ServiceNow Case Study: GTM with Kevin Haverty

The TL;DR from ServiceNow’s GTM strategy: 

1. Reputation is how you’ll get started: Having advocates to help you win business based on your reputation early on can be a big lift, but it won’t take you all the way. Understanding the persona you’re selling to and how to speak their language is also critical.
2. Build specialist teams to target new personas that your core team cannot reach: Your team will do their best, but solution sales will be necessary for the first push. This is especially true before you specialize your sales team by customer type. 
3. You’ll have to simultaneously push your core product and your new products: If your sales team neglects the core product in favor of the new product, your revenue might suffer while the new product gets started. Finding a balance is crucial to creating excitement about new products and keeping your sales team meeting quotas. Look for adjacencies where a new product will make an easy cross-sell.
4. Keep sales teams focused with guardrails: The temptation with new launches is to go too cheap or too wide. ServiceNow avoided this trap by setting a minimum contract value with pricing floors.
5. Don’t over/under-index too quickly: These things take time beyond the one or two quarters that Wall Street will push you to have. Gather as much data as you can in order to learn what’s working over the long term. As Kevin says, “It’s not just about whether we could build this great product. Should we build this great product?”

We hope you enjoy this interview with Kevin.