“We tried it for the past eight weeks and it didn’t generate any booked calls.” A founder will tell me, as they attempt to evaluate a recent go-to-market tactic. I can’t tell you how many times I get this type of diagnosis.

The problem with such a statement?

Their analysis lacks any sophistication.

“What do you mean, sophistication, Paul? What does that even have to do with my startup?”, you ask.

When you hear ‘sophistication’, an art critic’s snooty voice might come to mind, telling you why you should appreciate an Andy Warhol painting. Or you might overhear a pretentious sommelier explaining the nuances of the Napa Cab you’re about to try. While those might be forms of (forced) sophistication, our version – in StartupLand – feels quite different.

Back to our founder. Their look back at their GTM tactic is too binary. You need more sophistication about your data. Just saying that you don’t have any calls booked is a gross way of breaking down things. It doesn’t tell you what worked and what didn’t work. It just comes out and tells you the result without getting curious about all of the intermediary steps. The golden nuggets that were uncovered. They’re skipping over all of the seeds – that combined – could have sprouted a strong oak tree.

Let’s say that this tactic was an automated email campaign. If we were to be sophisticated about analyzing the feedback we’re getting from the market, we’d begin by zeroing in on our subject lines. It all starts there. Without an open email, you could have an empty email body. We’d parse which subject lines worked for us. Those that could be re-used later are generating the highest open rate. Any subject line garnering an open rate of 25% or more on any given sequence step is considered a strong subject line.

Next, we’d decide to turn our attention to individual emails. As you sift through individual emails through your deployed campaigns, you ask yourself, ‘Let’s see…which of these have generated replies? And of these, which ones have the highest reply rates?’ Those email bodies should be salvaged and could be combined with the aforementioned subject lines to generate even more potent campaigns.

Onto the meat of the issue. Interested rates – which by the way are the key metric in judging the success of any campaign for outbound email – are too low at 0.5% overall. We’ll likely want to modify our email body copy to get folks more interested in chatting with us.

Several factors deserve our consideration. Should we lead with a different pain point? Or change the value prop we use to talk about our product? The first component I might decide to modify, however, is our CTA/offer. Changing up the call-to-action/offer can transform an automated email experiment that wasn’t quite clicking, into a campaign that can be scaled up and reused time and time again.

The beauty of a potent CTA/offer? It gives the prospect a tangible reason to jump on a call with you, even if they’re not sure they’d benefit from your product or service. If you were selling a SaaS tool for sales coaches (follow me down this fictitious rabbit hole) and targeting someone like me, your powerful CTA/offer might look something like this in an email:

What times work for a 15-minute call next week to see if we might be able to help?

During that call, I’d be happy to share the biggest pitfalls that prevent sales coaches from making their highest possible income. This top mistakes list comes from the hundreds of conversations we’ve had with coaches like you over the last 2+ years.

I’d start thinking, ‘Man…this SaaS tool might benefit me but I’m busy right now. I consider myself a top sales coach. But, boy, if I’m to become aware of one pitfall that I still haven’t corrected…this call could have a five or 6 figure impact on my business. You know what? I’ll take this call. These guys’ SaaS tool might be useful, but I know I’ll get value from talking to them.’

This is what it feels like to build a go-to-market initiative. Brick-by-brick. You’ve nuked the useless bits. And salvaged and doubled down on the nuggets that worked.

Having said that, I’m continually amazed at product/tech founders who have a knack for product data but don’t always transfer those skills to their GTM. They possess data literacy in spades. And yet, a lot of times, founders don’t even know what success metrics or industry benchmarks they should aim for in going to market. A big part of my job with them is getting to lean into those new metrics and making sure they start holding them as near and dear to their hearts as they would any product engagement number.

This ability to decipher what has been working in your go-to-market initiatives from what has not is vital expertise. Without it, you’re flying blind. Or coming to hasty conclusions that will lead you astray. Lacking this aptitude will prevent you from building something methodically from scratch. Strata by strata. Until you have an edifice you’re proud of. Compare the exercise we just went through above with the initial assessment from our founder. In one case, you gave up because you didn’t get any booked intro calls. In the other, you knew what to look for in the data, you understood and parsed it. And then leveraged it to build a go-to-market initiative with a much higher likelihood of success. Don’t let anyone tell you sophistication only belongs in wine cellars, Michelin-star restaurants, or at the Opera House. Your startup needs it too. Starting with your go-to-market.