in minutes and everyone was lining up to battle to get in on the round.

And so money was flowing. And so companies, um, over extended themselves on all the ways they could grow at the same time. So we, we, we launched, you know, different initiatives. We went up market and down market. We added PLG at the same time we were doing pro product and partner led or, um, event. We tried to do it all.

We tried to build categories. We tried to do inbound. Uh, we tried to go to Europe. We tried to like, we just tried to do it all because at face value, They're all good ways to grow. And we could go into retail or we could go, you know, enterprises are just doing all these different things, um, because the money was there and so they weren't paying to the efficiency and they weren't paying to the cost of, of signing up and doing bad business.

But if, but today that's not the case. So you can't do it all. So the number one thing go to market process has to achieve is get the entire exec team and the department leaders of all the departments we've been talking about. Across go to market to agree on where growth will come from. If they can simply agree and focus in on the main ways, like if we have to hit this goal, what is the number one ways we will hit that goal, man, that will prevent people from wasting so much cycles and company resources and time and just doing stuff that isn't going to hit that number.

John Common: Preach it, Bryan Brown. I'm listening. All right. Um, So, I mean, yes, plus one. So, um, what are a handful of the more important core principles that underpin and drive the success of this go to market thing that you and I are talking about? 

Bryan Brown: Okay. How 

John Common: do I keep this part succinct? 

Bryan Brown: It's okay. Just 

John Common: let it rip. 

Bryan Brown: Yeah, I'm a framework person.

So, you know, I already thought of like the frameworks as you said that. I know, um, I know. So probably, probably the things, one of the things I'm most excited about is, um, the eight pillar go to market operating system that we've been teaching. Um, every, every roadshow we do, every city we go to, you know, every company we advise, that's the thing we, that's the number one thing that's helping people.

And. What it does, and the quickest way around it is we call it the eight, eight key questions to connect strategy to execution. Um, but it, it literally just asked people eight, eight really, you know, strategic thinking questions that if they, if an exec team and leadership team, senior leadership team, maybe.

If they just sat in a room and spent half a day just working through those questions, that alone would produce so much clarity and alignment. Um, but the questions are, are things like, you know, where can we grow the most? Which would be like, what market segments, okay? What is the, of those segments, what is the highest value product That those segments would appreciate that we can bring to market, right?

Because we have, you know, I'm a product person. So like I always had a hundred products I was building and, you know, at any determinists, Vtrend, Silverpop, IBM. We always had so much stuff we wanted to deliver. But if we had to, if I went back in time and said of all the cool product ideas, which one will the customers we're trying to serve that we can grow the most with, which one will they value the most?

That would have changed everything for me. I guarantee you, I would have instantly chopped off some ideas and some product lines that I was thinking would going to be amazing because I would have recognized that they didn't quite line in and hit the bullseye for the market where we could grow the most if we got focused.

Um, anyways, a couple more. So that's two of the questions. Then it's, um, then it would be like, what is the best way to position ourselves to differentiate in the market? Then it would be what go to market motions will help us hit the revenue number fastest. Right. So now we're getting like, is it inbound?

Is it outbound? Is it community? Is it categories at events? Is it partner? Like which combination can we, can we get the teams to focus in on that? Um, and then as we kind of keep moving around, around the model, um, you know, for customer, when it comes to customers, it's like, do we have a clear ROI and time to value?

I mean, imagine an exec leadership team, just debating the question is, is the value of our solution or service, is it clear to the buyer and how fast can they see time to value? Just think like, what would that conversation do alone, right? It would force so much focus on the customer and providing value would be incredible.

And you don't want just like CS doing that. You actually want marketing and sales and product and rev ops to all participate in that. And then just finishing out the pillars. Which customer cohorts can we expand the most? Can, can we, you know, if I have a book of business of 10, 000 companies, I serve, I'm an enterprise company or global company, and I've got all these different kinds of customers.

Do I have a way to ensure that the people supporting those accounts know which accounts to prioritize? If you think about a CS minded person, they're built to serve. They want to help everyone, whoever calls them, they will help, but they might be helping customers that could never do more with you, uh, don't have the same long term vision as your company.

aren't going to expand, aren't going to renew, might go out of business, right? Like they don't, we need to, we need to teach our companies how to prioritize the accounts that really are going to be in this with us, that we can grow together with. Um, and then it would be, the last two would be, what are the key metrics that will help us know if we're building an efficient growth company?

So is it not just ARR, right? Like ARR is everything, like two years ago, five years ago, it was all about ARR. Well, that's nice. We need ARR, but we need a lot of other things that show that we're building a healthy company. Um, and then what does it take for the leadership team to provide ongoing clarity and alignment for their teams?

And so again, those are the eight questions. It's the, it's, they, they sound so simple on their face value, but man, do they produce just incredible alignment discussions among teams? 

John Common: Yeah, this is, uh, this we practice this with our clients every day. And, um, for our audience, just know that we will put a link to, um, go to market partners and intelligent demands frameworks, which by the way, are like Peanut butter and jelly on this stuff.

Um, and so, so if you, if you didn't capture all the nuance of what, of what Bryan just said, don't worry, we'll have it in the show notes, you'll be able to, we want you to have a copy of this cause it's, it's really important just to round out this first sort of section of our, of our episode, which is really about just defining the fundamentals of go to market.

I want to end with. This question who owns and this is not a trap question who owns go to market or who should own go to market From your perspective. 

Bryan Brown: I want to hear what everyone's I want to hear everyone's answers So we we've surveyed we've surveyed that we've surveyed multiple times um, and if i'm working off of memory correctly the first time we Answered this I think 60 of the people said it was like Like marketing or sales.

Um, if you go back in time and you said, go to market, a lot of executives would have said, Oh, my CMO owns that. And then as we got further along, people would have said, no, my, my CRO owns that because they need to own the book of business, but that's like marketing's not go to market sales, isn't go to market.

So you can't have a department own go to market. Right. And so in, in our book and in our research. Talking to some of the best, brightest individuals in the world who are leading the biggest, coolest companies we know came down to the CEO expected that they owned GoToMarket. And that doesn't mean they own, I mean, it sounds crazy to add that to the CEO's plate.

Who else can align compensation? Can sales in line, can sales tell marketing how they're comped? No, they can't. So if you don't align compensation to the go to market strategy, execution is not going to click in. So the CEO has to, at some point. Own the highest level or at least facilitate their team to, uh, to align on the highest level, uh, strategy and approach.

John Common: And I think that I agree. And I think that the, the recommendation, the strong recommendation that the CEO owns go to market is. Even more obvious when you're an earlier stage company where I think it gets more difficult is when you move up market and now you're now we're a mid market company. We're a couple million, couple hundred million dollars in revenue, or how about we're 10 billion in revenue.

And so sometimes CEO gets replaced by tell me if you in these larger companies, the CEO, maybe get replaced by like the GM, uh, of, of the, you know, North American division, you know, that kind of thing. How do you, how do you think about that? In an enterprise setting. 

Bryan Brown: Yeah, absolutely. It, you know, IBM's a planet, right?

IBM has so many business units, um, right. Just huge company, right? Just incredible. Um, you know, so, or you, you know, you take like a global bank or financial, you know, services company. Um, it's going to come down to be. Business units, business lines, and there's going to be a GM over those. And those GMs are essentially a CEO, right?

They're the CEO of billion dollars, you know, um, though that, that becomes of that business unit. Uh, that CEO becomes the owner of go to market. 

John Common: Yeah, I figured. Yeah. Good. All right. And you mentioned it a second ago. Um, move the book that you wrote with Sangram Vadram. Talk to me about it. Let's just start at the top.

Why did you two write the book? Why'd you write it? 

Bryan Brown: Well, we are company builders. Um, we love inventing, we love building products and in both of our, you know, you know, Sangram was part of Pardot and then Salesforce. Um, and you know, um, but in our journeys of building companies, we just realized and just, just had a lot of like, Uh, energy around, why is it so hard to build companies?

It is so hard. Like, why is it so hard? And it, and, um, you know, and so, so like the opening of the book is just, let's, let's feel this pain together, which is, you know, even companies that have amazing products and ideas, visionary companies hit these walls. And sometimes they never recover. And it's like, what happened?

Why was it so hard? And, and it's not because they had a bad vision. It's not because they built a bad product. It's not because they didn't have great people. It's literally because they didn't have a way to figure out, go to market. And so they were just in chaos. And when you're in chaos, even when you're growing fast, everyone feels like they're losing, even if they are winning, because it's like the ball's moving and you can never get the projects done.

And there's so much. There's lack of focus. So everyone's asking to just to do more, more and more and more. And, and suddenly you just kind of lose expertise and, and companies that are amazing that could be, you know, enduring brands fizzle out. And so that was, that was, we wanted to, is there a, is there a better way?

Like, is there a better way to build a company? That was a, that was our, uh, idea for the book 

John Common: and in, and in, in the book, I, and I've read it a couple of times and, um, it's filled with lots of practical, pragmatic, uh, this is what you ought to do in this use case. That kind of, it's great book, but I think if you asked me, What maybe, maybe one of the most important concepts that you've built your book around, I would say it is this concept of the, the, the lifecycle of a business.

Um, and you've, you've, you've made it simpler. Cause you know, we've all seen the, like, you know, different life cycles that a company goes through over the company's lifecycle. And it can be an eight stage process. I've seen as many as nine stages, I've seen six stages, but you guys, in a bit more simple form, which made it more digestible for a lot of people, I think, and it's phase one in the company life cycle is, is Problem market fit.

Did I say that right? 

Bryan Brown: Yeah. You got it. 

John Common: Product market fit is phase two and then platform fit is phase three. Um, talk to us about some of the typical excitement, typical pain, typical challenges in that companies go through as you go through those three lifecycle stages and to the audience as Bryan walks through this.

Remember that yes, early stage companies go through these, but so do large companies at the product level or at different levels. And so I know Bryan, you'll speak to that, but let's just walk us through those three phases and just give us some flavor for the challenges and how to overcome those big challenges phase by phase.

Bryan Brown: Well, it's, yeah, so we, we call it the three Ps. Um, and Uh, the, the one, there's one page in the book, one chart, and we'll pull it up on a slide when we're, when we're working with, especially in a big company, you know, uh, 250 million plus revenue or a billion revenue. That one thing of the three Ps, even for the most seasoned exec teams.

Will without doubt, produce the best conversation that one's that one slide will, will command the room for one hour. I'm not, I mean, it's incredible because there it's, there's so much to tackle and trying to understand what's going on with your business. And so when you take a simple thing like the three P's and start to overlay your business on it, it is eyeopening for executives.

And, um, and so the, the gist of the three P's is, um, companies of all sizes, like you, if you're, you know, Huge company and you launch a new product. That new product is not going to get all the benefits of your current position. It's going to be a new product that is in problem market fit, which means it's trying to find, does it have a worthy enough problem with a big enough market that buyers Would want to pay for.

And so you're trying to identify the problem. Like you built a little tool or a product, but what's the problem it's solving and you're wrestling. Cause you know, a lot of, a lot of companies, when you build a product, it could, it could be pivoted lots of ways to solve lots of problems. So you got to identify that problem.

And we've seen companies. You know, with a product line that might, the product line itself might have 30 million in revenue. And you're like, well, that's clearly not problem market fit, but actually it is because they're not, their retention's really poor, which means they had a great sales motion, but the product still didn't hit the right problem.

Right. So there's, there's these interesting dynamics that happen there in problem market fit. Um, in problem market fit, you have to be, and this is the toughest. This is why. Um, large companies struggle to, uh, thwart off rising startups is because the startup has, has something that the enterprise doesn't, which is, um, they have endless flexibility around how they run their company.

And, and so when you launch a new, when you, this is why like big companies will, will build incubators and they'll, they'll try to like get it out of the complexity of the big company so it can, it can thrive and innovate quickly and not have all the process and procedures. Um, but you know, you've got to be, you've got to be able to, to pivot and be ad hoc and you've got to allow a lot of autonomy in the early stage, um, of, of, you know, building a new solution.

Um, but by the time you find a lane that you can grow, an audience that, that appreciates that product and you can sell the same thing to the same buyer in the same way. That's the definition of product market fit, right? When you can sell the same thing to the same buyer in the same way that now, now you've moved out of ad hoc, like, you know, trying to find your way to, we found a way.

Let's line everyone up to it and let's go all in on that way. And that's, that's the beginning of scaled growth that happens in product market fit. The challenge that happens when you cross these phases, when you go from one P to the next, the biggest problem is everything you were doing in the first phase, the entire way you went to market is not going to work as you move to the new phase.

And that's, that's why companies struggle and fail is because they essentially hit what we call a valley of death. And so they're going growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, and they start to find product market fit. And they tried to lean into it, but the whole company is still working in the autonomous way of.

Problem market fit, and they don't have shared KPIs. They don't have shared rev ops. They don't have shared data system or processes. Everything's all over the place. Contracts always look different. Every sales tech was different, but now, now we need to standardize. And so you have to retrain and retool.

You have to transform the go to market. And I didn't, I never realized that building companies early on. I thought once you got marketing and sales working you just, you just kept it the same. But it has to change to reflect where your business is growing. And the third P, and I'll just hit it real fast, is platform market fit.

So, you're in product market fit, you're doing great, you've got a great product, people buy it, they love it, they renew, they want more of it. Um, but you've only got one line of, of revenue essentially. And you might have some add ons and ways to, you know, seats and usage and stuff to, to increase lifetime value for customers.

To be an enterprise company, you need to have multiple clouds or platforms or suites or things like, you know, that they can buy that now you start to sell. Bigger accounts or bigger deals into that company get, you know, more users, more departments, more teams. Um, and so having multiple products that the same buyer will want to buy, that's the definition of platform market.

John Common: That's excellent. Okay. So I'm going to try to say it back. I'm sure it will not be as eloquent as what you just said, but problem market fit, the, the, the main jobs to be done in that phase sound like. Is there an audience that I will hopefully call a customer at some point, an audience with a problem that is big enough, urgent enough to them, important enough to them that I can actually solve?

And, and, and, and is there enough, is it one customer or is it, is there a collection of customers with that problem that I can solve? And ideally, can I, is there a chance that I could potentially solve it profitably? And 

Bryan Brown: yeah, 

John Common: ish. Right. And by definition, I think that first phase, that problem market fit phase.

When you hear, hear us talk about it, it's fraught with, uh, you know, risk. It's it's, it's, it's the opposite of scale and standardization. And so I think, you know, it's hard to say. If you're going to step one, know if you're in problem market fit. And if you are, don't try to act like you're in platform for market fit when you're in problem market fit, you know, right?

So, so there's that phase next phase. Okay. I know that I'm in product market fit when I can sell the same product to the same type of buyer in the same way. And I, and you could argue that problem market fit. It's all about finding your way to product mark, which group of buyers with what needs at what price point match to what product and what go to market motion or sales and marketing motion produces my ability to move to the next stage, which is, Oh, wait a minute.

It's not different every time it's starting to be the same product to the same target audience sold and marketed in the same way. So there, and then now we get to. Uh, uh, platform market fit, where it's like, what if I'm selling him chocolate? What if I sold him peanut butter and, and maybe even, wow, chocolate and peanut butter go really well together.

There's a plat, there's literally a platform thing called the Reese's peanut butter cup, sort of part of my value prop. And, and at each of those phases, when you're crossing over from problem market fit to product market fit to platform market fit, what your book says Get ready. It's going to hurt you're going to have to go through some valleys of death and don't be surprised when it happens.

Um, did I get, am I getting that ish, right? 

Bryan Brown: Yeah, I love it. Yeah. I love it. And, and the way you, the way you see it happen, cause again, businesses are so complex. It's hard to know when this is happening. Exactly. But what happens is you've been going along at a certain growth rate. And all of a sudden that growth rate is much harder to sustain.

And you're wondering why it's getting difficult and more difficult. And that's sort of that moment where you're crossing into the next lane. And so you've got to put in different KPIs. Um, the team needs a different process. You need to rethink your go to market motion. Like you've got to like, Retool to go to market to make it work in the new scenario of the business.

And then you get back and you're humming again. Um, and so, so you, it shows up in pain, right? And, and the sooner a company can recognize. Hey, we are experiencing a valley of death. And, um, and so what changed and what do we need to do? Like you could have a team where, I mean, this happened, I've seen this every, everywhere I've been, I've seen this and companies have helped, but like sales is killing it quarter after quarter after quarter, and then boom, they're not killing it and everyone's like, what happened?

Right. And that's, and, and so that's that, that's that moment where the old way worked. And then suddenly it's not working and you have to recognize that something's changed. The company has moved forward. You know, we introduced more products. It's more complexity. We've got to change. We've got to change the way we're going to market.

John Common: Those different pains, those pains come from the, I think there are six valleys of death and five or six. And, and what you're saying is there are symptoms, there are symptoms that it's time to return back to the shared cross functional space called go to market. And you didn't say this, but I, I know you mean this, the opposite of what to do is to retreat into your siloed departments and, and, and, and throw more siloed heroics and tactics at what is fundamentally a cross functional go to market challenge.

And I think that's, that's the important part for the folks who are listening is that. Roll back 20 minutes in this interview, we defined go to market as a fundamentally cross functional, always on, evolving, A influences B influences C kind of a thing. And then if you combine that, that definition of go to market with the, the three P's and the valleys of death, The real mistake that I think companies make and can't avoid is when they hit a negative symptom or a valley of death to, to remember not to retreat into their siloed caves, but to go back to that go to market workshop.

space and say, hold on, maybe it's not just a marketing problem or a sales problem. What if we need, what if we got in a room together and recognize, wait, well, I think we need to tweak our ICP. Think about how the problem we're solving. Think about how that matches to our product and how we position it and message it.

And then is there anything around our go to market motions that we, this is the cross functional complexity and nuance that is multivariant go to market. 

Bryan Brown: Yeah. You said that super well. I love it. That's so, I'm glad you, I'm glad you pointed that out. It's, it's, it's absolutely critical and we've never really had frameworks that taught companies how to do that.

Like we've had like the demand waterfall framework and, but, but that doesn't teach us how to do what you just described. Right. And that's, and that's why. Isn't that shocking by the way? 

John Common: Can we just pause for a second and say, how is it that it's 2024, B2B has been around a bit. Right. Right. And, and yet we, there.

Until now, there really hasn't been discussion, frameworks, focus, research, partners to help companies do this work. Why, why do you think 

Bryan Brown: that is? Oh man, that's a good question. I don't, I don't know. I, um, it's, it's just a really good question. I think we're, we're still in some ways maturing to just, like, if you look at 20 years of B2B, man, a lot has changed, right?

Yeah. 20 years ago. Everything was, everything we did was, was an on premise experience, right? Of like, you know, um, so just the way we, we interact, the way we go to market, the way teams work, um, the complexities that exist today, the team's complexities, the dynamics of teams, the digitalization of everything, it's just changed.

It's changed so much. So, um, but I guess, I guess the missing component for, for years was, um, that strategy was. You know, in the ivory tower, and then execution was on the ground floor of the factory. 

John Common: Yeah. 

Bryan Brown: And there's just, there was just not a lot of connectivity between the two things. Um, and so that's why I think the old frameworks were not, the old frameworks were built for execution.

They weren't built to connect strategy. It dawned on 

John Common: me the other day, I was like, you know, I think part of the way that we got here. Well, you just said that one thing is, you know. Every field grows up eventually, right? So I think we're looking at the natural maturation of B2B, you know, and that's okay.

It's okay to grow up. And I think our field is growing up. But I think, I think there's another systemic thing inside of a lot of companies that when you say it out loud, it might be kind of overly simplistic, but it, but it might be true. And that is, I think a lot at a lot of companies, they equate their org chart with their strategy.

Bryan Brown: Oh, wow. That's huge. Yeah, that's a. 

John Common: And they, and think about it. If you put an org chart, the board is at the top and they say, here's what our growth goals are. Here's what our budgets are. Here's what our corporate strategy. And then they skip, there, there is no org chart spot that says cross functional go to market.

It goes straight to, uh, CEO, CFO, COO, and then department heads. And so it's almost like the air in the room has always been bored, gives us the goals and the budgets and the constraints, and then we get straight down to tactics, which are in silos. And I wonder if it hasn't, I wonder if that's at the root of it.

And I think what, what we're talking about and what even what B2B Go To Market is saying is, Stop following your org chart as your strategy, your org chart of the people and the capabilities, but there's got to be this middle layer between what the board wants and what your people do every day.

Tactically, it's like we're inserting a new piece of software called cross functional growth. I don't know. I don't know if that I'm getting philosophical. 

Bryan Brown: I love that. No, I love, no, I love that point. And I think that's why the CEO or GM of the business unit has to own it because who else can align? Who else can align the department heads?

Like no one can, they have to. Um, so, yeah, I mean, I, I, I think, I think you nailed it. 

John Common: Growth Driver is brought to you today by the talented and kind people at Intelligent Demand. If you're a B2B CMO, CRO, or Go To Market leader, and you're personally responsible for driving efficient growth, Go check them out at intelligent demand.

com book a meeting with them. Talk to an expert. They can help So let's let's take us kind of where we are today today So the current state of b2b go to market So go to market partners the firm that you're a founder and chief analyst for Uh, you guys one of the one of the things I love is you not Only produce frameworks.

You also do research and benchmark research and you produce it on a regular basis. Um, talk to us about what the last two or three major chunks of research about the state of B2B go to market has, has been showing and telling you and us. 

Bryan Brown: Well, some of it is, you know, what we're all feeling. And so it's nice.

It's nice when you're struggling as a company to grow At the rate you used to grow, um, to know, is it just us? Is it, is it everyone like what's going on? So our benchmark report, one of the benchmark report on go to market, one of the things that it does is it just sort of helps you know, where, where do you fit in, in light of everyone else?

Um, and what, what it's shown is that, um, you know, and I think it was like 57 percent of companies basically said, uh, we built insufficient marketing pipeline. And, and we were seeing that trend in the prior report and the prior report. And then in this report, it actually showed up in missing revenue. It makes sense.

You miss pipeline sales has less to work. Right. And, and by the way, the other big stat was that, uh, 70 percent of companies are seeing their, their traditional deal cycle is much longer. So if it's taking longer to get deals done and, and then, you know, you six months ago, everyone said pipelines down deals are longer, but we're still really optimistic that we'll hit our revenue plan.

And then, and then we did the report and no one hit the revenue plan. So, you know, more than half of companies missed revenue and these are reforecasted numbers. So it's not like they've already pulled themselves back and yet they still missed. And it's really a reflection of how, when, when the economy got tight and people were like, we've got to conserve cash.

None of these, most companies were not built efficiently. So they're trying to retool to be efficient so that they don't burn cash. But to do that, what did they do? They cut spend. Where did they cut it from? Marketing pulled back hard. That was the first thing to go because it's discretionary. You can, you don't have to lose people.

So everyone cut hard on all of the brand building they had been doing. And guess what brand actually does drive demand. And now we're, now we're seeing that show up. Um, and so, you know, um, now there's companies that are still thriving. There's companies that are outperforming. There's companies that are crushing their revenue numbers.

Um, but that's not the majority. And I, I saw a stat, I can't remember where I saw it or who it was, but it, it was basically showed, um, uh, You know, on average companies were at 30 percent growth rate in this sort of study. And those same companies are now at 18 percent on average growth rate. So clearly it's, it's been hard on everyone across the board.

John Common: Yeah. That way, the way you, the way you just walked through that was so great. It's it, these are big, complex topics. Thanks for saying it, that it was so efficient the way you just did that. And, uh, I think what you just told us is when you clamp down on brand and you also clamp down on demand or growth marketing, uh, eventually that will have negative impacts.

So wait for it on pipeline, which will have negative impacts on, uh, uh, you know, bookings and, and, and revenue. And. And that's just the truth of it, you know, and, and even more so if, if, you know, you, uh, are seeing, uh, the way buyers buy gets more and more skeptical and slow and how they make decisions. And so that takes us this, does that take us to today?

What's your, what's your take on where we are now and where we're headed next? 

Bryan Brown: Well, so, you know, no, one's just going to sit around and let, let their companies struggle. They're, everyone's trying to figure out how to get to efficient growth and what to do. What does it look different? How does go to market look different today than it did two, three years ago?

And so companies are experimenting with more go to market motions. They're realizing that outbound left on its own won't produce. So they're combining outbound with event led with. Partner led. So there we're, we're pulling things together around the same buyer, the same ICP, the same product lines. We're running multiple kinds of motions.

For those buyers to move them forward. That's been huge. Um, I think, and the, the other thing I would say is that, um, it's, it's forced it like it's forcing companies to stop a lot of bad habits. So here's a bad habit. You got to cut budget. So back to your org chart, like let's picture your org charts. You mentioned a while ago.

Uh, board says, you guys are spending too much. We're not going to fund this. We got to cut back. CEO says, okay, CFO comes up with a plan. Okay. We can cut by 30, 40%. And then they basically spread it across the departments. And now in isolation, marketing says, well, we got 40 percent less. So what are we going to do?

So then in isolation, marketing starts just sort of like, well, let's not do that campaign. And let's, let's cut this much back from ad spend and let's cut this much back. But what we just did was we kept the same width of growth that we were trying to achieve all the same breadth of activities, and we just cut them down.

In spend, if you will, or people instead, what we have to do is back at strategy. We say, given the current constraints, what is our best way to grow the revenue? What is our best motion? What is our best customer segment? What are our best product lines? And you got to just take this, the fewer dollars and get them more focused.

And actually, when you do that, you can then grow faster than you were before. Because in a, in a tough market, if you can focus your resources. There are buyers. People are buying. It's not like no one's buying anything. You just have to get, do a better job of being focused. And so if you can focus your resources, you, you can still perform better even though you had to do a cut.

John Common: Especially if most of your peers are not thinking through the lens of go to market, through the lens of cross functional, what at Intelligent Man we call integrated growth plays. If, if you're, if most of your competitors are still doing the blunt force trauma, equal cut, don't change your growth playbook at all.

That's the opportunity that you just talked about. I think you can say, wait a minute, we're going to be smart enough to go back into that go to market space and exit with a, uh, optimized growth playbook or two that puts, that focuses our resources and bets in high Uh, impact areas. That's the trick, I think.

Bryan Brown: Oh, so, so critical. And I mean, really go to market can be your differentiator. Like it's hard to differentiate products today because it's easy. It's easier than ever to build quickly and emulate quickly. Um, so what, what's hard to copy is go to market. You can't see it. It's inside it. It's the nucleus of a company.

It's very hard to copy someone's go to market. Um, and so I, I just think go to market literally is what separates the winners from the losers. It's it's, you got to have great product. That's just table stakes, but, um, it's go to market that's going to separate. 

John Common: Anything else about kind of the state of B2B that we just kind of wrap up this last section here.

Um, That comes off, comes to mind from what you've learned with your benchmark research. 

Bryan Brown: Uh, I mean, two quick things, um, despite all the cuts, cuts and pullbacks companies have made, they have not, they have been accelerating in revenue operations. So people are hiring for RevOps. They're trying to unite their teams, unify data and systems and processes.

They're trying to get a handle on the business. They're trying to get, you know, what we call, uh, a go to market scorecard in place where they can actually stop measuring the department with department level KPIs, but measure the business performance that includes all the work that departments are doing.

Um, and so that's been fun to see. I think RevOps people want clarity. They want, they want predictability. They want to forecast better. They want to see what's happening. Um, so that's been a big one. Um, the other one I would say is, um, Just incentivizing teams. So sales comp and the way we comped for deals and all the people that got paid out on a deal.

Was just really out of whack for, um, it was, we were focused on comping for land grab strategy. And in a land grab strategy, which is, you know, the early two thousands was that's what you did. You got out first to market, you planted your flag and as many customers as you could, and then over the next 10 years, you sorted out who were good customers and who were bad customers and how do we get efficient and, and you find your way.

Well, that's no one's funding that right now. And so, um, so we can't, we have to rethink comp, we have to rethink, you know, um, you know, how do we incent teams to sell the right business and not just hit the number. And so I think there's a lot of change happening in, on that side. 

John Common: This is great advice for folks.

Thank you for giving us this sort of the state of B2B go to market. Um, we're going to, we're going to start pivoting to, to sort of the last part of this episode. Although I seriously, I, you and I could talk a lot longer than anybody would probably want to listen about this stuff. I'm having a blast. Um, let's kind of, let's do some, uh, lightning round.

Um, And then, look, I'm going to ask you an unfairly simple question, and don't, try not to overthink it, you don't have to give a perfect answer, just like the, out of your expertise, what comes to mind, okay, so we're in low bar here. Um, what are one or two mistakes that companies tend to make when they develop and execute their go to market strategies?

Um, 

Bryan Brown: surprisingly, despite everything we talked about, they do it in isolation, so marketing will go off and build an ICP. And then sales will go off and pick their target accounts. And guess what? The two things are not in harmony. Um, so I think, you know, that's isolation, isolated activities. Um, you know, lack of, lack of clarity.

Like we just have to spend more time together, you know, and just let, let the cross functional leadership teams work together on these concepts, I think is, is a big piece. 

John Common: If you had a best friend who was a CMO, a best friend, who's a CRO and a best friend, who's a CEO, and you were going to give one piece of advice to that CMO, CRO, CEO around what we've been talking today.

I don't know. What would it be the same piece of advice or would they be different based on those three, uh, those three folks? 

Bryan Brown: Um, I mean, the, the advice in common, I'm glad you said a low bar because these are, these are good questions. I want to think about it. But, um, my, my quick answer is, um, You guys need like all these teams have exact their exact, you know, weekly or biweekly exact meeting, but that exact meeting has a lot of breadth that needs to cover a lot of ground.

It needs to cover. So I would say you guys need to have a go to market leadership rhythm, and that would be a weekly meeting with a go to market dashboard as the sort of focal point of aligning these groups to facilitate conversations, to The team aligned. And so we, we use this phrase cat, which is clarity, alignment, and team.

Every single time I'm helping a company and we talk to individuals, what we hear is lack of clarity and misalignment with each other, because I talked to the CRO. Then I go talk to CMO and we're not like trying to pit them against each other. We just, in trying to help them, we suddenly hear. They're, they're just all misaligned and misalignment happens in weeks.

Like you step away for one week and you get misaligned. So you need a weekly meeting, call it cat, call it go to market execution, whatever you want to call it. But it's leadership re reminding themselves on the best way to grow together to hit the plan. And if you just did that, man, that, that clarity alignment would solve so much downstream chaos that all the, the poor people who are trying to do the good work they're doing.

Yeah. Are like, what's the, no one can give us a clear answer. And so we need, we need that. 

John Common: You've worked in technology and services. And now as an analyst, you've got such a deep and varied perspective on B2B, this thing we all do. Anybody who's listening to this as a nerd, right? And I mean, it's not like my mom's listening to this, right?

So like, what do you love most? What, what is the thing that keeps you coming back to this B2B growth stuff? What do you love most about what you do? 

Bryan Brown: Oh. Gosh, I love to create and bring ideas to market and see people just love and get, and get value. It just fills me up, you know, and I know you and I share a musical background.

We both love to play music and write songs and, um, And it's the same feeling when you, when you, when you create something, uh, you help a business get out there. Like, it's what you got, why you guys do what you do, John. Like you help hundreds of companies just nail their execution and build amazing go to market plays and plans.

And like you do it because, You're helping someone get their idea out there in the world. And it's fulfilling to see, get something, get traction. Um, and so that's what keeps me going. Whether it's a product, a framework, an idea, a new, a new word. Like I just get excited about that creation process and, and putting stuff out there.

John Common: Yeah. Oh, that's great. Uh, what advice would you give your younger self? Think about that kid who went to Ireland at 19. What, what advice would you give that, that, that, that person? 

Bryan Brown: Oh my gosh. Hang in there. It'll be okay. Um, Oh gosh. I could take that so many directions, like have empathy for yourself. No. Um, um, I mean, I, I, I would say this remove, You know, in general, from 19 years old to, you know, what I am now, which is much older.

But, um, what I, what I would say is, If you can remove your emotion from the conversation, um, you can get to strategy, you can get to clarity, but it's hard to do that because we're so passionate about the things we believe in and what we want to achieve and our, our opinions and exec teams just get passionate.

We debate and bash and, you know, and we get so mad when someone doesn't see it our way. And we, we, you know, cause we're so excited about what we believe is possible. So the only way to like. Counter that is to have a framework because frameworks, like I've been in heated rooms and you put up the three P's, the five valleys, the eight pillar framework, it immediately takes the emotion out and everyone's brain just locks into the best strategic thinking they have possible.

And then your, your mind and your gut do what they're supposed to do, which take all your experiences and, and allow you to think clearly and make good decisions. But we need frameworks so that they give us an objective way. To, to, to not have all the cognitive biases that are rattling around in our brains and all the stuff that's, you know, the histories we have of the hard stuff we've done building companies.

So I love frameworks because they, they will instantly pull your back to your best thinking. 

John Common: Oh, that's good. That's good. All right. Last one. And these are maybe the hardest questions, I guess, but, uh,

you and I both. And I would wager most of the people listening right now are busy, ambitious, going up against significant stretch goals. And they're probably stressed. What have you learned about balancing work and family? And also yourself, like taking care of yourself as a, as a business athlete. 

Bryan Brown: Man, like 10 years ago, I was just having a super stressful time at work.

Just felt like the weight of the world was on me. And, um, man, this, everything's going to come crashing down if I don't figure out how to sort all these things out. And it just felt so heavy. I pulled up to my front, my front yard, pulled into the driveway and the sprinklers are on. And I see the sprinkler is gushing, meaning it's broken.

And I'm just like, this is it. That's the last thing. I'm so sick of it. Everything's just, you know, you're just feeling so heavy, so much stress, pressure coming from every direction. And I got out and I, you know, went and got a shovel and I dug into the thing, turned off the water and dug in there, um, saw what was broken, went to Home Depot.

came back, put the thing on, glued it together, you know, put the earth back and turned on the sprinklers and it worked. And I started walking in the house and all of a sudden I realized I didn't have a single ounce of pressure or stress on me, period. I felt whole and well. And, and the lesson was, man, put your hands in the dirt and do something and, and you'll find that all everything else can just get out of there and you can get headspace and clarity.

So it was, it was life changing, man. I think about that many times. 

John Common: Oh, I love that. That is such a great story. Yeah. Get lost. Get lost in a. And a, and a, and a real tangible thing, because you're right, both you and I, and I bet you, everybody who listens to this show, we deal with concepts and software and long projects that take, they can take quarters and years sometimes to manifest.

And isn't it fun to have a thing that you can touch and feel and you're like, It was broken an hour ago. I applied my best efforts and it's 60 minutes later and it is done. I did a thing today. That is great. That is great. 

Bryan Brown: Yeah, it was, it was, it was transformative and it's just, it's the power of your mind and you realize, oh my gosh, I could change the way I feel if I could, if I could calm my mind, which is really what happened when I was digging in the dirt.

Right. It just sort of released. all that stress and the, yeah, it's amazing. Anyways, thanks for letting me share that. 

John Common: No, I love it. That's great. Well, what a good place to end. And I, I want to end saying thank you. I, uh, you have let me just pick your brain and you've been so generous with your expertise and your experience and you, uh, thank you for coming on Growth Driver and just, and thank also, honestly, thank you for, The career that you've put together, man.

You, you are helping, you've helped me, you're helping all of the clients you've, you've, you've interfaced with. And so just a big, big, thank you to you, Bryan. 

Bryan Brown: And thank you, John. You've been an amazing partner over the years and, um, been part of the journey of many of the things I've done. We've been, we've been in similar paths, doing connected things.

And, you know, you guys at intelligent demand, you're just, uh, we love what you do, you're an amazing partner of ours, and just so appreciative that you're out there helping companies solve go to market with us, and we don't expect we can do it alone. And we, and we. We love what you guys are doing and thankful back for the, for the friendship and partnership.

John Common: All right. All right, everybody talk to you soon. And thanks again, Bryan. 

Bryan Brown: Thank you. 

John Common: All right. Uh, I knew that that session with Bryan Brown and I was going to be, uh, fun. Had a pretty high sense that it would hopefully uncover something that would be valuable for you, uh, who are, um, the folks who watch and listen to Growth Driver, but man, we could have gone.

A whole nother hour. And I don't know, maybe Bryan and I just need to do a part two of that, but that was such a great time talking to him. He's so smart. He's so smart. And, uh, and I hope, I hope you enjoy, uh, what, what, what you heard today on Growth Driver. And look, if you do, if you like what we're doing here, I want you to, um, I want you to follow us.

I want you to, uh, when you see us out there, I want you to give us a like. Please comment. Doesn't have to even be positive. Just come on, jump in with us. And, and definitely if you hear something that resonates with you and might be applicable to your team, I want you to share it with your team. I think this episode absolutely qualifies for that.

So, um, subscribe, uh, follow us on, and also remember we've got a YouTube channel, so if you, uh, if you're just listening to us, uh, uh, and you want to see what, what it's like when, uh, people like Bryan Brown and I geek out, uh, we're on YouTube as well. Uh, last thing is, uh, we, uh, love, uh, hearing questions or ideas for guests or challenges that you want us to unpack here on Growth Driver.

If you have any of that, find, uh, me or Nina, um, from the Growth Driver team on LinkedIn, uh, or just even through the Growth Driver, uh, website. And I just want to end by saying a Growth Driver is brought to you by the talented and kind people at Intelligent Demand. So look, if you work at a B2B company that needs to update the way you go to market, And to rethink the growth plays you're using to drive growth.

And by the way, that's like every company right now, then I want you to go to intelligent demand and request a growth playbook consult. They will help you align your go to market teams around efficient growth and provide the expertise you need to bring it all to life. So, uh, I guess the only other thing I want to say is we will see you soon here on Growth Driver.

And thanks again for giving us your time. Bye everybody.