Cien’s Growth Essentials Series:  How to Run a Successful 2-Month GTM Analysis & Transformation Project – Part 1

By Ivan Redini, Director Partner Success, Cien.ai

“We have found that there is usually no time for the boring prep stuff, but unlimited time to go over valuable insights, so we try to make the former as painless as possible“

– Ivan Redini, Director Partner Success, Cien.ai

What Could Go Wrong? – It’s Just A Project… 

The answer is: A lot. At Cien.ai we do these types of projects all the time, and we have learned the hard way that if you want to wow your clients, you have to have your ducks in a row… Everyone is eager to get the secret keys to growing their sales, but few are willing to sit through hours and hours of meetings, wait weeks for results, and provide detailed definitions over and over. So how do you avoid that? With automation and a plan of course! 

The Prep 

You need clear alignment. Begin the project by aligning expectations, with a shared view of success (what good results look like). Make it clear that you will focus on real and urgent problems, and that this most likely will reveal many more details and, in some cases, deprioritize current initiatives. 

Make data preparation efficient: Provide clients with a simple calibration worksheet (requiring minimal effort) to get the required business context and rules.  Bring the right stakeholders to the table: ensure the RevOps team will be part of the conversation since they will be needed during a transformation phase, and they tend to have the best knowledge about the intricacies of your data. 

We have found that there is usually no time available for the boring prep stuff, but unlimited time to go over valuable insights, so we try to make the former as painless as possible.

The Data Acquisition

Easy CRM Integration: Facilitate direct API connections to the client’s CRM system. At Cien, we have 1-click solutions that only require a few minutes of a CRM admin’s time. Pre-empt InfoSec concerns by providing pre-created FAQ sheets. At Cien, we keep our client’s data secure by masking PII and following the highest standards as evidenced by our SOC 2 certification and our other security credentials. 

For extremely security-conscious organizations like financial institutions, we also offer self-hosting of the data, so it never leaves the client’s private cloud environment. 

The Analysis

You cannot achieve meaningful transformation if you do not know where the problems are. It starts with trust in the process: The system has been calibrated and the data has been cleaned up. Showing how the top-line and organizational data now makes sense and matches your stakeholders’ expectations, sets you up for more substantial exploration. 

The actual analysis should be as comprehensive as possible, looking at all aspects of the go-to-market function, and testing different types of problem hypotheses. If no problem is found in a particular area, that issue can be eliminated as a friction point. Once you have the areas that truly are problematic identified, it’s often useful to do a bottom-up analysis of the potential related to fixing each of them and the feasibility of reaching those goals.

At Cien, we call this our “Heat Map Analysis” (problematic areas are marked as “red/hot”) and we aim to deliver this in the first 5 business days after receiving the data and calibration info. Now the fun part begins!

This is the first part of two of this article, the next section will be published in a week.

About The Cien.ai Growth Essentials Series 

This article is part of our Growth Essentials Series, inspired by our work with B2B business leaders, growth consultants, and PE operating partners. These articles focus on the non-technical aspects of improving GTM performance. If you want to dig in on the technical details of how to measure the concepts we use here, please refer to our “Practical RevOps Analytics Series”.