Before a go-to-market plan gets funded, rebuild its math from the revenue target down, test it with your own historical rates, cut conversion in half to see what fails first, and name who watches each number every week. Paste the plan, the target customer definition, the funnel assumptions, the hiring schedule, past conversion and ramp data, and the budget request into one request. Instruct Pingpong to recompute the plan with your actual rates, find assumptions that depend on hires or partners you do not yet have, and flag numbers no one owns. Review your written answers in a second round.
This page is for chief executives, revenue and marketing leaders, and directors asked to fund a written go-to-market plan. Executive starting points live under Pingpong for executives.
Rebuild the math from the target down
Work backward from the revenue target: deals needed at the planned contract size, opportunities needed at the planned win rate, meetings and leads needed at each conversion step. Then check two things. Does the target customer list contain enough companies to fill the top of that funnel? And can the sales team, hired on the actual schedule and ramped at your historical pace, carry the result?
Cut conversion in half
Halve one rate at a time and see which commitment breaks first: the revenue line, the hiring plan, or the budget. A plan that only works when every rate hits target needs a gate, a point where spending pauses until the early numbers come in.
Give every number an owner
- Pipeline created each week, against plan.
- Conversion at each step, against history.
- Hires started and ramp progress.
- Spend to date against the gate.
Each line needs one named owner who reports it weekly.
A worked example
This example is illustrative and does not describe a customer. A 250-person software company asks its board for $4.5 million to sell a new compliance product to its existing mid-market base. The plan targets $6 million in new recurring revenue next year, with 10 account executives, 6 development representatives, and a marketing program.
The chief revenue officer pastes the plan, funnel model, hiring schedule, past ramp data, and customer list by industry.
A useful pass rebuilds the funnel. At a $60,000 contract size, the target needs 100 deals. At the planned 25% win rate, that means 400 opportunities. The plan describes the target customer as "mid-market companies in regulated industries," but only about 400 of the company's 3,000 accounts fit that description, so the plan would need nearly every one to become an opportunity in year one. The model sources 40% of pipeline from partner referrals, and no partner has signed.
Capacity looks thin as well. The plan assumes account executives reach full quota in three months, while the company's own hires have taken six. With five starting in the first month and five in the fourth, the six-month ramp cuts first-year quota capacity from about $6.3 million to about $5.3 million, and at typical attainment the realistic figure is closer to $4 million. The plan also depends on a sales engineer and a product marketing lead who are not in the hiring budget.
At half the planned win rate, revenue falls to about $3 million while spending stays at $4.5 million. No one owns the weekly numbers. The new product has no general manager.
The revised plan sets $4 million as the base target and $6 million as upside. Six account executives start in the first half, and the remaining four are hired only if pipeline reaches three times the next quarter's target by the end of the second quarter. Partner referrals leave the base case until two partners sign. The target list is narrowed to about 400 named accounts. The sales engineer joins the budget. A general manager owns the weekly numbers and reports to the board each quarter. If the gate is missed, spending for the year drops to about $3 million.
When the plan is funded and the product is close to reaching customers, see define done and test the adoption cases before you launch.
A request you can copy
Below are our go-to-market plan, target customer definition, funnel assumptions, hiring schedule, past conversion and ramp data, and budget request. Rebuild the funnel from the revenue target down using our historical rates. Check whether the target customer list is large enough. Recompute sales capacity with our actual ramp and hiring dates. Halve each conversion rate in turn and name what breaks first. Flag dependencies on unfilled roles or unsigned partners, and numbers with no owner. Stop there so we can answer in writing, then review our answers.
How Pingpong runs the review
The web review app sends your request through several models in order. Each later model receives the original request and every earlier answer, with instructions to assess the work so far. For the steps inside the app, see running your first review.
What a model can't review
A model works from the data you paste. It does not know how buyers in your market behave, what competitors are planning, or whether your historical rates will hold. You and the board own the funding decision.
When the plan goes to the board, see war-game a decision before the board meeting. More guides live under work decisions before you commit.