Message-Market Fit

Why do so many startups struggle to scale when they move from founder-led sales?

There are many possible answers: poor hiring, lack of onboarding, no real PMF.

But I think an overlooked root cause is the absence of Message-Market Fit, and the ability to adapt messages to different audiences.

What is Message-Market Fit?

In its simplest form, Message-Market Fit is the ability to quickly and succinctly convey the right message, to the right person.

If you’re going to take it to the next level, then it’s about delivering the right message, at the right time, in the right channel…to the right person.

PMF v MMF

PMF is vital to scaling a SaaS business, and is roughly defined as building a product solution to a particular pain in a market that can be repeatedly serviced through the product.

This is really hard to get right, but when you do, you’ll find you have sticky customers who love using the product, and clarity on the problem you solve for who.

However, finding more of those people, and doing that efficiently is another challenge completely…one that requires Message Market Fit - the ability to quickly and succinctly convey the right message, to the right person.

Once you’ve cracked those basics, you’ll then get better at optimising the delivery of that message through the right channels, at the right time.

Back to scaling past Founder-Led Sales

Founders think about the problem they’re solving, and how they solve it, every waking hour (and whilst sleeping too no doubt).

They become naturally attuned to adapting the way they pitch the business to different audiences.

They pitch to VCs differently to prospects…and they can adapt their story when attending a friends BBQ on the weekend.

They can go into the weeds for technical folks, talk about practical applications to end-users, and how it fits into strategic imperatives to the C-Suite.

But can a 22 year old SDR do the same? What about even a seasoned sales rep who’s 6-months in?

It’s just really hard to replicate how a founder pitches a company, dynamically adjusting the core principles of their ‘way’ to the different contexts they’re in.

When you’re unsure how to do this as a company, you haven’t worked out how to execute your Message-Market Fit. And it’s a growth limiter.

It doesn’t end there

Now what about when you launch a new product line, evolve your ICP, change markets or a shift in the macro environment necessitates a re-calibration of your messaging?

At this point in your journey, it might be difficult for even a founder to adjust the messaging on the fly, because it's gotten complex, and the proliferation of audiences and channels you need to adapt to are too many.

This is why, even once you’ve hit what feels like good traction, it can just as quickly evaporate and you see your revenue plateau.

3 phases of Message Market Fit*

For any business looking to grow in a consistent, efficient and scalable way there are 3 prerequisites that must be in place.

These are needed before you can start to optimise the performance of individual channels (more on this below).

This is often missed, and causes a lot of time and money to be wasted!

The 3 foundational stages are:

1. Find message-market fit to build sustainable pipeline…learn what cuts through and sparks the interest of your ICP
2. Refine the message across the full buyer journey to closed-won, so you know it drives revenue
3. Codify it into a repeatable playbook: message-market-channel-timing (right message, right person, right place, right time = $$$$$$)

*if your revenue is slowing or stalled, even if you once had message-market fit, chances are you’ve temporarily lost it and need to rediscover it

The Snowflake Story

Snowflake is one of the great startup success stories of our generation, now at over £3bn in revenue.

But it all started by learning what messages resonated with their target market!

What you might not be able to see in these slides (presented by Ryan Lieber, one of Snowflake’s first SDRs, now their Startup Program Manager for EMEA), is that steps 1-3 were ‘learn what resonates with a specific portion of the market’ and then the big unlock, in step 4 is: Focus on messaging, alignment, consistency

If it's good enough for Snowflake, maybe we can take a lesson from that!

Message before Channel

Way too many startups focus on ‘channel’ before ‘message’. It’s even missing completely from Brian Balfour’s ‘4 Fits’ go-to-market framework (which I love by the way…but I think this 5th element is critical to success).

Why go message first?

Because even in a channel that’s not the perfect fit (smaller % of your ICP in there), if you nail your message you’ll convert a way higher % of them, than if you try to find the perfect channel and optimise it (higher number of ICP) but your message doesn’t resonate.

It’s like shouting there’s food just over there to a hungry crowd…but in a foreign language they can’t understand. They’ll continue searching elsewhere!

Whereas you might have a room full of people who ate not long ago…but if you tell the room about this incredible cuisine that gets their taste buds tingling, you can bet the handful of folks who are hungry will beat a rapid path to the food and you’ll like get several more folks too.

Great, but how do I find Message-Market Fit?

There really is only one way…it's by testing it. Over and over again.

And that’s where RevvedUp can really help!

It’s easy to set up high level variations of your messaging in the platform, and then using our AI generated personalisation strategy, we can adapt those core elements to every prospect you’re reaching out to.

As you distribute those messages via email, linkedin, calls and landing pages, you will quickly see reply and conversation rates emerge that show which versions resonate with which prospects.

Even better, in the process of discovering your Message-Market Fit, you’ll be booking more meetings and building pipeline!

This is the essence of Strategy through Action…learn by doing and you move both faster and farther.

If you’d like to learn more about discovering your Message-Market Fit to help support faster and more efficient growth…I’d love to hear from you.