SaaS go-to-market strategy template (free, copyable)

A go-to-market strategy is the plan for how a product reaches paying customers: who you sell to, what problem you solve for them, how you are positioned against the alternatives, how you price and sell, which channels you use and how you will know it is working. This template turns that into twelve sections you can fill in with your founders in two working sessions, then run as a 90-day plan.

How to use this template

1. Gather inputs first. Talk to five recent customers and, if you can, two or three deals you lost. Their words go straight into sections 1 to 5.
2. Session one, about two hours: fill in sections 1 to 5 with the founders. Disagreements here are useful, since they show where the positioning is still unclear.
3. Session two: fill in sections 6 to 12, and keep the channel list to two or three.
4. Run it. Turn section 12 into weekly priorities and review the whole document at day 30, 60 and 90.

The template

1. Section 1

   Target customer

   Everything else depends on knowing exactly who you are selling to first.

   • Company type and industry
   • Company size and stage
   • The trigger that makes them look for a tool like yours now
   • Must-haves they will not compromise on
   • Who is not a fit, and why

2. Section 2

   Buying group

   B2B deals involve several people, and each one needs a different reason to say yes.

   • Champion: the person who uses it every day
   • Economic buyer: the person who signs
   • Others who can block the deal (IT, security, finance, legal)
   • What each of them needs to hear

3. Section 3

   The problem and current alternatives

   Buyers compare you with what they do today, which is often a spreadsheet, an in-house build or doing nothing.

   • The problem, in the words customers use
   • What they do today instead
   • What the status quo costs them in time, money or risk

4. Section 4

   Positioning statement

   One sentence the whole team, and an AI assistant, can repeat.

   • For [target customer] who [problem], [product] is a [category] that [key benefit]. Unlike [main alternative], we [key difference].
   • The proof behind the key difference

5. Section 5

   Messaging

   Positioning turned into words for the homepage, sales calls and LinkedIn.

   • One-line description of what you do
   • Three proof points
   • The top three objections, and your answer to each
   • Words and claims to avoid

6. Section 6

   Pricing and packaging

   Pricing is part of positioning, and for AI products it also decides your margins.

   • Pricing metric: seats, usage or outcomes
   • Plans and what each one includes
   • Free trial, free plan or demo first
   • How model and usage costs affect margins at your price

7. Section 7

   Sales motion

   How a buyer goes from interested to paying, and who helps them along the way.

   • Self-serve, sales-led or a mix
   • Who runs the first call
   • Expected length of the sales cycle
   • What has to be true for a deal to close

8. Section 8

   Channels

   Two or three channels done well beat six done halfway.

   • For each channel: why your buyer is there
   • The first experiment you will run
   • What success looks like after 30 days
   • Options: founder-led LinkedIn, communities, partnerships, search and AI answers, outbound, events

9. Section 9

   Launch moments

   Each release is a reason for buyers to look again.

   • The next two launches on the roadmap
   • The story behind each one
   • Date and owner for each

10. Section 10

    AI search presence

    More buyers now start software research in an AI assistant.

    • The ten questions buyers ask an AI assistant before buying a tool like yours
    • Who gets named in the answers today
    • The pages and mentions you need to earn

11. Section 11

    Metrics

    Decide up front how you will know what is working.

    • North-star metric
    • Leading indicators: demo requests by source, activation rate, pipeline created, win rate
    • How you will learn where each buyer first heard of you

12. Section 12

    90-day plan

    The strategy turned into work with owners and dates.

    • Weeks 1–4: goals and owners
    • Weeks 5–8: goals and owners
    • Weeks 9–12: goals and owners
    • The decision you will make at day 90

Worked example: a fictional AI startup

To show the level of detail that helps, here are four sections filled in for a made-up company: an AI tool that drafts quarterly business review decks for customer success teams from CRM and support data.

• Target customer: B2B SaaS companies with 50 to 500 employees and a customer success team of five or more, preparing quarterly reviews for their largest accounts. The trigger is a new head of customer success, or renewals at risk. Not a fit: companies without a CRM their team keeps up to date.
• Problem and alternatives: “Every quarter we lose a week pulling numbers into slides.” Today they use spreadsheets and slide templates, or an analyst pulls the data by hand. The cost is CSM time that could go to the accounts themselves.
• Positioning statement: For customer success leads at mid-sized SaaS companies who spend days building quarterly reviews, [product] is an AI reporting assistant that drafts each review from CRM and support data in minutes. Unlike slide templates, it pulls the account’s real usage and support history, so every deck is specific to the customer.
• Channels: founder-led LinkedIn aimed at customer success leaders, two customer success communities, and a partnership with a CRM marketplace. The first experiment is a teardown post of a real quarterly review, anonymised, with a free draft offered to the first twenty teams.

Common mistakes

• A target customer that fits everyone. “B2B companies” is a market. A target customer narrows it to a type of company, a size and a moment.
• Writing positioning before talking to customers. The best positioning lines usually come straight from a customer’s description of the problem.
• Choosing five channels at once. Small teams get better results from two channels run well for a full quarter.
• Treating the launch as one day. Plan the next two launches as moments with a story, an owner and a follow-up for sales.
• No way to learn where buyers came from. Add a “How did you hear about us?” field before you start spending.

Where this template comes from

The positioning statement in section 4 follows the classic format popularised by Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm. The rest is organised around the four layers of the Shortlist Stack, the framework I use for B2B SaaS marketing. If you would like help filling it in with your team, that is the core of my go-to-market and positioning work.