Go-to-Market / Product-Market-Fit Checklist

	A	B	C	D
1	Phase:	Timeline:	Goal of Phase	Questions to be answered:
2	Initiate	Days 1 - 90	Understand basic market landscape, where {Your Product} fits in, and who our initial targets are	What is the size / type of ideal firm?
3				What departments feel the pain most?
4				Who is the buyer (actual purchaser who can approve / write checks)?
5				Who is the end user (s)?
6				What is the pain point we're solving for?
7				How do they solve for this today?
8				What is the advantage of {Your Product} solving for it than current solution?
9				What is their workflow (recurring event where {Your Product} fits in)?
10				What other similar / competitor tools/ service do they pay for?
11				What's the cost / pricing for those tools / services?
12				What's the best way to reach buyer / end user?
13				What's the best way to sell into these firms (e.g. to end users first; or direct to purchaser)
14				How to build awareness and credibility in the new market to get past early adopters?
15				Are there channels and partners you can leverage to accelerate the close of new customers?
16				How big is the market (for {Your Product})?
17				Is that specific sub-market large enough?
18				What's the best way to acquire leads for prospecting?
19				What are the major potential roadbloacks (hypothesize 3-4 issues you may encounter)
20				How price inelastic is this industry? Scale of 1-3 (1 being elastic, 3 being inelastic)
21				Thoughts for best pricing structure to initiate / test with?
22	Gain Access	Days 91 - 180	Land initial 20 clients & start to understand the machine	Steps to execute:
23				Formulate hypothesis on initial target outreach and offering: end users, who to call in to sell to, etc.
24				Build initial list of 500 diverse prospects
25				Build initial cadence structure (email, call, email, vmail, etc.)
26				Execute initial cadence structure
27				Questions to be answered:
28				Prove / disprove hypothesis on the pain point you're solving?
29				What was the best way to reach them?
30				Better to sell top down or bottom up?
31				How do we build the next 5,000 lead list and was there anything specific to avoid for next set of prospects? (e.g. certain types / sizes / focuses of firms)
32				Numbers to analyze:
33				How many dials / emails / touch points to set first meeting?
34				How many touch points after first meeting did it take to close?
35				How long was Sales Cycle?
36				What does the initial close rate look like? and what are industry benchmarks for comps in this vertical?
37				Average Deal Size?
38				Average Utilization?
39	Dry Run	Days 181 - 365	Prove out the market and the machine	Steps to execute:
40				Build list of 2,000 prospects
41				Deploy 2 sales reps into this vertical with hypothesized cadence / outreach
42				Execute for 6-12 months to prove out hypotheses and economics
43				Numbers to analyze:
44				How many dials / emails / touch points to set first meeting?
45				How many touch points after first meeting did it take to close?
46				How long was Sales Cycle?
47				What is Close Rate?
48				Average Deal Size?
49				Average Utilization post-sale?
50				What are the largest concerns about this market and why it may not work out?
51				Does pricing seem correct? If so, why? If not, what's the set of behaviors we want to optimize for that are functions of pricing?
52	Deploy	Days 365+	Hire sales team into this vertical to execute, gain market share, and establish fully functioning vertical for {Your Product}	Steps to execute:
53				Build List of 5,000 prospects
54				Build training program and hire more reps to execute on this vertical
55				Deploy 3 additional reps into vertical with proven cadence / outreach
56				Numbers to analyze:
57				How many dials / emails / touch points to set first meeting?
58				How many touch points after first meeting did it take to close?
59				How long was Sales Cycle?
60				What is Close Rate?
61				Average Deal Size?
62				Average Utilization post-close? Did this meet / underperform / exceed expectations based on pain points initially discovered?
63				Does the pricing seem somewhat right? (review your close rates / utilization rates)
64				Assess Product market fit (scale 1-10)?
65				How many more reps can we deploy into this vertical and what is our time to zero? (time to zero = based on cadence + recyclability + hiring plans the amount of time you have in a specific market segment before you run out of leads)
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