STAGEONE GTM
When not to hire a go-to-market consultant
Half of what I do on a first call is work out whether the answer is no. Here are the six situations where it is.
STAGEONE GTM
Half of what I do on a first call is work out whether the answer is no. Here are the six situations where it is.
THE SHORT ANSWER
Do not hire one if you are pre-product-market-fit, if you need someone to run the team, if the problem is one rep, if you want a document for the board, if you are under roughly $1M in revenue, or if you will not be in the room yourself.
Roughly half of what I do in a first conversation is work out whether the answer is no. That is not modesty, it is self-interest. An engagement that was never going to work costs me more in reputation than it pays in fee.
THE SIX DISQUALIFIERS
You need customers, not a stage model. Building a repeatable system on top of a product the market has not validated formalizes the wrong thing and makes it harder to change later. Go sell it yourself until you know why people buy.
That is a fractional CRO or a VP of Sales, and it is a real need. A consultant who agrees to run your team part-time is quietly selling you a fractional seat with a project invoice attached.
The system works. The issue is coaching, fit or accountability, and those are management problems. Hiring a consultant to solve them outsources a conversation you need to have yourself.
A strategy firm does this well and I do not do it at all. Be careful about the version where a consultant is hired to say out loud something the CEO already believes but does not want to be the one to say.
The cost is not proportionate to the stage. I will tell you this on the first call and not bill for it.
The decisions here are commercial judgment calls about who you sell to and what you deliberately refuse to chase. Nobody can make those for you. An engagement delegated entirely downward produces a document that nobody follows, and I have watched that happen.
WHEN IT IS THE RIGHT CALL
Revenue is working and nobody can explain why, which means it cannot be repeated or defended. The team is about to grow past what the current playbook supports. A long-tenured salesperson or the founder is stepping back and everything they knew is undocumented. Or you are about to spend real money on headcount and want to know whether the system can carry it first.
If one of those describes you, the Six Reads will tell you which shape the problem is making, in about two minutes, for free and with no email required.
And if none of the six disqualifiers apply but you are still unsure, thirty minutes will settle it in either direction.