Your GTM strategy is probably backwards

A founder asked me recently:

“How do I build a go-to-market strategy that actually gets traction?”

Great question.

Here’s what I told him:

Don’t start with your product.
Start with your people.

More specifically:

• Who gets the most value from what you do?

• What’s broken for them?

• Why would they care about your solution right now?

If you can’t answer those three questions clearly and specifically, your GTM strategy isn’t a strategy—it’s a guessing game.

And nobody scales on guesses.

Here’s the simple version of a GTM plan that doesn’t suck:

1. Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) — Not “startups.” Not “B2B SaaS.” Think: “RevOps leaders at $10–30M ARR SaaS companies hiring SDRs.”

2. Find the pain — What’s keeping them up at night? What are they sick of dealing with? This becomes your messaging.

3. Build a message that resonates — Show up where they are. Say what they’re thinking. Make them feel seen.

4. Pick a few channels — Cold email, LinkedIn, partnerships… doesn’t matter. Just don’t try to do all the things.

5. Iterate like mad — What worked? What didn’t? Adjust accordingly.

Bonus tip?

Track conversion rate > traffic. Nobody cares if 1,000 people visited your landing page if none of them said yes.

Yours,

—R

P.S. Selling a product without first validating your ICP is like yelling into a void and hoping for a reply. Stop shouting. Start listening.