Wednesday last week saw the latest ISV Meetup hosted by GoCardless in London. The evening, having begun with the normal pizza and beer and catch up, was split into two sessions. The first a panel discussion where the audience had an opportunity to question a panel made up of different skill sets, including Julrich Kieffer from Metacube, on a variety of issues ISVs face in building and implementing AppExchange apps.

This panel was then followed by a debate hosted by Metacube EU CEO, David Fordham. The debate was based around the common challenges of implementing a “Go to Market” (GTM) strategy successfully and the first issue we identified was that many ISV’s don’t have a clear, complete GTM strategy. One company asked the question “is GTM only for a start-up and when you are established you don’t need one”. The main observation here is that every business has to continue developing sales strategies, expanding their market and generating revenue. A GTM strategy should be on-going and can be refined and adapted as the business grows but must be continuous.

Probably the most significant point that was debated was the need to understand your client and their needs, which in turn means understanding their customer’s needs as well. Without this understanding it is impossible to envision and build a sales story that helps clients to know that your App meets their needs.

There were many other areas that were discussed including:

• Getting the most from your partners
• Word of mouth referrals
• Working with other ISV’s
• Support from Salesforce
• Product/Market fit

It would be difficult for us to cover all of these topics in one blog so we will be sharing a series of blogs over the coming weeks covering each of these points.

In the meantime, if you would like to know more about how Metacube can help with your GTM strategy, do contact David directly at david.fordham@metacube.com.