Commercial Ecosystem

A go-to-market blueprint for entrepreneurs

Why This Matters:

• Simplifies go-to-market strategies for your start-up.
• Provides a structured approach to align team efforts and resources.
• Applicable to a multitude of scenarios, helping you understand and utilize market and resource dynamics.

Introduction

In the dynamic world of start-ups, cutting through the complexity to find a clear path to repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth is crucial. The Commercial Ecosystem model offers a solution with a straightforward way to understand and implement effective go-to-market strategies, even for those just starting out in entrepreneurship.

What is the Commercial Ecosystem?

At its core, the Commercial Ecosystem is a blueprint for guiding start-ups in customer acquisition and expansion. It aligns your resources and strategy, simplifying the route from start-up idea to market triumph.

Commercial Ecosystem explained

Resources

Resources (green) refers to the foundational elements of your start-up. It includes:

• People: Your customer-facing team driving the customer forward on their journey.
• Platforms: Marketing tools and channels applied across the full customer journey.
• Partners: Business alliances and partnerships that support your growth.
• Product: The core offering. In SaaS (Software as a Service), this is usually a website-based platform, app or service.

A customer can change “lanes” between one Resource to another at any given stage depending on how the start-ups designs their customer journey. A common customer journey would follow the Platform lane from Brand to Lead upon which they would switch to the People lane for the reminder of their customer lifecycle.

Customer Journey

The Customer Journey (gray) mirrors what's also known as a sales and marketing funnel and is central to understanding how to engage, retain and even expand your customers. Here’s a brief introduction to the steps a start-up can leverage:

• Brand: Create awareness of the start-up's name and existence.
• Demand: Generate interest by focusing on the problems customers are facing.
• Lead: Capture interest by offering solutions to problems.
• Pipeline: Engage with and consult customers to scope solutions.
• Closed Won: Close deals and win customers.
• Onboarding/activation: Get customers' users live with the product.
• Impact: Deliver first and repeated experience of value.
• Expand: Upsell more seats or features or cross-sell into new product lines.

A common pitfall for start-ups is to overemphasize on Closed Won which is an internal milestone. For customers, the Impact is what they buy into - not signing a contract. So any start-up should always strive towards delivering impact fast. And keep delivering impact to keep customers happy and eligible for further expansion with e.g. more users, features or products.

Resource Factors

Resource Factors (red) are critical for aligning your business strategy with market conditions. A key part of this discipline is Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) i.e., the total cost of acquiring a new customer. It's crucial to balance this with the value each customer brings, known as the Annual Contract Value (ACV).

For higher ACV customers, a sales-led approach (top Resource) elevating personal interaction is usually preferred to gain predictability and control. A lower ACV may be more suited to product-led strategies (bottom Resource) offering both low cost and higher exponentiality. This strategy has also grown popular under the term PLG (Product-Led Growth).

Customer Journey Factors

Customer Journey factors (blue) help in monitor, evaluate and optimize the customer journey and include:

• Value: The potential revenue each customer can bring to your start-up.
• Volume: The total number of customers or transactions your start-up handles.
• Velocity: The speed at which customers progress through various stages of the customer journey.
• Cost: The expenditure involved in moving customers along this journey.

How to use the model

Identify your Resources

Understand the role of your team (People), marketing channels (Platforms), business alliances (Partners), and your core offering (Product).

Map the Customer Journey

Design how your start-up ideally wants to see customer journey’s play out across your Resource lanes to gain the highest possible output at the lowest possible input.

Strategize your go-to-market strategy

Understanding your Resources - how you can acquire and expand a customer - and your Customer Journey - how the customers would like to buy and use your product our service, now you can strategize the best possible go-to-market strategy to achieve:

• Efficiency: The fastest possible acquisition of most new customers at the lowest cost with the highest value.
• Impact: The highest initial and repeated value for your customers.
• Growth: A repeatable, scalable and profitable formula to growing your start-up.

Practical application

Step-by-step approach

Start with identifying your Resources, then map out the journey you intend for your customers to have. Discuss how the use of different Resources to both acquire and expand a customer can impact the Resource- and Customer Journey Factors to find the optimum solution for your start-up.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Commercial Ecosystem is your key to simplifies complex go-to-market strategies. It empowers you with actionable steps, guiding your journey as an entrepreneur to craft and execute successful start-up strategies. Take this tool and turn your visionary ideas into reality.