Title: Go To Market Strategy — LearnCoachAssist

Q: What is go-to-market strategy?
A: Go-to-market strategy is the coordinated plan for how a product reaches customers, wins adoption, and generates revenue.

Q: Why does GTM strategy matter?
A: A strong GTM strategy aligns product, marketing, sales, and customer success around how growth will actually happen.

Q: What is a target segment?
A: A target segment is the specific customer group the team is prioritizing first based on need, value, and fit.

Q: What is positioning in GTM?
A: Positioning is how the product is framed in the market relative to alternatives and customer needs.

Q: What is a value proposition?
A: A value proposition is the clear statement of why a customer should choose this product and what benefit it delivers.

Q: Why should GTM strategy start with customer need?
A: Channels and messaging work best when they are built around a real problem customers already care about.

Q: What is a distribution channel?
A: A distribution channel is the route through which the product reaches customers, such as self-serve web, sales-led outreach, or partnerships.

Q: What is product-market fit in GTM terms?
A: Product-market fit means the product solves a meaningful problem well enough that demand and retention become easier to sustain.

Q: Why is segmentation useful in GTM?
A: Different segments often need different messaging, pricing, sales motion, and success approach.

Q: What is a sales-led GTM motion?
A: A sales-led motion relies on direct human selling to acquire and expand customers, often for higher-value deals.

Q: What is a product-led GTM motion?
A: A product-led motion uses the product experience itself to drive adoption, conversion, and expansion.

Q: What is a partner-led GTM motion?
A: A partner-led motion depends on resellers, agencies, or ecosystem partners to reach customers.

Q: Why should GTM teams define a primary motion?
A: Too many competing motions dilute focus and make execution harder to coordinate.

Q: What is message-market fit?
A: Message-market fit is when the language used in marketing clearly resonates with how the target customer thinks about the problem.

Q: What is an ICP?
A: ICP stands for Ideal Customer Profile, the type of customer most likely to get value and become a strong fit for the business.

Q: Why is onboarding part of GTM?
A: Acquisition is weakened if customers fail to activate quickly after signing up or buying.

Q: What is activation?
A: Activation is the moment a new user reaches a meaningful first value milestone in the product.

Q: Why should GTM metrics cover the full funnel?
A: Strong top-of-funnel numbers mean little if conversion, retention, or expansion are weak downstream.

Q: What is CAC?
A: CAC stands for Customer Acquisition Cost, the total cost of acquiring a new customer.

Q: What is LTV?
A: LTV stands for Lifetime Value, the revenue or margin expected from a customer over the relationship.

Q: Why does channel efficiency matter?
A: Some channels create demand, but not efficiently enough to support sustainable growth.

Q: What is a launch plan?
A: A launch plan is the coordinated timeline, messaging, ownership, and readiness work for bringing an offer to market.

Q: Why should GTM assumptions be tested early?
A: Testing reduces the risk of scaling messaging, pricing, or channels that do not actually work.

Q: What is win-loss analysis in GTM?
A: Win-loss analysis studies why deals were won or lost so teams can sharpen positioning and execution.

Q: What is a strong GTM principle?
A: Choose the clearest target, sharpest message, and simplest motion that can reliably create adoption.

Q: What is GTM alignment?
A: GTM alignment means product, marketing, sales, and success share the same customer story and commercial priorities.

Q: Why should sales feedback influence GTM strategy?
A: Sales conversations reveal objections, urgency, and buying language that improve the market approach.

Q: What is a durable GTM habit?
A: Keep learning from the market fast enough that messaging and motion improve before waste compounds.

Q: What is buyer enablement?
A: Buyer enablement is giving prospects the information and confidence needed to make a decision internally.

Q: Why should GTM strategy be revisited after launch?
A: Initial assumptions often need refinement once real customer behavior and conversion data appear.

Q: What is a category entry point?
A: A category entry point is the situation or trigger that makes a buyer start looking for a solution.

Q: What is a strong GTM question?
A: Where are the highest-fit customers already feeling the problem strongly enough to act now?

Q: What is TAM, SAM, SOM?
A: TAM: total addressable market.
SAM: serviceable available market (within reach).
SOM: serviceable obtainable market (realistic 3-yr capture).

Q: Top-down vs bottom-up TAM?
A: Top-down: industry × % share. Fast but optimistic.
Bottom-up: customers × ARPU. Slower but defensible. Investors trust bottom-up.

Q: Three GTM motions side-by-side?
A: PLG: low ACV, high volume, freemium.
SLG: high ACV, low volume, AEs/SDRs.
Channel: partner-driven; trades margin for reach.

Q: Why PLG works for SMB but stalls upmarket?
A: Enterprise needs procurement, SOC2, custom contracts, multi-stakeholder demos. Self-serve can't carry that.

Q: PLG → SLG transition trigger?
A: When ARR/customer crosses ~$10-20k or deal cycles need security/legal reviews. Sales-assist layer is added without removing PLG.

Q: What is a 'sales-assisted PLG'?
A: Hybrid motion: product-driven trial, but a rep helps champion sell internally. Used by Notion, Linear, Loom.

Q: Why bottoms-up adoption is hard to stop?
A: Once enough users love a tool, security/IT discovers it and is asked to formalize. Avoids gatekeepers entirely.

Q: What is the 'champion' in B2B sales?
A: Internal advocate who pushes the deal through stakeholders. Must be coached, armed with business case, protected from political risk.

Q: What is MEDDIC/MEDDPICC?
A: Qualification framework: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion (+ Paper Process, Competition).

Q: What is BANT — and why has it aged?
A: Budget, Authority, Need, Timing. Useful for legacy sales; misses modern complex buying (multi-stakeholder, async, self-serve discovery).

Q: What is SPICED?
A: Modern qualification framework: Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical event, Decision. Forces a 'why now'.

Q: Land and expand — how does it work?
A: Win small with a single team or use case; expand via additional seats, products, or business units. Common in PLG and modern SaaS.

Q: What is net revenue retention (NRR)?
A: (Starting ARR + expansion − churn − downgrades) ÷ starting ARR. >100% means existing customers grow faster than they churn. World-class: 130%+.

Q: Why NRR is the SaaS quality metric?
A: With NRR > 100%, growth compounds without new logos. Investors value 1pt of NRR at much more than 1pt of new ARR.

Q: What is CAC payback?
A: Months to recover CAC from gross margin contribution. Good SaaS: 12-18 months. Great PLG: under 12.

Q: Magic number — what is it?
A: (New ARR added × 4) ÷ S&M spend in prior quarter. >1 = invest more; 0.5-1 = scale carefully; <0.5 = rethink GTM.

Q: Bowtie funnel?
A: Symmetrical funnel that adds the post-sale journey: lead → opp → customer → onboarded → expanded → advocate. Treats retention as a stage, not an afterthought.

Q: Why pricing is part of GTM, not finance?
A: Pricing shapes adoption velocity, sales cycle length, who buys, and where you compete. It's strategy, not bookkeeping.

Q: Pricing axes — what to choose?
A: Per-seat, per-usage, per-outcome, flat, tiered, freemium. Tie the metric to value the customer experiences (e.g., Twilio per message).

Q: Why per-seat pricing has plateaued in AI tools?
A: AI delivers value per task, not per user. Cursor, Lovable, and similar are moving to credits, usage, or outcomes.

Q: Reverse-trial — what is it?
A: Start every user on full features for X days, then downgrade to free unless they pay. Higher activation than freemium.

Q: Freemium vs free trial?
A: Freemium: forever-free tier with limits.
Free trial: full features for limited time. Freemium scales better for sticky tools; trial is better for high-ACV.

Q: What is product-led signal?
A: Behavioral indicator that a user is ready to buy: usage frequency, team invites, feature depth, file size. Used to prioritize outreach.

Q: PQL — Product-Qualified Lead?
A: A user whose product behavior shows buying intent (e.g., 3 invited teammates, 10 projects, hit a usage cap). Replaces MQL in PLG.

Q: Why MQLs are losing favor?
A: 'Marketing-qualified' often means form fill. Disconnected from buying intent. PQLs (behavior) and ICP-fit account scores (firmographic) are sharper.

Q: What is ABM (Account-Based Marketing)?
A: Focuses marketing + sales on a named list of high-fit accounts. Personalized outbound, ads, content. Best for high-ACV with concentrated TAM.

Q: ABM tiers (1, 2, 3)?
A: 1:1: deep personalization, 1-50 accounts.
1:few: cluster ~100s by industry/role.
1:many: programmatic, 1000s. Adjust depth to deal value.

Q: What is a beachhead market?
A: A small, defensible niche to dominate first before expanding. Tesla's beachhead was high-end Roadster buyers; Facebook's was Harvard students.

Q: Crossing the Chasm — Moore's framework?
A: Early adopters and pragmatists buy differently. Most failures happen between innovators and the mainstream. Bridge with beachhead + whole product solution.

Q: Whole product concept?
A: The minimum complete offering that lets pragmatist customers succeed without piecing it together. Includes integrations, services, partners.

Q: What is GTM-fit?
A: The motion (PLG, sales-led, channel) matches the buyer, product complexity, and price point. Wrong fit = burned capital.

Q: Sales velocity formula?
A: (# Opportunities × ACV × Win Rate) ÷ Sales Cycle Length. Pull one of these levers; others move proportionally.

Q: Sales cycle length drivers?
A: ACV (higher = longer), buyer complexity (more stakeholders = longer), procurement maturity, urgency, contract terms.

Q: Pipeline coverage ratio?
A: Pipeline ÷ Quota. Healthy SaaS: 3-4× for typical close rates. <2× = at risk; >5× often signals stale pipeline.

Q: Pipeline hygiene — what to audit?
A: Close date in the past, no activity 14+ days, missing next step, missing economic buyer, missing exit criteria. Cleanup weekly.

Q: What is 'demo dependency'?
A: When deals stall without another live demo. Sign of weak self-serve enablement. Add async demo videos, ROI calculators, interactive walkthroughs.

Q: What is the 'pricing page test'?
A: If your pricing page can't close a sale on its own (with no human help), you have a sales-led motion whether you wanted one or not.

Q: Why publish pricing transparently?
A: Removes friction, signals confidence, builds trust. 'Contact sales' filters out PLG users. Hybrid: show 'starting at' or first 1-2 tiers.

Q: What is 'contract length' as a GTM lever?
A: Multi-year contracts trade discount for predictability + lower churn. Common: 10-15% discount for 2-yr; 20%+ for 3-yr.

Q: Annual vs monthly billing — GTM effect?
A: Annual: lower churn, better cash flow, 15-20% discount typical. Monthly: lower commitment, easier conversion, used for SMB.

Q: What is logo retention vs revenue retention?
A: Logo: % of customers staying.
Revenue: % of starting revenue retained (incl. expansion). Logo can be lower if you lose small accounts but expand big ones.

Q: Why GTM teams should map the buying committee?
A: B2B deals avg 6-10 stakeholders (Gartner). Mapping economic buyer, champion, end users, IT, procurement, legal de-risks deals.

Q: What is a 'mutual action plan' (MAP)?
A: Shared document with prospect tracking milestones, owners, and dates from POC to signed contract. Surfaces stalls early.

Q: Outbound vs inbound — quick contrast?
A: Outbound: SDR/AE proactively reaches out. High control, high cost.
Inbound: marketing creates pull; lead comes to you. Lower cost, slower compounding.

Q: SDR vs BDR vs AE?
A: SDR: inbound reps qualifying MQLs.
BDR: outbound prospectors generating new opps.
AE: closes the deal. Some orgs collapse SDR/BDR.

Q: Sales process stages (typical SaaS)?
A: 1) Lead → 2) MQL/PQL → 3) Discovery → 4) Demo → 5) Proposal → 6) Negotiation → 7) Closed Won/Lost. Each stage has exit criteria.

Q: Discovery call — primary goal?
A: Understand pain, urgency, decision criteria, decision process, success metric. Not to demo. Earn the right to demo.

Q: Demo best practice — order?
A: Lead with their top pain. Show one feature solving it. Confirm fit. Reveal more depth only if asked. Don't 'spray' features.

Q: 'Solutions selling' vs 'challenger sale'?
A: Solutions selling: understand pain, prescribe fit.
Challenger: teach the buyer a new insight that reframes the problem. Best reps mix both.

Q: What is 'closed lost — analysis playbook'?
A: Categorize loss reason: no decision, competitor, price, timing, fit. Patterns drive product, marketing, or sales process changes.

Q: Time to first value (TTFV)?
A: Time from signup to first meaningful 'aha'. Lower = higher activation, higher retention. Track religiously in PLG.

Q: Free trial → paid conversion benchmarks?
A: B2B SaaS: 15-25% trial-to-paid is solid. 25-50% is excellent (often PLG leaders). <10% = activation or fit problem.

Q: What is a 'wedge' product?
A: A focused tool that solves one acute problem and lands the customer. Used to bootstrap multi-product expansion later. (Notion's notes → docs → wiki → CRM.)

Q: Multi-product strategy — when does it work?
A: After a strong wedge with high NRR. Adjacent product attaches to existing customer base; sales/marketing leverage compounds.

Q: Top-down vs bottom-up — strategic choice?
A: Top-down: sell to execs first, cascade down (Salesforce).
Bottom-up: users adopt first, IT formalizes later (Slack, Figma). Bottom-up has lower CAC but slower enterprise penetration.

Q: What is a category creator?
A: A company that defines a new market category vs. fitting into an existing one (e.g., Drift = conversational marketing). Higher risk, higher reward.

Q: What is brand positioning vs product positioning?
A: Brand: emotional / identity. Why us, not them.
Product: functional. What does it do, for whom, vs what alternatives.

Q: Why messaging hierarchies matter?
A: One headline, three sub-points, supporting proof. Hierarchies let teams communicate consistently across web, sales, content.

Q: Jobs-to-be-Done in GTM?
A: Frame product around the 'job' customer is hiring it to do, not the demographic. 'Quickbooks is hired to make tax time less terrifying' — drives messaging.

Q: What is the buying triangle (Gartner)?
A: Old: linear funnel. New: messy, looping web of stakeholders consuming async content. Modern GTM creates enable-themselves content for the whole committee.

Q: Why B2B buyers are 70% through decision before talking to sales?
A: Most research happens via web, peers, communities, content. Content GTM is no longer 'top of funnel' — it's the buying process.

Q: What is the 'category leader premium'?
A: The market leader earns 50%+ of category market cap. Investors and buyers default to #1. Aim for category-leading position, not 'me-too'.

Q: What is 'GTM efficiency'?
A: ARR added ÷ S&M spend. Top decile SaaS: $1.5+ per $1 spent. Median: $1. Below $0.5 = unsustainable.

Q: What is 'Rule of 40'?
A: Growth rate % + EBITDA margin % ≥ 40 for a healthy SaaS. Below means investors discount; above means premium. Trade growth for profit or vice versa.

Q: Burn multiple — definition?
A: Net burn ÷ net new ARR. <1 = great. 1-2 = good. 2-3 = OK. >3 = inefficient. Used to benchmark GTM efficiency.

Q: What is win rate by stage?
A: % of opps that advance from stage X to stage X+1. Drops at a particular stage point to a process or value gap.

Q: Win rate vs close rate?
A: Win rate: closed-won ÷ (closed-won + closed-lost).
Close rate: closed-won ÷ all opps (incl. no-decision). No-decision is often the real enemy.

Q: 'No decision' — what causes it?
A: Lack of urgency, weak champion, fuzzy ROI, no critical event. Add a 'why now?' to discovery; create urgency through events or compelling proof.

Q: What is a 'critical event'?
A: A time-bound trigger (regulation deadline, contract renewal, leadership change) forcing a decision by date X. Without it, deals slip indefinitely.

Q: What is sales playbook?
A: Documented set of plays for typical scenarios: persona, message, objections, demo flow, ROI calculator, follow-up cadence. Source of consistency.

Q: What is sales enablement?
A: Function that arms reps with content, training, tools. Aligns with marketing on messaging; with product on roadmap; with success on retention.

Q: Why do many launches fail commercially?
A: Built before validating demand; messaging unclear; no champion in target accounts; pricing off. Pre-launch GTM validation is undervalued.

Q: Pre-launch GTM checklist?
A: 1) ICP defined.
2) Positioning sharp.
3) 10 design partners signed.
4) Pricing tested with 5 buyers.
5) Sales/CS trained.
6) Content stack ready.
7) Analytics wired.

Q: What is product marketing's role?
A: Owns positioning, messaging, launches, competitive intel, sales enablement. Connects product and market.

Q: Product marketing vs growth marketing?
A: PMM: positioning, story, launch.
Growth: channels, experiments, conversion. Both report up to marketing or split between marketing and product.

Q: Demand gen vs growth?
A: Demand gen: creates pipeline via content, ads, events.
Growth: optimizes conversion + activation + retention. Distinction is fuzzier in PLG.

Q: What is content velocity vs content depth?
A: Velocity: lots of small posts, social. SEO compound.
Depth: pillar pages, definitive guides. Authority compounds. Mix both.

Q: SEO as GTM channel — when?
A: Defensible, slow-compound. Works when buyers actively search; less when category is new (where you'd rely on category creation content).

Q: What is dark social?
A: Sharing via DMs, Slack, group chats — invisible to attribution. Often the largest source of word-of-mouth and demand.

Q: Why attribution is increasingly broken?
A: Cookie deprecation, dark social, multi-touch journeys. Self-reported attribution (survey on conversion) is now standard supplement.

Q: Last-touch vs multi-touch attribution?
A: Last-touch: credits final touch. Easy, biased toward bottom-funnel.
Multi-touch: spreads credit across touches. Harder, fairer. Multi-touch + self-report is current best practice.

Q: What is a 'lighthouse customer'?
A: A reference customer whose brand and use case win other deals. Aim to land 2-3 lighthouses per ICP early.

Q: Why customer references compound?
A: Each happy ref shortens future sales cycles. Invest in ref management — case studies, video, peer chats, advisory board.

Q: What is 'community-led growth'?
A: Building a network of users/customers/fans who recommend the product organically. Notion, dbt, HubSpot, Salesforce all use this.

Q: Why GTM teams should run win-back motions?
A: Lost or churned customers convert at higher rates than cold leads. 'What changed?' outreach often re-opens deals.

Q: What is gross dollar retention (GDR)?
A: (Starting ARR − churn − downgrades) ÷ starting ARR. Excludes expansion. Floor metric: GDR shows underlying churn unmasked by expansion.

Q: GDR benchmarks?
A: SMB: 80-90%. Mid-market: 85-95%. Enterprise: 90-98%. Below = product or fit problem; above = sticky offering.

Q: What is logo churn vs revenue churn?
A: Logo churn ignores deal size. Revenue churn weights it. A single big logo lost can crush revenue churn while logo churn looks fine.

Q: What is expansion ARR?
A: Net-new ARR from existing customers (upsell + cross-sell). Aim for ~30-40% of total new ARR in expansion-heavy SaaS.

Q: Renewal strategy — when to start?
A: 90-120 days before renewal. Champion check-ins, usage review, value summary, plan ahead. Last-minute renewals are at-risk.

Q: Customer success vs account management?
A: CSM: adoption, value realization, health.
AM: commercial expansion, renewal. Some orgs combine; high-ACV usually splits.

Q: What is the 'value loop'?
A: Use case → activation → outcome → expansion → reference → new use case. The strongest GTM motion is a flywheel of value loops.

Q: QBR — what is it?
A: Quarterly Business Review with customer. Recap outcomes, review goals, plan next quarter, surface expansion opportunities, identify risks.

Q: Customer health score — what goes in?
A: Usage, depth (features used), breadth (teams adopting), NPS, support tickets, executive engagement, renewal indicator. Roll up to red/yellow/green.

Q: Renewals red flag — top 3?
A: 1) Champion left.
2) Usage dropped >30%.
3) Exec sponsorship missing. Each triples churn risk.

Q: What is a 'value review'?
A: Quarterly meeting to show customer the realized value (time saved, revenue, cost avoided). Pre-empts pricing/value debates at renewal.

Q: Why discounting can hurt long-term?
A: Anchors price expectation; trains sales to discount; signals weak value. Better: protect price; trade for term, references, expanded scope.

Q: Pricing power — how to build?
A: Strong category position, must-have product, switching cost, ROI quantified, brand. Without these, you compete on price.

Q: Switching cost — components?
A: Data migration, retraining, integrations, contracts, organizational habit. Higher switching cost = pricing power.

Q: What is 'category design' (Play Bigger)?
A: Define a new market problem and own the language around it. Forces buyers to rethink existing solutions in your framing.

Q: Why category creation is risky?
A: Education cost is huge; needs deep funding; payoff comes slowly. Most category-creation attempts fail to gain traction.

Q: What is 'fast follower' GTM?
A: Enter a defined category with a sharper product or better motion. Less education; more competition on execution.

Q: Competitive positioning — three axes?
A: Better, different, cheaper. Pick at most two. Trying to be all three often signals lack of focus.

Q: What is a 'kill sheet'?
A: Internal sales document explaining why you beat each major competitor on specific dimensions. Living document; updated by win-loss analysis.

Q: What is 'battlecard' vs 'kill sheet'?
A: Battlecards summarize competitor pros/cons; kill sheets script the rep's pitch against them. Both live in enablement.

Q: Why do GTM teams overweight features?
A: Features feel concrete; outcomes feel fuzzy. Buyers buy outcomes. Reframe features as 'so that…' outcomes.

Q: What is the 'so what' test?
A: After each feature claim, ask 'so what?' until you reach a real business outcome. The chain becomes your value prop.

Q: What is buyer-personas vs ICP?
A: ICP: company-level fit (size, industry, tech stack).
Persona: role-level buyer/user. Need both. ICP filters accounts; personas tailor messaging.

Q: What is 'firmographic' data?
A: Company-level attributes: industry, size, revenue, tech stack, region. Used to score ICP fit. Sources: Clay, ZoomInfo, Apollo, public data.

Q: Intent data — what is it?
A: Signals a company is researching your category: site visits, content downloads, third-party intent (Bombora, G2). Triggers outbound.

Q: What is 'allbound' GTM?
A: Inbound + outbound coordinated by account, not channel. Uses intent + ICP fit + behavioral signals to time outreach.

Q: Why ads alone rarely drive B2B?
A: B2B buyers don't decide from one ad. Ads enable assist + retargeting; content and reputation move the deal. ROI per dollar tends to lag.

Q: What is a 'category-defining keyword'?
A: A search term that captures category intent ('product analytics', 'data warehouse'). Worth competing for — high intent, high LTV.

Q: Direct response vs brand marketing?
A: Direct response: trackable click → conversion (PPC, retargeting).
Brand: long-term recall (events, content, sponsorships). Both needed; balance varies.

Q: What is 'partner-led' GTM?
A: Resellers, system integrators, technology partners, marketplaces drive the deal. Trades margin (20-40%) for reach + credibility.

Q: Marketplaces as GTM channel?
A: AWS, GCP, Azure, Salesforce marketplaces let buyers purchase against existing cloud commit. Bypasses procurement. Growing fast for B2B SaaS.

Q: Why marketplace listings can 10x SMB conversion?
A: Customer already has budget allocated; co-sell with the cloud provider; bypasses procurement & legal friction.

Q: What is 'co-sell'?
A: Joint motion with a partner (e.g., AWS) where the partner brings the buyer relationship and you bring the product. Revenue shared.

Q: Why community is a moat?
A: Hard to copy. Compounds attention, references, talent, content, advocacy. dbt, HubSpot, Notion, Figma all use this.

Q: Lead magnets — what works in 2024?
A: Interactive tools, calculators, benchmarks, free SaaS tier — high signal. Generic 'ebooks' are dead weight; cost-per-lead high, intent low.

Q: Why events are still a top channel for high-ACV?
A: Concentrated buyer presence, peer signal, multi-stakeholder access. ROI from 1 well-targeted dinner can beat months of digital.

Q: What is a 'roadshow'?
A: Mini-events in key cities targeting your ICP. Trade scale for depth. Sponsorship vs your own event = ownership of audience data.

Q: Webinar performance benchmarks?
A: Registration → attendance: 30-50%. Attendee → SQL: 5-15%. SQL → opportunity: 20-30%. Most leaks at attendance — drip pre-event.

Q: What is 'PR as GTM'?
A: Earned media: Bloomberg, TechCrunch, NYT. Doesn't drive direct conversion but enables enterprise credibility and recruiting.

Q: G2/Capterra/TrustRadius reviews — why matter?
A: Buyers research peer reviews before sales calls. Sites rank by review volume + sentiment. Active review-collection is a GTM lever.

Q: What is 'review velocity'?
A: Pace of new reviews. Sites favor recent reviews. Aim for ongoing flow, not bursts. Tag automated requests post-customer success milestone.

Q: What is 'land' contract size — strategy?
A: Land small (per-team, per-use-case) to reduce friction; aim to expand. SMB-style PLG land vs enterprise-style 'big bang'.

Q: What is 'POC' (Proof of Concept)?
A: Time-bound, scoped test with success criteria. Used in mid-market+ to de-risk purchase. Charge for POCs to filter and signal value.

Q: Why charge for POCs?
A: Unpaid POCs go on forever and signal low intent. Paid POCs (credit toward purchase) filter for serious buyers.

Q: What is 'pilot' vs 'POC'?
A: POC: technical fit test.
Pilot: limited production deployment with one team. Pilot is a stage closer to a real customer.

Q: Why churn forecasting?
A: Knowing which accounts will churn lets CS intervene early. Health scores + usage trends predict 60-90% of churn 60+ days out.

Q: What is the 'value gap'?
A: Difference between perceived value and actual value delivered. Closing this is CS's #1 job at renewal.

Q: What is the 'expansion playbook'?
A: 1) Identify high-usage accounts.
2) Surface unused features.
3) Trigger upsell on usage cap.
4) Cross-sell adjacent product.
5) Multi-year deal for term lock.

Q: Why field marketing for high-ACV?
A: Local presence (dinners, exec roundtables, executive briefing center visits) builds trust with senior buyers — ROI per dollar far above digital for $500k+ deals.

Q: What is 'GTM math' to know cold?
A: CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC, CAC payback, NRR, GDR, Magic Number, Rule of 40, Burn Multiple, Win rate, Cycle length, ACV, Pipeline coverage.

Q: What is 'velocity math'?
A: If you double pipeline at same win rate + cycle, ARR doubles. Pull the right lever — pipeline, conversion, ACV, cycle — for your stage.

Q: Why GTM choices compound?
A: Pricing affects positioning affects channel affects sales motion affects CS model. Each choice rules out alternatives — choose strategically.

Q: GTM strategy review — when?
A: Quarterly minimum. Catch drift before it becomes structural: ICP shift, win-rate drop, NRR slip, motion misalignment.

Q: What is GTM debt?
A: Decisions made for short-term growth that constrain future options (e.g., aggressive discounting, wrong ICP). Pay it down deliberately.

Q: Why founder-led sales matters early?
A: Founders carry vision, can pivot ICP on the fly, learn fastest from customer signals. Most GTM hires fail when founder hasn't sold first.

Q: When to hire first AE vs first SDR?
A: AE first — they can prospect and close. SDR added when founder/AE can't keep up. SDR-first risks generating poor-fit leads no one can close.

Q: Sales rep ramp time — typical?
A: 3-9 months to full quota. Mid-market: ~6 months. Enterprise: 9-12. Track ramp velocity as a GTM health metric.

Q: What is a 'good rep' signal in months 1-3?
A: Pipeline coverage, qualified opps generated, demo-to-opp conversion, peer-rated quality of discovery. Closed-won lags too much.

Q: What is GTM north star?
A: One outcome metric the team rallies around: ARR, NRR, accounts adopted, hours saved. Aligns daily work to shared outcome.

Q: What is 'lossless growth' (Jason Lemkin)?
A: Growth that doesn't increase churn or burn proportionally. The compound advantage of efficient GTM.

Q: What is 'good growth' definition?
A: Repeatable, predictable, scalable. Repeatable = pattern visible. Predictable = forecast accurate. Scalable = unit economics improve, not degrade, at scale.

Q: What is the 'GTM flywheel'?
A: Land → activate → expand → advocate → land more. Each turn lowers CAC and lifts NRR. Strongest competitive moat.

Q: What is sales engineering's role?
A: Technical counterpart to AE. Owns demos, POCs, technical objection handling, integration scoping. Coverage ratio: 1 SE per 3-5 AEs typical.

Q: What is the 'iron triangle' of sales hiring?
A: Quota, ramp time, comp. Tight on any two means tradeoffs on the third. Setting all three aggressively burns reps out.

Q: Quota attainment benchmarks?
A: 60-75% rep attainment is healthy. >80% means quota too low; <50% means too high (or wrong hires). Plan for 70% median.

Q: What is 'on-target earnings' (OTE)?
A: Base + variable at 100% attainment. Typical SaaS: 50/50 split (base/variable). Enterprise: 60/40. SDRs: 70/30.

Q: Commission accelerators — when?
A: Above 100% attainment. Common: 1.5× over plan, 2× over 150%. Drives top reps to push harder; protects margin below 100%.

Q: What is sales-led 'plant and harvest' cycle?
A: Reps invest months in named accounts before harvesting deals. Longer ramp; higher ACV; sticky. Used for $100k+ enterprise deals.

Q: Why CRM hygiene determines forecast accuracy?
A: Garbage in, garbage out. If reps don't update next steps, dates, and amounts, leadership can't see reality. Enforce hygiene with stage exit criteria.

Q: What is sales forecast accuracy benchmark?
A: Within ±5% of plan: world-class. ±10%: good. >±15%: forecasting is broken or pipeline volatile.

Q: Three forecast types?
A: Commit: high confidence, signed paper-likely.
Best case: realistic optimism.
Pipeline / upside: deals not yet committed but possible.

Q: What is 'roll-up' forecast?
A: Aggregated bottom-up: reps → managers → directors → VP. Compares to top-down quota target. Gap analysis drives mid-quarter actions.

Q: What is GTM 'org chart' for $10M ARR SaaS?
A: VP Sales, 2-3 AEs, 1-2 SDRs, 1 SE, 1 CSM, 1 PMM, 1 Demand Gen. Adjust based on PLG vs SLG mix.

Q: What is GTM 'org chart' for $100M ARR?
A: Full RevOps, multiple segment teams (SMB/MM/Enterprise), regional splits, partner team, dedicated PMM per product, dedicated growth team.

Q: What is RevOps?
A: Revenue Operations: cross-functional team owning systems, data, forecasting, comp plans, territory design. Spans sales, marketing, success.

Q: Why RevOps matters?
A: One source of truth across the GTM stack. Without it, sales/marketing/success each have their own data, and leadership can't trust any of it.

Q: Territory design — types?
A: Geographic: traditional, simple.
Vertical: by industry expertise.
Account size: SMB/MM/Enterprise.
Named accounts: rep owns specific logos. Choose by motion.

Q: What is 'patch quality' in territories?
A: Pipeline density, account fit, win rate, deal size potential. Uneven patches cause rep churn. Use data to balance.

Q: Sales kickoff (SKO) — what is it?
A: Annual event: strategy reset, training, product launches, comp plan rollout, motivation. 2-3 days. Often January.

Q: What is 'enablement velocity'?
A: Time from new content (positioning shift, product launch) to reps using it confidently. Faster = more agile GTM.

Q: Sales certification — when use?
A: When messaging, demos, or pricing change materially. Reps must demonstrate fluency before selling. Common at category-creator companies.

Q: What is 'win-room' or 'deal-desk'?
A: Cross-functional team that supports complex deals: pricing exceptions, custom contract terms, executive alignment. Speeds enterprise deals.

Q: What is sales acceleration?
A: Tools and processes that shorten cycles: sequence automation, intent data, conversation intelligence, signal-based outreach.

Q: Conversation intelligence — what is it?
A: Tools (Gong, Chorus) that record + analyze sales calls. Surface objections, deal risks, rep behavior, coaching insights at scale.

Q: What is 'coachability' rep signal?
A: Reps who apply feedback and improve within 2 cycles. The #1 predictor of rep success beyond raw skill.

Q: Sales onboarding — best-practice length?
A: 30/60/90-day plan with weekly milestones. By day 90: full quota, full system fluency, certified on demo. 30-60 ramp is rare and risky.

Q: What is GTM 'inflection point'?
A: The moment something changes (new ICP segment opens, motion shifts, regulation hits). Detection and quick adaptation = sustained growth.

Q: What is 'go-to-market debt'?
A: Accumulated choices that no longer fit current scale or market: legacy pricing, single-rep playbook, founder-led deals. Pay down before scale.

Q: GTM playbook diff: $1M ARR vs $10M ARR?
A: $1M: founder + 1 AE; chase any logo. $10M: defined ICP, sales process, marketing engine, customer success function. Different motion, different ops.

Q: What is 'GTM-fit' indicator at $1M ARR?
A: Consistent close rate, predictable cycle, replicable rep success. Without these, hiring more reps multiplies dysfunction.

Q: Why hiring reps too early kills companies?
A: Without product-market fit and GTM-fit, reps fail. Burn skyrockets, founder energy dissipates fixing reps instead of building. Wait for signal.

Q: What signals founder-led sales is working?
A: Inbound demand exceeding founder bandwidth. Reps close at 60%+ of founder rate. Documented process. Then hire AE.

Q: What is 'pivot' GTM cost?
A: A real pivot (new ICP/positioning) usually invalidates 6+ months of GTM investment. Plan for it; sequence it; communicate it cleanly.

Q: ICP refinement — when?
A: When closed-won have a tight pattern but pipeline doesn't. Tighten ICP to focus efforts; let unrelated leads bounce.

Q: What is 'GTM experimentation' cadence?
A: One major experiment per quarter: new segment, new channel, new motion variant. Measure ruthlessly; kill or scale.

Q: What is 'GTM playbook documentation'?
A: Living document: ICP, personas, pain points, positioning, messaging, channels, sales process, objection handling, comp plan, success metrics.

Q: What is 'positioning statement' template (Geoffrey Moore)?
A: For [target customer], who [statement of need], our [product] is a [category] that [key benefit]. Unlike [primary alternative], our product [key differentiator].

Q: What is 'jobs-to-be-done' positioning?
A: Frame product as 'we help [customer] get [job] done.' Removes feature debate; centers customer outcome.

Q: Why positioning is a forcing function?
A: Forces team to pick: who, what category, vs whom, how different. Most companies are vague on at least one — and it shows in messaging.

Q: What is 'category-of-one' positioning?
A: Position as the only credible option for a defined problem. Hard, but produces premium pricing and category leader effect.

Q: Brand promise vs tagline?
A: Tagline: catchy phrase ('Just do it').
Promise: what we commit to deliver. Tagline rides the promise — the promise drives every interaction.

Q: Why employee comp affects GTM?
A: If reps are paid only on new logo, expansion suffers. Pay model = behavior. Design comp around the metric that drives your GTM motion.