Why most gtm fails.
Your ICP is a Frankenstein of who you've sold to, not who you should sell to.
Title, industry, revenue band — that's a demographic, not an ICP. You don't know the trigger event, the internal champion profile, the job-to-be-done, or the buying committee structure.
You're optimizing campaigns for a persona that doesn't buy.
The audit alone is worth six figures. The interviews shifted our entire ICP — turned out we were chasing a persona that shows up, downloads the resource, and never converts.
Your positioning is 'better, faster, cheaper' — so is everyone else's.
Differentiation by feature is a race to the bottom. Without a defensible category position and a clear point of view, you're in a commodity auction where price wins.
You don't know why you lose deals.
Win/loss analysis is 'the prospect said price was the issue.' Price is never the real issue. You're missing the actual objections, the competitive comparisons being made, and the internal politics that kill deals.
Your competitive intelligence is a quarterly LinkedIn sweep.
Static battlecards from six months ago. No signal on competitor moves, pricing changes, customer sentiment shifts, or emerging category entrants. You're flying blind into competitive deals.
Your board deck says 'large TAM' but can't defend it.
Bottom-up TAM built on Gartner reports and LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters. No primary research. No evidence of segment-level buying intent. Investors know the difference.
Every tool in the arsenal.
ICP Definition + Validation
Primary interviews, intent data analysis, CRM cohort analysis — identify the customers who buy fast, pay most, churn least, and expand hardest.
- → 28 ICP interviews / sprint
- → Cohort analysis
- → ICP scoring model
Win / Loss Analysis
Blind third-party interviews with won and lost deals. The truth your sales team can't get — what actually drove the decision.
- → Blind buyer interviews
- → Decision driver analysis
- → Objection mapping
Competitive Intelligence
Ongoing competitive monitoring, battlecard production, pricing intelligence, and customer sentiment tracking across review sites.
- → Battlecard production
- → Pricing intelligence
- → Review mining
Positioning + Messaging
Category design, differentiated positioning, messaging hierarchy, and proof point architecture. Tested against buyer language from primary research.
- → Positioning framework
- → Messaging hierarchy
- → Proof point testing
Market Sizing (TAM/SAM/SOM)
Bottom-up TAM with primary research validation. Defensible methodology that holds up in board rooms and investor decks.
- → Bottom-up TAM model
- → Segment sizing
- → Board-ready narrative
Jobs-to-be-Done Research
JTBD interview framework, outcome mapping, and switch trigger identification — the buying psychology underneath the feature requests.
- → JTBD interview design
- → Outcome mapping
- → Switch trigger analysis
Category Design
For companies creating new categories: category narrative, lightning strike strategy, POV development, and analyst community seeding.
- → Category POV doc
- → Lightning strike plan
- → Analyst briefing strategy
GTM Strategy
Go-to-market architecture: motion selection (PLG vs SLG), channel prioritization, sequencing, and revenue model design grounded in research.
- → GTM motion design
- → Channel prioritization
- → Revenue model
Voice of Customer
Systematic VoC program: NPS driver analysis, CSAT deep-dives, churn interview synthesis, expansion trigger identification.
- → VoC interview program
- → NPS driver analysis
- → Churn synthesis
Sales Intelligence
Account-based research, buying committee mapping, trigger event monitoring, and personalization data for strategic deals.
- → Account research
- → Buying committee map
- → Trigger event alerts
Survey Research
Quantitative surveys designed, fielded, and analyzed. Sample sourcing, bias review, and executive-ready reporting.
- → Survey instrument design
- → Panel sourcing
- → Statistical analysis
Research Repository
Structured research repository in Notion or Dovetail — taggable insights, clip library, pattern synthesis across all research.
- → Dovetail / Notion setup
- → Insight taxonomy
- → Search + discovery
How we work
Senior operators only. We embed in your tools, run the work, and leave a system you can run.
Research design + hypothesis
We map your current GTM assumptions, identify the highest-risk beliefs to test, and design the research to challenge them — not confirm them.
Primary + secondary research
ICP interviews, win/loss calls, competitive sweeps, survey fielding. We do the work — you don't spend weeks scheduling calls.
Pattern recognition + insight
Themes, tensions, and surprises surfaced from data. Findings that are actionable, not academic. We tell you what the data means for your GTM.
GTM applications
ICP scoring models, messaging frameworks, battlecards, positioning docs — research applied directly to the sales and marketing layer.