6 Counter-Intuitive Go-to-Market Lessons from Gr4vy’s Enterprise Journey
When selling enterprise software, conventional wisdom often leads founders astray. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, John Lunn, CEO and Founder of Gr4vy, shared hard-earned insights that challenge typical enterprise GTM assumptions. Here are six critical lessons that emerged from Gr4vy’s journey:
- Sell to People Who Are Actually Shopping
The most profound GTM insight came from understanding who not to sell to. “Don’t sell to people who aren’t shopping,” John emphasizes. “When you’ve been in the consumer payment space, people will drive past the poster of the flashy new car every day and lust for it. That doesn’t really happen in enterprise software sales… unless you’ve got a problem you actually need a solution for right now, there’s really no point trying to sell to you.”
- Position Around Enhancement, Not Replacement
A crucial pivot in Gr4vy’s GTM strategy came from understanding stakeholder psychology. “When you’re building a product that could eliminate roles or positions organizations like a payments team, don’t go off and sell to the head of the payments team,” John reveals. Instead, they reframed their positioning: “We had to definitely really think about how we positioned our product as a tool that will help payments teams move quicker, that will help companies innovate faster, rather than coming straight out and say, hey, we’re going to replace your payments team.”
- Expand Your ICP Through Channel Discovery
Initial assumptions about target customers often need refinement. “We came into this with the assumption of what our ICP was,” John explains. Market feedback revealed an unexpected opportunity: “What has changed is we’ve realized that another large part of our client base is the people serving those peoples… rather than selling directly to the retailer, selling to the shopping cart that services the retailer is a different route to get to the same place.”
- Growth Through Customer Success, Not Just Acquisition
Gr4vy’s impressive growth – “doubling month on month” in transactions and tripling revenue in their last quarter – came from a focused approach to customer relationships. “The rise in volume is not because we’re adding hundreds and hundreds of new clients, it’s because we’re growing with the customers we’ve got today,” John notes. Their strategy? “You talk to a Gr4vy customer, they’ll say, Gr4vy feels like it’s part of our team, and that’s by design.”
- Resist the Temptation to Scale Prematurely
The recent market downturn revealed the dangers of premature scaling. “We raised and launched during the boom times, and I think a lot of the advice at the time is grow very quickly, spend, grow, get as big as you can, as fast as you can. And then the wheels fell off that sort of model,” John reflects. His advice? “Go a bit slower to start with… getting it right and then growing from there based on revenue is a better way to grow.”
- Develop Versatility as a Core Competency
Success in enterprise sales requires founders to master multiple disciplines. “As a Founder, you wake up every day and you have no idea what you’re going to be dealing with that day,” John explains. “You will be going through spreadsheets and maybe doing fundraising one hour. Next hour, you might be working on your next marketing campaign, then you might be flipping over to sales numbers, pitching to some clients.”
These lessons have shaped Gr4vy’s path to becoming what John envisions as “the central point of integrations for retailers around the world with their payment types.” Their experience shows that successful enterprise GTM isn’t just about having the right product – it’s about understanding the complex human dynamics of enterprise sales, positioning your solution in alignment with stakeholder incentives, and building sustainable growth through strong customer relationships.
For B2B founders plotting their own GTM strategy, the key takeaway is clear: conventional wisdom about rapid scaling and aggressive positioning often needs to be replaced with a more nuanced approach that considers the unique psychology and buying patterns of enterprise customers.