GTM Consulting · Simpleworks
Simpleworks builds go-to-market strategies for Indian MSMEs and startups — specific to your market, your distribution reality, and the customers who will actually pay for what you sell.
39+
Years of
experience
6
Industries
served
₹1–50Cr
Revenue range
we work in
Understanding GTM
Go-to-market strategy is not a marketing plan. It is not a sales target. It is the answer to three specific questions — and most businesses have answered at least one of them vaguely.
01
Not “SMEs in India.” Not “mid-market companies.” A specific segment — defined by industry, geography, company size, buying behaviour, and the problem they are paying to solve. The more precisely you can describe the customer, the more efficiently you can reach them.
02
Not a list of features. A clear, honest answer to why a rational buyer in your target segment would pay for your product or service instead of the next-best option available to them. This is your positioning — and most businesses cannot state it clearly in one sentence.
03
The channel and motion: direct sales, dealer networks, digital channels, partnerships, referrals. The sequence: which channel to prove first, at what investment, before expanding. And the message: what you say to the customer and in which context. All three together — not any one alone.
What We Do
GTM consulting at Simpleworks is not brand strategy or a digital marketing brief. It is the structured work of answering the three GTM questions with enough precision to actually direct a sales and marketing effort.
01 — Segmentation
Most businesses define their target customer too broadly — which means their sales effort is spread thin and their messaging resonates with no one in particular. Simpleworks works with founders to identify the two or three customer segments most likely to convert, most likely to pay, and most likely to generate referrals — and builds the GTM strategy around those segments first.
02 — Positioning
Positioning is not a tagline. It is a clear statement of who you serve, what problem you solve, and why you solve it better than the alternative. Simpleworks develops positioning that is specific enough to be meaningful and honest enough to be defensible — starting from a rigorous analysis of what buyers actually care about, not what the founders want to say about themselves.
03 — Channel Strategy
The right channel for an industrial components manufacturer in Pune is not the right channel for a SaaS startup in Bengaluru. Simpleworks builds channel strategy from the ground up — understanding which channels your target segment actually uses to find and evaluate suppliers, and which you can win in given your current resources and relationships.
04 — GTM Execution Plan
A GTM strategy that lives in a presentation is not a GTM strategy — it is a hypothesis. Simpleworks converts the strategy into a phased execution plan: which segment to pursue first, which channel to prove in the first 90 days, what the sales motion looks like, and what the milestones are that will tell you whether the strategy is working or needs to change.
Who We Work With
GTM consulting is for businesses at a specific kind of turning point — when the current approach to market has stopped working, or when entering a market for the first time and the stakes of getting it wrong are high.
Customers who try the product are happy with it. Referrals come in occasionally. But new customer acquisition is unpredictable — some months are strong, others are not, and the team cannot explain why. The problem is almost always in the GTM: the wrong segment, the wrong channel, or a positioning that doesn't connect with the people most likely to buy.
A new segment, a new city, a new product line. The approach that worked in the existing market may not work in the new one — different buyers, different buying behaviour, different distribution. Getting the GTM right before committing full sales headcount and marketing budget is the difference between a successful expansion and an expensive lesson.
A new competitor, a change in buyer behaviour, a technology that has disrupted the channel. The business that worked reliably for ten years is now under pressure it has never experienced before. The GTM strategy that built the business needs to be rebuilt — or the business will continue to defend a position that no longer exists.
The business is growing, but the growth is coming from customers who are hard to service, slow to pay, and unlikely to refer others. The best customers — the ones who buy repeatedly, pay promptly, and send referrals — are a small fraction of the revenue. A GTM reset reorients the entire sales effort toward the customers who create the most value at the lowest cost to serve.
If any of these describe your business, the right next step is a conversation.
The first call is free →How We Work
Every GTM engagement at Simpleworks follows four steps — in order. Skipping any one of them produces a strategy that looks complete on paper but fails in the field.
Diagnose
Before recommending a new GTM, Simpleworks analyses the existing one. Who are the current customers — and which ones are actually profitable? Which channels produced them? What is the win rate in each segment and why? What does the sales process look like and where does it lose? The current state, diagnosed honestly, is the foundation for everything that follows.
Define
The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the most important output of a GTM strategy — and most businesses don't have one they can state precisely. Simpleworks builds the ICP from the data: which existing customers deliver the most revenue at the lowest cost to acquire and serve, what they have in common, and how to find more of them. The ICP becomes the filter for every GTM decision that follows.
Design
With the ICP defined, Simpleworks builds the positioning (why you, for them, vs. the alternative), the messaging (what you say and how), and the channel strategy (how you reach them at scale). For Indian MSMEs, this almost always involves a combination of direct sales, dealer or distributor networks, and digital channels — sequenced in the order that the business can actually execute with its current team and budget.
Deploy
The GTM strategy launches as a 90-day sprint — a focused effort on one segment, one channel, and one message, with clear milestones that define what success looks like at the end of 90 days. Simpleworks stays involved through this sprint, reviewing results weekly and adjusting the strategy based on what the market is telling you. At the end of the sprint, you have either a proven model to scale or a clear understanding of what to change — not a guess.
Why Simpleworks
Most GTM frameworks are built for technology companies with large marketing budgets, inside sales teams, and digital-first distribution. Simpleworks builds GTM strategies for businesses where distribution is physical, budgets are real, and the sales team is two people.
The standard GTM playbook assumes your market is digital-first, your buyers respond to content marketing, and you have a sales team that can follow up on inbound leads. For a consumer goods company selling through distributors in tier-2 cities, or a manufacturing business whose customers still make buying decisions based on personal relationships and site visits, this playbook is worse than useless — it directs effort toward channels your buyers don't use.
Simpleworks brings 39 years of experience in Consumer Durables, Automotive, Telecom, and SaaS — businesses where distribution networks, dealer relationships, and regional sales structures are the core of the GTM, not an afterthought. Prem Menon has built and rebuilt go-to-market strategies across industries where the market is physical, the sales cycle is long, and the buyer makes decisions based on trust as much as specification.
“A GTM strategy for an Indian MSME has to start with how buyers in your segment actually behave — not how they’re supposed to behave according to a Silicon Valley growth playbook. Most of the time, the answer involves a sales person, a relationship, and a site visit.”— Prem Menon, Founder, Simpleworks Consulting
The 90-day GTM sprint model is built specifically for MSMEs that cannot afford to run a six-month strategy experiment. It produces a validated model — or a clear indication of what isn’t working — within a timeframe that leaves room to adjust before the year is over.
Dealer networks, distributor relationships, B2B sales cycles, and regional market dynamics — not a digital marketing funnel copied from a SaaS playbook.
The ICP is built from your real customer data, not from a workshop exercise. Which customers have the highest LTV, the fastest sales cycle, and the best referral rate. Start there.
A GTM plan that requires headcount you don't have and a marketing budget you can't afford is not a plan — it's a wish. Simpleworks builds GTM strategies around what the business can actually execute in the next 90 days.
39 years across Consumer Durables, Automotive, Telecom, and SaaS. No junior consultants. No generic frameworks. GTM advice grounded in how Indian markets actually work.
Our Work
Every GTM engagement at Simpleworks produces three things. Each one is necessary. None of them alone is sufficient.
01
A precise definition of your best customer — the segment that converts fastest, pays best, and refers most. Built from your actual data, not a workshop assumption. The ICP becomes the filter for every sales and marketing decision going forward.
02
A clear, honest answer to why your target customer should choose you over the alternative — stated in language that reflects how buyers actually think about the problem, not how the product team describes the solution.
03
A sequenced plan for the first 90 days — one segment, one channel, one message, clear milestones. Simpleworks stays involved through the sprint, reviewing results and adjusting in real time. At the end you have a validated model, not a hypothesis.
From the Blog
These articles explore the go-to-market questions most Indian MSME founders are working through — and how Simpleworks approaches them.
Who Is Your Customer, Really?
A first-principles guide to defining your Ideal Customer Profile — the most important GTM question and the one most businesses answer too vaguely to be useful.
Read article →StrategyWhy 90% of Indian MSMEs Have No Real Strategy — And the 3-Step Fix
GTM strategy cannot exist without business strategy. This article explains the strategic foundation that every go-to-market effort needs to be built on.
Read article →ConsultingMSME Consulting: Why a Focused Firm Delivers More Than a Full-Service One
Why a consultant who specialises in GTM for Indian markets will always outperform a generalist agency promising the same result as one of thirty services.
Read article →Coming soon
GTM vs. Growth Strategy — What's the Difference and Which Does Your Business Need?
Coming soon
Channel Strategy for Indian MSME Manufacturers — How to Choose and Win
Coming soon
How to Enter a New Market with a Lean Sales Team
Common Questions
Everything you need to know before we speak.
A marketing plan describes the activities you will run — campaigns, content, events, advertising. A GTM strategy defines who you are selling to, why they should buy from you, and how you will reach them. The GTM strategy is the foundation; the marketing plan is built on top of it. Most businesses that struggle with marketing are actually struggling with an unclear GTM — the activities cannot work if the fundamentals haven't been defined.
Both — but the approach is different. Most of Simpleworks' GTM work is with B2B businesses: manufacturing companies, industrial suppliers, SaaS businesses, and professional services firms. In B2B, the GTM strategy focuses on segment definition, sales motion, and channel strategy. In B2C, the emphasis shifts toward positioning and distribution. The three core questions — who is the customer, why you, how do you reach them — apply in both cases.
A marketing agency executes a GTM strategy — they run campaigns, produce content, manage digital channels. Simpleworks builds the GTM strategy that the agency then executes. If you hire a marketing agency before you have a clear GTM, you are paying an agency to run campaigns that haven't been aimed correctly. The GTM strategy comes first; the agency comes second. Many of our clients engage Simpleworks specifically because they have a marketing agency relationship that isn't producing results — and the root cause is always a GTM problem, not an execution problem.
Yes — and this is where Simpleworks' experience is most distinctive. Prem Menon spent years working in businesses where dealer networks, distribution channels, and trade relationships were the primary GTM motion — Consumer Durables at Usha International, Automotive at MRF and Apollo Tyres. The GTM strategy for a manufacturing or consumer goods business that sells through intermediaries is fundamentally different from a direct sales or digital model, and it requires a consultant who understands how those channels actually work in Indian markets.
A full GTM engagement — covering diagnosis, ICP definition, positioning, channel strategy, and the first 90-day sprint — typically runs three to five months. The first four to six weeks cover diagnosis and strategy design. The following ten to twelve weeks cover the 90-day sprint with Simpleworks' active involvement in weekly reviews and adjustments. Shorter engagements focused on a specific GTM question — ICP definition only, or channel strategy for a new market — can run four to six weeks.
A free 30-minute conversation with Prem Menon. No pitch, no proposal. You describe where your current GTM is breaking down — inconsistent sales, unclear positioning, a new market you're trying to enter. Prem asks a few direct questions and tells you honestly whether a GTM engagement would help, what it would involve, and what it would cost in approximate terms. If it is not the right fit, he will say so.
Tell us where your current GTM is breaking down — or what market you’re trying to enter. We’ll tell you honestly whether and how Simpleworks can help.
Response within one business day · Based in Bengaluru · Working across India