A go-to-market checklist for your next launch

1. Segment

Name one segment you can describe in a sentence, size honestly, and reach affordably. “SMEs in Gujarat” is not a segment. “Auto-component manufacturers in Rajkot with 50 to 200 employees who export” is. If your first segment does not feel uncomfortably narrow, it is too wide.

2. Positioning

Write the sentence a customer in that segment would use to explain your product to a colleague. Two things must be in it: what it replaces, and why it is worth switching. If you cannot name what it replaces — including “doing nothing” — the positioning is not finished.

3. Price

Build the price from the value delivered and the margin you need, then sanity-check it against what the segment currently pays for the alternative. Cost-plus pricing is the most common and most expensive mistake in an SME launch, because it caps your margin at exactly the moment you have the most pricing freedom.

Test the price with real conversations before launch, not after. Five honest conversations with target buyers are worth more than a spreadsheet.

4. Channel

Direct, distributor or digital — choose on economics, not preference. Calculate the fully loaded cost of a sale through each route, including the discount a distributor needs to care. A channel that cannot make money selling your product will not sell it, whatever the agreement says.

5. The launch calendar

Ninety days, with named owners and a weekly measure. Not a marketing calendar — an execution calendar covering inventory, pricing approvals, sales training, collateral, and the first fifty conversations. The launch is not the campaign; the launch is the first fifty conversations.

The check before you spend

Take the plan back to your unit economics and your team's real capacity. A plan your team cannot execute is not a plan, and a plan whose margin math does not survive contact with a distributor discount is a slow way to lose a year.