Go-to-market planning: a three-step process for SaaS growth

Executive overview

Most SaaS teams set a revenue target and then jump straight to a to-do list they never look at again. The result is misaligned effort, wasted bandwidth, and a plan that survives only until Monday morning.

This three-step process—establish the numbers, ask high-quality questions, build a massive action plan—forces a data-backed, choice-driven approach before anyone commits to doing anything.

Revenue targets only become executable when broken down into customers needed and opportunities required.

Step 1: Establish the numbers

• Start with the revenue target, then divide by average contract value (ACV) to get number of customers needed.
• Divide customers needed by your win rate to get the number of opportunities required.
• Example: $10M target ÷ $100K ACV = 100 customers; 100 ÷ 20% win rate = 500 opportunities.
• This reframe shifts the team from "a big scary revenue number" to a concrete pipeline target.
• Once you know the opportunity count, you can debate whether inbound, outbound, or SDR hiring can realistically fill it.
• Aligns founders, co-founders, VPs of sales and marketing around a single shared number before any planning begins.

Step 2: Ask high-quality questions before making plans

Bring data into the room before anyone proposes a tactic. Four key questions:

• Top three lead sources: Which channels actually produce closed revenue? Double down; stop the rest.
• Top three loss codes: Log why every deal is lost. Patterns reveal market dynamics and gaps in your sales motion.
• Top three ICP attributes: Look at your best customers and ask what they share. Feed this back into your ICP definition.
• Top three objections: Distinguish between objections that slow a deal and those that kill it. Both need a response in messaging and process.

Decisions made from data are harder to reverse on Monday morning than decisions made from instinct.

Step 3: Build a massive action plan — subtract, don't just add

Organise every proposed action into three buckets:

1. Stop: Activities not showing up in top lead sources or yielding poor returns (e.g. low-yield cold email blasts, underperforming contractors).
2. Continue: What is working — double down, don't dilute.
3. Start: Gaps identified by the data (e.g. formal ICP exercise, messaging overhaul to address top objections, turning on compounding marketing channels).

The discipline of the stop bucket frees bandwidth for the start bucket. Without it, teams add to an already overloaded list and execute nothing well.

Bonus: Operationalise the plan

• Maintain a shared working document so decisions and rationale are visible to the whole team.
• Define the metrics that will tell you whether the plan is working.
• Review metrics weekly, check progress monthly, revamp the plan every quarter.
• Iteration — not the initial plan — is what drives compounding growth.