Aaron Burcell Talks About Go-To-Market Planning

Aaron Burcell the VP Marketing from SmartyCard and veteran of many successful start-ups (WebTV, etc) talked about Go-To-Market planning at my class last night, great stuff.

Many good insights, but a few ideas that stuck out for me:

-spend 50% of your time listening to your customer (via customer support, beta programs, watching customers use your product, site analytics, etc.)

-being one-of-a-kind and quickly getting to market isn't everything

-really understand what your company is trying to achieve and what value it provides its customers before you can craft a go-to-market plan 

-with that identify launch goals and metrics

Aaron, Chris Carvalho, and the whole SmartyCard crew recently had a very successful launch: People's Choice Award at demo09 and WSJ http://tr.im/gZm6 and USA Today coverage http://tinyurl.com/cmmbjc