These are the most critical parts of the playbook, and will become important leverage points when you operationalize GTM:

1. The Urgent Pain. This is the pain point that drives the customer to buy now — not one year from now. (See “Find the Urgent Pain.”) Without the urgent pain, there is no GTM Fit.
2. The “Wow” – What is the thing — or things — in your product or pitch that causes the customer to engage and learn more? Wow’s make customers advance forward through the customer journey. They convert skeptics into champions.
3. Sign 1st Contract. This is when you begin your formal relationship.
4. Time to First Value. This is the first point at which the customer gets value from your product. What is the first value? When does the customer experience it? At this phase, the champion has a clearer understanding of the path to reduced pain. But they’ll also have improved clarity on the barriers to success, and they’ll come back to you with a list of issues to resolve.
5. Full Deployment/Expand. Full deployment can take months or even years from the first signed contract. Along the way, there will be several checkpoints for getting live, and they are often accompanied by problems, especially when scaling. Learning from and nailing these stages is critical to trigger expands and new use cases. If you’ve solved an existential urgent pain, by now your champion may become known within their company.
6. New Use Cases. Once your product is fully deployed and integrated into the workflow, new use cases may trigger upsells and expands.
7. Strategic Platform. Your product is now an essential part of your customer’s organization, a platform that launches them toward the strategic destination. In recognition, ideally your champion becomes a hero and gets promoted.

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