If there is a single expression that can make an accomplished executive frown, it is the term go-to-market strategy (GTM). In meetings, everyone pretends to understand, but if you ask ten B2B professionals what GTM really means, they will probably give you ten different opinions. Some say it is only sales enablement, others are sure it is just marketing, and a couple of them would refer to it as “a launching plan.” In fact, GTM is a combination of all those things, but at the same time, none of them.
Then what is the reason for the confusion? And more importantly, why does misinterpreting GTM keep B2B firms that are brilliant otherwise from unlocking their full potential? According to a 2024 Gartner survey, nearly 68% of B2B executives report that their GTM strategy is poorly understood across teams, leading to misaligned initiatives and underutilized technology.
Today, we are going to look into the real thing, the reasons for so many companies treating GTM as an afterthought, and the way to create a GTM strategy that helps people, technology, and revenue come together.
If you are interested in how your GTM can work for you or against you without your knowledge, keep reading.
What GTM Really Means in B2B?
Go-to-market (GTM) is definitely not the responsibility of a single person. A marketing plan, a sales outreach sequence, or a product launch checklist are not the right definitions. It is a detailed plan of the ways your company is going to offer its product to the customers.
GTM would be like the GPS of your company. Without it, even the most skilled sales team or the latest MarTech stack will be at a loss. An effective GTM brings the following into compliance:
- The Who: The client’s profiles and buyer personas.
- The What: Product positioning and value proposition.
- The How: Channels, pricing, and engagement tactics.
- The Why: Your mission and differentiation.
Still, studies reveal that as many as 70% of B2B companies confess that they have trouble with the coordination of GTM across teams. The misunderstanding of GTM is not related to poor implementation; rather, it is all about the wrong definition that has been assumed as a starting point.
Why So Many B2B Firms Misunderstand GTM?
Here’s the thing: GTM is not misunderstood because it is a difficult concept to grasp. Instead, it is misunderstood because it affects every department in the organization. When each person has a little bit of something, no one really knows the whole thing.
1. Over-simplifying GTM as “just marketing”
Marketing is probably the first step, but GTM is the whole process. It is like asking only one part of the team to drive the car during a race.
2. Confusing GTM with product launch plans
Introducing a product to the market is an event, whereas GTM is a dynamic system that evolves with markets, competitors, and customer behavior. If your GTM disappears the day your press release is published, you have just an announcement, not a strategy.
3. Misaligned KPIs across departments
Sales-track deals. Marketing-track leads. Product-track adoption. Finance-track revenue. If your GTM does not combine these numbers, you will be debating success more than driving it.
4. Ignoring buyer behavior shifts
The modern buyers do not like to be “sold to”. Gartner says that 83% of B2B buyers want to do a digital self-research before talking to the salesperson. In this era, a GTM plan that does not focus on this aspect is as good as writing letters in a TikTok world.
5. Relying too heavily on tools instead of clarity
Certainly, MarTech is efficient. But a CRM can’t really explain to you why your buyers pick the competitors. GTM strategy should come first, and the tools should only be the means for its implementation.
The Cost of a Misunderstood GTM
When your GTM strategy is not clear, the damage shows little by little, but for sure:
- Your marketing team generates leads… that the sales team doesn’t follow up on.
- Your sales team closes deals… that expire after 12 months and are not renewed.
- Your product team builds features… which no one uses.
Does this sound like a familiar situation to you? They are not failures, but an indication of a lack of GTM alignment. And in a market that is B2B competitive, where every small mistake can cause you to lose the game against your rival, the question of ignoring the problem becomes too risky to ignore.
How to Fix Misunderstanding of GTM
What methods can one employ to transform GTM from just another buzzword to a cash cow? The first thing to do is rethink your GTM approach.
1. Customer Insight-based GTM
GTM should be solely focused on answering the buyer value creation question, i.e.. How to create, in fact, buyer value?
One should use a combination of intent data and behavior data to develop data-driven buyer personas.
It is also important to depict customer lifecycles, detail the journey from product need to product adoption in the customer lifecycle, not only from awareness to purchase.
Confirm your assumptions with customer interviews and get true buyer feedback.
Pay attention: The term “We think that we know our customers” does not define a strategy.
According to Gartner, organizations leveraging intent and behavioral data to guide GTM decisions achieve up to 30% higher engagement rates and 20% faster sales cycles.
2. Coordinate Different Teams’ KPIs
Some considerations on what to include in KPI metric selection to support teamwork values and encourage a collaborative approach are given below:
- Customer lifetime value (CLV).
- Conversion velocity.
Win rate by persona. In this instance, the problem of barriers or “silos” would be removed without any extra work if everyone had the same KPI targets and worked across the teams.
McKinsey research shows that companies with unified cross-department KPIs see a 15% increase in win rates and significantly faster pipeline velocity.
3. GTM Should Be Kept Going and Not a One-off
The markets can be volatile, and competitors may even do the opposite of what you expect them to do. Customers will also change. Hence, the change has to be checked through your GTM system every quarter, not as a presentation that stays the same after the commencement. Forrester notes that companies that continuously monitor and adapt GTM strategies quarterly outperform peers by 12–15% in revenue growth.
Implement the MarTech platforms mentioned above, namely Salesforce, HubSpot, or Emarsys, to create feedback loops during your GTM execution. These tools act as the early warning signs for engagement (e.g., a sudden drop) before a disaster actually unfolds.
4. Just Get Sales, Marketing, and Product Into One Room
Experiment with an idea, such as literally putting sales, marketing, and product in one room. Plan to have short, goal-focused, and metrics-driven cross-functional face-to-face GTM meetings held monthly. When sales delivers objections directly to the product, positioning becomes clearer almost immediately.
5. Not Just Tools, Empowerment Is the Key
Technology has the function of facilitating GTM, but it is still the people who carry out the plans. Spend money on sales enablement, onboarding, and continuous training. If your team is not trained to tell your story in a unified way, your GTM plan is nothing more than a hypothesis.
An Example That People Can Relate To
Thinking of GTM as a new software platform for the introduction to big business clients. Advertising creates targeted messages to lure interest. Sales engages directly with potential buyers, answering questions and removing objections. Product teams ensure that the solution meets the customer’s needs and that the delivery is without any hassle. But if, for example, marketing, demos, and features are not aligned and marketing promises automation while the product is not capable of delivering, then the client is confused, and their expectations are not met. What is the result? An actively interested prospect might even be stopped from purchasing, and, above all, trust in your company will be lost over time.
That is exactly how B2B buyers experience it when GTM is not coordinated.
Conclusion: GTM Is a Team Sport
Go To Market or GTM, the often misunderstood model, is a plot of non-alignment which does not fail due to lack of understanding but because teams are not ‘in sync’. Nevertheless, most B2B firms continue to view GTM as nothing more than a checklist of procedures rather than a guide for the whole company. Basically, a GTM that combines product, marketing, sales, and customer success is not only the company’s main winning strategy, but it is also the company’s winning edge.
During such moments, you could ask your team in the GTM meeting: Are we just putting a campaign into action, or are we really building a system that connects with our buyers? Companies that give honest answers and take the following step with them are not only the ones that will step into the market but also the ones that will be ahead of it.
FAQs
1. What is the biggest mistake B2B companies make with GTM strategies?
The biggest mistake is treating the GTM process as a stand-alone occasion (like a launch) and, as a result, not running it as a continuous system that changes with customer needs and market variations.
2. How do MarTech tools improve GTM alignment?
For example, Salesforce, Adobe, HubSpot, etc., are among the MarTech tools that can help in data centralization, support cross-team visibility, and enable the automatic generation of reports. Hence, companies can identify the gaps and realign their GTM quicker by employing these tools. According to a Forrester report, companies that integrate MarTech platforms across sales, marketing, and product teams see 25% faster lead-to-opportunity conversion.
3. How often should GTM strategies be updated?
In the perfect GTM model, the process would be updated with the new market conditions and buyer behavior every three months. It is not a “set it and forget it” system.
4. Can small B2B firms benefit from GTM strategies?
Indeed, they can. In fact, smaller companies often benefit more from GTM, which enables them to avoid unnecessary expenses and position themselves as a formidable competitor against the big players.
5. What KPIs best measure GTM success?
Don’t just look for leads only. The real success of GTM is represented by KPIs such as customer lifetime value (CLV), sales cycle velocity, win rates for specific personas, and retention rates.
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