What Most SaaS Companies Get Wrong About Go-To-Market Timing

The SaaS industry is awash in great products that failed to cross the starting line due to poor timing. Most SaaS companies, even those with previous successes, often misjudge the timing for launching, scaling, or pivoting their go-to-market strategies.

While this is an expensive and, unfortunately, very easy mistake to make, it’s also fixable if you know what missteps to look out for. Upcoming GTM platforms like Conigma are making it easier to align product launches with market readiness, giving teams the data they need to move with confidence rather than guesswork.

This article highlights some of the biggest reasons why companies make mistakes with go-to-market timing and how to start fixing those mistakes for your company.

Chapters

A Finished Product Doesn’t Mean a Ready Market

The old “build it and they will come” mentality has inspired many founders to get off their butt and start working on their next big thing, but it doesn’t ring true for most SaaS products. Too many companies assume that a finished, functional product is automatically market-ready, which leads to launching too early and watching the product fall flat. For a successful go-to-market release, the market has to be ready for the product just as much as the product needs to be ready for the market.

Internal Enthusiasm Isn’t the Same as Market Demand

While failing to consider the market before pushing a product can be a disaster, misreading market signals is just as common and just as damaging. This usually comes down to one of two missteps:

• Venerating internal enthusiasm without sourcing external market data, such as competition and adoption cycles
• Relying heavily on vanity metrics, which can make companies mistake initial curiosity for sustainable demand over time.

These misunderstandings lead to massive burn in marketing with little to show for it in real earnings. Only by accurately reading market signals and acting accordingly can your go-to-market timing be perfect.

Scaling at the Wrong Moment Can Undo a Good Launch

Scaling is important for growth and revenue, but it presents companies with what could almost be a second go-to-market event. Expanding sales and marketing can seem like a good idea in the moment, but if not properly timed, it could lead to insanely high churn rates and inefficient customer acquisition costs.

Conversely, scaling too late risks losing your hard-earned market readiness to faster competitors and settling for a lower market share. Balance is key when it comes to timing, both for a first impression and for knowing when to expand.

Gut Instinct Doesn’t Scale

For decades, enterprise culture has nurtured and reinforced the power of an executive’s intuition in timing product releases. Many leaders have climbed the ranks on good luck and guesswork, only to have products fail at the highest levels because there’s no real data backing up their decisions.

With access to customer feedback loops, usage statistics, market research, and more, it’s becoming impossible to remain competitive without utilizing these analytical tools. This is especially true for go-to-market timing, as every product only gets one shot at a first impression. Companies can’t risk relying on hunches and human effort alone, which is exactly where GTM platforms come in.

GTM Platforms Take the Guesswork Out of Timing

Go-to-market platforms offer immense value to companies struggling with these issues, providing real-time insights and predictive analysis of adoption cycles. They also offer strong customer segmentation and targeting tools to ensure that you have the “who” down as well as the “when.”

Strong GTM platforms are perfect for the modern business environment because they reduce the guesswork for timing your launch, align disparate parts of your sales funnel, and enable you to pivot quickly with market demand. For SaaS companies, there’s no better alarm system to help perfect your timing.

Timing Is Half the Product

Bad timing is one of the most consistent reasons behind SaaS products failing, even when the product itself is innovative and effective. While there are several reasons why companies drop the ball, there’s one solid solution: use the right tools to make smarter, data-driven decisions on go-to-market timing. The era of gut feelings and guesswork needs to be firmly left behind, because in SaaS, timing is just as important to success as the product itself.

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