Choose your market, positioning, ideal customer, and channels with clarity so every team member pulls in the same direction.
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In fifteen years of helping companies with growth, I've found that execution problems often trace back to four underlying decisions. These decisions are sometimes called GTM strategy, and getting them right makes everything downstream much easier.
The tricky part is that these decisions are often made implicitly rather than explicitly. You might be running two growth motions at the same time without realising they require completely different resources and metrics. You might be targeting multiple personas and wondering why your messaging feels generic. You might have positioning that sounds good internally but doesn't actually differentiate you in the market.
When growth feels harder than it should, it's worth checking whether these four foundations are clear.
Your growth motion determines how you'll acquire customers. Your ICP defines who you're going after. Your positioning shapes how you'll win against alternatives. Your unit economics tell you whether the model actually works financially.
Each decision constrains the next. And each one requires explicit commitment from leadership, not just the growth team. I can help clients think through these decisions as a fractional head of growth, but ultimately they need buy-in from founders and executives because they shape everything that follows.
This playbook gives you the frameworks to make these decisions explicitly and check whether your current approach is coherent.
Most B2B companies pick a growth motion by accident and wonder why scaling feels so hard. Learn how to deliberately choose between founder-led
Vague targeting wastes budget and confuses your team. Get specific about which companies to pursue and who within them actually makes buying decisions so every growth activity has a clear target.
Your prospects compare you to alternatives whether you like it or not. Control that comparison by deliberately choosing your category and articulating why you win against the options they are already considering.
Growth without guardrails burns cash. Set the CAC to LTV ratio and payback period that determines how aggressively you can scale and what constraints your growth engines need to operate within.
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Richard Rumelt
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A sharp test for strategy quality. Diagnose, choose guiding policies and design actions that compound over quarters.
Bill Aulet
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Step by step approach to define customers, test value and design a go to market path that leads to repeatable revenue.
Alistair Croll
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Pick the One Metric that Matters for your stage. Build lean dashboards and use data to decide the next best move.
John Doerr
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A clear guide to OKRs for growth teams. Write good objectives, choose key results and run cadences that stick.
Gary Keller
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A method for ruthless focus. Ask the focusing question, block time and protect momentum on the work that matters most.
Richard Koch
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Use Pareto thinking to pick channels, ideas and customers. Cut the long tail and double down on what works.
Document your ideal customer's role, goals, and challenges to tailor messaging and prioritise features that solve real problems they actually pay for.
Identify what you do better or differently that competitors can't easily copy to defend margins and win customers consistently over time.
Plan how you'll reach customers and generate revenue by choosing channels, pricing, and sales models that match your product and market reality.
Define how you're different from alternatives in a way that matters to customers to guide all messaging and ensure consistent market perception.
Articulate the specific outcome customers get from your solution to communicate why they should choose you over doing nothing or using alternatives.
Estimate the maximum revenue opportunity if you captured 100% market share to size your opportunity and prioritise which markets to enter first.
Apply disciplined experimentation across the entire customer lifecycle, optimising every stage through rapid testing and data-driven iteration.
Achieve the state where your product solves a genuine, urgent problem for a defined market that's willing to pay and actively pulling your solution in.
Attract prospects through valuable content that solves real problems, building trust and generating qualified leads who approach you.
Turn satisfied customers into active promoters who systematically bring qualified prospects into your pipeline at near-zero acquisition cost.
How do you make all four engines work together instead of in isolation?
Raise prices strategically through better packaging, value communication, and positioning so revenue grows without adding customers.
Develop cross-sell and upsell motions that expand accounts by solving more problems for customers who already trust you.
Build retention strategies, success milestones, and renewal processes that keep customers committed for longer periods.
Strengthen your closing approach — objection handling, negotiation, and follow-through — so more proposals turn into signed contracts.
Streamline your proposal workflow and improve how you present solutions so more qualified deals receive a clear, compelling offer.
Sharpen your discovery process and scoring criteria so more meetings convert into qualified pipeline with real potential.