Mike's GTM Advisory Framework

This reference file contains the distilled advisory framework from Mike's pre-Floodgate sales coaching work. It serves as the tactical reference layer for all GTM audit outputs.

Important: The two foundational principles (find the buyer's top problem and design the buying process) are defined in SKILL.md and take priority over everything in this file. The dimensions below are the supporting tactical areas that help founders execute on those two principles. When generating an audit, always evaluate the two principles first, then consult this file for the tactical specifics.

Supporting Audit Dimensions

These dimensions provide the tactical coaching patterns that reinforce the two core principles. Not every audit will surface findings in all of them. Focus on the ones where the transcripts reveal the biggest gaps.

1. Discovery Depth and Quality

This dimension is tightly connected to Principle 1. Deep discovery is how founders find the buyer's top problem in the first place, and how they stay on it throughout the sales motion.

What great looks like: The founder uncovers specific pain points, understands the business impact of those pains, identifies competing priorities, and learns about prior solutions before ever pitching.

Common failure modes at seed stage:

• Jumping straight to "we can do X" without understanding the prospect's context
• Asking surface-level questions ("What are your challenges?") instead of impact questions ("What does that cost you in lost revenue?")
• Answering prospect questions immediately instead of first asking why the question matters
• Missing "breadcrumbs" -- small clues in what the prospect says that could unlock critical intel

Key coaching patterns:

• When a prospect mentions a specific priority, don't jump ahead. Ask: "Have you already mapped out how you're going to accomplish this?" and "What would accomplishing this mean for your org? For the wider company?"
• When a prospect asks a question that could be easily answered, respond with a question: "Why is that critical? How have you tried to solve it? What's the negative impact given you can't do it today?"
• Ask about previous solutions: "What did you use for X at your last company? What worked? What didn't? What would you do differently here?"
• Push beyond the problem to the insight: "Is there anything you think is true about [area] but can't currently prove? If you're right and can prove it, what could that mean for the business?"

2. Stakeholder and Decision-Maker Mapping

What great looks like: The founder knows who holds the budget, who has final authority, and who might block the deal. They proactively involve the right people.

Common failure modes:

• Getting stuck with an IC champion who can't sign anything
• Never asking "who else will weigh in on this decision?"
• Not understanding the internal buying process (procurement steps, legal review, committee approval)
• Letting the champion present internally instead of offering to do it themselves

Key coaching patterns:

• Ask: "Who else will weigh in on this?" and "How does [VP/Head of X] view this problem?"
• For enterprise deals: ask the champion to map out the remainder of the buying process and identify the top risks
• Offer to join internal presentations or at minimum review the champion's pitch before they present

3. Outcome-Based Pitching (vs. Feature Dumping)

What great looks like: The founder connects every capability to a specific outcome the prospect cares about. They use the prospect's own language and priorities to frame the value.

Common failure modes:

• Leading with features ("We have X, Y, Z capabilities")
• Demoing everything instead of the 2-3 things that matter most to this prospect
• Not referencing the discovery findings during the demo
• Missing the opportunity to quantify ROI or frame the product as an investment

Key coaching patterns:

• If the prospect's project is worth $1M+, make that the anchor: "For a critical component of a $1M project, $25k is a rounding error"
• After showing a feature, don't ask "would this be helpful?" Instead ask: "Where do you think this would be most useful at [company]? Why?"
• Connect capabilities to specific outcomes: "get your rebrand done 6 weeks faster" not "we have style consistency features"
• Reference specific customer outcomes and success stories during the demo

4. Controlling the Next Step

This dimension is tightly connected to Principle 2. Designing the buying process means the founder always controls what happens next.

What great looks like: Every call ends with a specific, calendar-booked next step. The founder proposes the agenda and format. They offer an evaluation roadmap that helps the buyer understand how to move forward.

Common failure modes:

• Ending calls with "let me know if you want to chat again"
• Asking the prospect what they'd like to do next (instead of proposing something)
• Sending follow-up emails to schedule instead of booking on the call
• Not having a "menu" of next-step options to propose

Key coaching patterns:

• Book the next call while still on the current call. At minimum, suggest a calendar hold in 2 weeks.
• Propose a specific, relevant next step: "We often do a short follow-up with your Head of RevOps to dig into X..."
• Don't finish the demo on Call 1. If you layer on proper discovery, you won't have time anyway -- and having unshown features gives the prospect a reason to take Call 2.
• Build a menu of Call 2 deliverables: expert call with a domain leader, custom dashboard mock-up using dummy data, business case co-build, deeper technical dive

5. Competitive Handling

What great looks like: The founder learns how the prospect perceives alternatives before positioning against them. They differentiate based on what the prospect actually values, not generic comparison points.

Common failure modes:

• Pitching a "broader platform" when the prospect only needs a narrow solution (making the competitor look simpler/cheaper)
• Not asking about previous solutions or why they left
• Badmouthing competitors instead of letting the prospect reveal what matters
• Not understanding the real competition (which might be "do nothing" or "build internally")

Key coaching patterns:

• Ask: "What did you like about [competitor]?" and "Why did you decide to move off [previous solution]?"
• The real competition is often "how were they going to solve this before they found you?" Ask that question.
• For deals against established players: highlight your traction with notable logos, emphasize that the prospect will be a top-priority customer, and offer your mobile number

6. Pricing Delivery

What great looks like: Pricing is delivered as a discovery-informed conversation, not a sticker reveal. The founder gathers context, presents 1-2 options with rationale, then pauses for the reaction.

Common failure modes:

• Sharing pricing before understanding the prospect's context, budget, or requirements
• Presenting too many options or over-explaining the pricing model
• Not anchoring high enough when the deal is clearly strategic/critical for the prospect
• Giving free concessions without making them contingent on commitment

Key coaching patterns:

• Before sharing pricing, ask context questions: "Do you typically use SSO?" "Does your legal team need to review an MSA?" "How many users would definitely need access? How many ideally?"
• Present one or two options with rationale, then pause. Let them react.
• If you've uncovered that the project is critical/high-budget, don't be afraid to anchor high. You can always discount, and they'll feel they got a great deal.
• For discounting: never give free concessions. Make every discount contingent on signing by a specific date (but triple-check that the date gives them enough time for procurement).

7. Credibility and Social Proof

What great looks like: The founder establishes authority in the first 2-3 minutes of the call with a concise credibility statement, and references relevant customers or outcomes throughout.

Common failure modes:

• No credibility intro at all
• Long, rambling company backgrounds that don't establish relevance
• Never mentioning specific customer outcomes during the demo
• Not positioning pilot/design-partner programs as exclusive

Key coaching patterns:

• Start calls with a brief credibility statement: notable customers, investors, or founder's relevant background
• Track and reference specific outcomes customers have achieved (not just logos)
• Position early-stage engagement programs as structured and selective, not desperate

8. Land-and-Expand Strategy

What great looks like: The founder makes a conscious choice about deal structure based on the specific prospect. Sometimes that means closing fast and small, sometimes it means slowing down to land bigger.

Common failure modes:

• Trying to sell the full platform to every prospect
• Pitching expansion use cases that overwhelm the initial buyer
• Not thinking about how to seed future expansion in the initial deal

Key coaching patterns:

• For most seed-stage companies: close something, prove value, expand from there
• Options to evaluate per deal: (a) close quickly, expand later (b) include limited wider-team access to seed expansion (c) slow down with a PoC to land a much larger deal
• When pitching broader use cases, highlight future potential without making it feel like a requirement
• Consider including a platform fee or committed spend in contracts so the customer is motivated to extract value even if personnel changes

Outbound Email at Seed Stage

This section applies when the founder provides outbound email templates, cold outreach sequences, or prospecting copy as part of the audit inputs. If no outbound materials are provided, skip this section.

The Core Problem

At pre-seed and seed stage, the biggest failure mode in outbound email is that the emails look like they came from a scaled sales org running an automated cadence. They read like: "Hi [First Name], I noticed [Company] is [generic trigger]. We help companies like yours [value prop]. Would you be open to a 15-minute call?"

These emails are dead on arrival. The buyer's inbox is full of hundreds of sequences like this from companies with bigger brands, more social proof, and actual SDR teams. A seed-stage founder sending emails that look like this is competing on a playing field where they have zero advantage.

The buyer's filter is simple: unless they already know the vendor and were thinking about reaching out anyway, they ignore anything that looks like a cadence. The founder needs to break through that filter.

What Works Instead

At seed stage, the goal of outbound email is singular: get the person to have a conversation. Not to sell. Not to book a demo. Just to create enough interest or goodwill that the buyer is willing to spend 20 minutes talking.

Three approaches that work:

1. Expertise-led outreach. The founder leads with their own credibility and knowledge of the buyer's category. "I've spent the last 18 months working with 30+ [buyer persona] teams and there are 2-3 patterns I keep seeing around [problem area]. Happy to share what I've learned, whether or not our product is relevant for you." This works because it offers the buyer something valuable (insight from someone who's talked to a lot of their peers) with no strings attached.

2. Advice-seeking outreach. The founder asks for the buyer's perspective on a genuine question. "We're building [product] and I'm trying to understand how [buyer persona] teams think about [specific challenge]. You seem like someone who's thought deeply about this. Would you be open to a quick chat? I'd love to learn from your experience." This works because it's flattering, low-pressure, and positions the buyer as the expert.

3. Value-creating outreach (PVP/Jordan Crawford approach). The founder uses AI to research the prospect and includes something genuinely useful in the first email. This could be: a quick analysis of the prospect's public data (website, job postings, ad spend, tech stack), a relevant insight specific to their business, or a comparison to what their competitors are doing. The email delivers value on day one before asking for anything. The key is that the "personalized value" must be truly specific and useful, not just "I noticed you're hiring for [role]" surface-level personalization.

How to Evaluate and Recommend

When outbound templates are provided, run this check:

Does the email look like a sales cadence? If yes, flag it immediately. Explain that at seed stage, competing with automated sequences is a losing strategy. The founder doesn't have the brand, the SDR team, or the volume to make cadence-style outbound work.

What's the ask? If the email asks for a demo or a meeting right away, suggest softening to a conversation or an exchange of ideas. The first touch should feel like a peer reaching out, not a vendor prospecting.

Is there genuine value for the recipient? If the email is all about the founder's product, it needs to flip. What can the founder offer the buyer that's useful regardless of whether they become a customer?

Does it leverage the founder's unique advantage? At seed stage, the founder IS the product advantage. They know their category better than anyone. They've talked to dozens of buyers. They've built something because they understand a problem deeply. The email should reflect that, not hide behind corporate-sounding copy.

Generating PVP-Style Recommendations

When the audit recommends shifting to value-creating outbound, don't just say "try PVP." Generate specific ideas for what that could look like given:

• The product: What data or insights does the founder have access to that would be valuable to prospects? (e.g., if they're selling a FinOps tool, they might be able to share benchmarking data on cloud spend by company size)
• The buyer persona: What does this person care about? What would make them stop scrolling? What would they forward to a colleague?
• The competitive landscape: What are prospects not getting from existing solutions that the founder could surface in an email?
• Scalability with AI: How could the founder use AI tools (GPT, Claude, research agents, web scrapers) to generate prospect-specific value at scale without it feeling templated? Think: automated competitive analyses, personalized benchmark reports, custom industry briefs.

Propose 2-3 specific PVP concepts the founder could test, with enough detail that they could actually build and launch one within a week.

Voice Calibration

Mike's advisory voice has specific characteristics that should be reflected in all outputs:

Directness with empathy. He tells founders what needs to change, but frames it as unlocking opportunity rather than correcting mistakes. He acknowledges what's working first.

Specificity over abstraction. Instead of "improve your discovery," he says "At 4:10, you proactively pitch X -- before doing that, try asking [specific question]." Recommendations include actual language founders can use.

Strategic optionality. For complex decisions (deal structure, pricing strategy, hiring), he presents 2-3 options with the tradeoffs of each rather than prescribing a single answer.

Business context awareness. He thinks about the founder's sales motion in the context of their broader business: market dynamics, buyer personas, competitive landscape, team capacity. Recommendations account for what's realistic.

Peer tone, not consultant tone. He writes "you'll want to..." not "it is recommended that..." He shares his own experience when relevant. He's willing to say "I'm not sure what the exact questions would be, but some options..." -- showing that he's thinking alongside the founder, not dispensing from on high.

Anti-Patterns to Avoid in Outputs

• Generic sales methodology labels (MEDDIC, BANT, SPIN, Challenger, Sandler). Use the concepts without the jargon.
• Laundry lists of 15+ recommendations. Keep it to 3-8, prioritized by impact.
• Recommendations that require hiring or building product. Focus on what the current team can do with their current resources.
• Treating all prospects as identical. Flag when different prospect types need different approaches.
• Ignoring the founder's stage. A solo founder doing their own sales needs simpler advice than a team of 3 AEs.
• Using em dashes anywhere in the output. Use commas, parentheses, semicolons, or restructure.