How to avoid the horizontal platform trap
Get super-specific about how you fit into your buyer's existing workflow
When you talk to early-stage startup founders about challenges in their GTM strategy you often hear some version of the following:
“We’ve built a horizontal platform! Our technology is flexible and can handle a range of use cases, so we’re selling to a range of companies and functions.”
This is the horizontal platform trap. It’s the kiss of death for startup revenue growth.
Here’s why:
When you cast a wide net the only common denominator is you — your technology, your platform, your team.
You either end up boring your prospects to death with jargon-laden descriptions of how unique and wonderful your scalable AI-powered technology platform is, or spouting generic value props about driving business growth.
You force your buyers to do the heavy lifting to connect the dots between what your tech does and how it actually solves their real-world problem. This requires finding highly motivated early adopters with a vision for how to bring you into their day-to-day and the change management skills to make it happen.
You fail to demonstrate your understanding of your buyer’s problems and your expertise in solving them, which makes them less confident in working with you.
The key to avoiding the horizontal platform trap is to deeply understand your buyer’s existing workflow and adapt your messaging to be super-specific in describing how you fit into it and make it better. Doing so can also help you refine your ideal customer profile.
This post covers:
How to understand your buyer’s existing workflow
Examples of how to get super-specific for different types of buyers (marketing, engineering, HR)
3 simple exercises to make your messaging super-specific
Example of a website with super-specific messaging
Example of a website with vague messaging
How to understand your buyer’s existing workflow
Every business leader has a mental model for their existing workflow — the specific combination of people, process, tools and materials that delivers an outcome to their business.
They routinely reference their mental model when evaluating any proposal to improve their outcome because they know that moving forward with it will require altering their worfklow. They also know that the greater the change required, the greater the likelihood of failure.
These are the types of questions that a business leader asks themselves as they evaluate a proposal:
Which of my business problems do you solve?
Which specific aspect of the problem do you address?
How does fixing that part of the problem align with my goals?
Where exactly do you fit into my existing workflow for solving the problem?
Which of my existing solutions do you replace?
What does implementing your solution involve?
Which of my employees owns this part of the workflow?
As a vendor, the more specifically you are able to answer these questions, the less heavy lifting your buyer will have to do and the easier it will be for them to visualize the change.
How to get super-specific by function
While all buyers will be asking themselves the same types of questions, buyers from different functions will have different types of questions based on the nature of their work. Here are examples getting super specific with Marketing, Engineering and HR.
Getting super-specific with Marketing workflows
Which aspect of the customer journey do you help with? Acquisition or retention? These are separate efforts within a marketing organization, with separate budgets and sometimes separate teams so I need to narrow it down.
Let’s say you help with acquisition. Which part of the acquisition funnel do you help with? Lead generation, lead nurture, bottom of funnel purchase activation or lapsed buyer reactivation? Each of these are currently in different stages of maturity with different priorities.
Let’s say you help with lead generation. Which specific metric do you move for me? Do you drive form fills, meetings booked or opportunities created? How does increasing that metric align with my goals?
Let’s say you help with meetings booked. What is my current workflow for booking meetings? What part of my workflow would I have to change? Do I need to replace an existing solution or do I need to add you on top of what I currently have?
Let’s say I need to replace an existing solution. What data needs to be ported over? Which systems do you integrate with? What does that integration entail? How long does it take?
Who on my team would own getting this done? What else are they working on? How does this change their priorities?
Getting super-specific with Engineering workflows
Which part of the development lifecycle do you help with? Design, prototyping, development, deployment, monitoring or maintenance? These are separate
Let’s say you help with deployment. Which specific deployment problem do you help with? Planning, configuration, testing, installation, replication?
Let’s say you help with configuration. Which specific metric do you move for me? Error counts, configuration time, audit time etc?
What is my current workflow for configuration? What part of my workflow would I have to change? Do I need to replace an existing solution or do I need to add you on top of what I currently have?
Let’s say I need to add you to my stack. Which of my existing tools do I need to integrate you with? What does that integration involve? How long does it take? How long does it take?
Who on my team would own getting this done? What else are they working on? How does this change their priorities?