TLDR

GTM or Go-To-Market is reeeeeeeeeal hot right now but it’s also crazy hard. 

Lots of people are talking about how to build or improve everyone else's GTM engine, so I thought I’d take the other side. 

Here’s the gist.

GTM is hard because…  

GTM  = (Strategy x Alignment x Timing) ^ (Execution).

The Whole Lesson

Everywhere I go, people are talking about GTM or Go-to-Market strategy. 

Before getting into Product Marketing, I had a foggy idea of what GTM was and how it differed from the traditional business and product strategy stuff I was very familiar with. 

Now that I’ve been a PMM for a bit, I define GTM as…

The set of interconnecting choices and actions that sit across Sales, Product, Marketing, and Customer Success (plus other functions depending on your company) that are needed to accomplish a set of objectives for a product, or solution. 

Since there are lots of very smart people talking about how to make everyone else’s GTM better, I thought I’d discuss why GTM is hard instead. 

As a former finance person, I like formulas, so why not put this whole article into a formula? Here goes. 

GTM is hard because…

GTM Success = (Strategy x Alignment x Timing) ^ (Execution) 

Let’s dig in. 

Strategy

Having worked in strategy and strategy related roles for most of my career, you can probably tell I really like this kind of stuff. Most people think strategy is this esoteric corporate thing that’s hard to understand. In practice, it’s just a set of reinforcing choices needed to accomplish an outcome. When it comes to GTM, the set of choices you need to consider relate to the market you are in, the products you create, the customers you go after, what you say to them and the channels you use to try and acquire them. As you can probably tell, not only are there a million things that can go wrong in determining all of that but also, there are a lot of people who go into making those decisions. When I started out in business, I thought getting those questions right alone was the key to getting to where you want to go. Now that I’ve been beaten up a little, I know strategy is only one part of things. If you have theoretically built the right strategy but the people around you don’t agree on it, it’s as good as a pretty PowerPoint that sits on a shelf. I used to be a consultant so I have a lot of experience in that area.

Alignment 

I think one of the biggest failings of my formal business education was that it didn’t teach us enough about how difficult getting alignment across functions is and how practically important inter-company relationships are. Reflecting on the years I spent in consulting-type jobs (see above), I’ve seen first hand the extent to which big executives at big companies disagree and how much it impacts their operations (and the lives of employees). Those experiences have not only given me strong appreciation for how hard being an executive must be but also, how much havoc this misalignment creates when it comes to a strategy being effective. Why you might ask? Because strategy is about focus and if your leaders aren’t aligned, they will push those under them to do things that derails focus. Product Marketers tend to get the brunt of this because they sit in the middle of all the misalignment. They also tend to have shared ownership of GTM. 

Here’s a great practical piece of PE GTM thought leadership that drives home where misalignment can happen.

Timing

In his landmark TED Talk, Idealab founder Bill Gross revealed some shocking findings related to a study he did on why startups failed or succeed. According to him, timing was the most important consideration. 

These findings remind me of Morgan Housel’s stuff from The Psychology of Money on luck vs skill. Morgan rightfully points out how hard it is to really tell whether something’s success is about it being good or being lucky. According to Morgan, the more successful you or something is, the luckier you probably are. I don’t know the ultimate answer to this question, but there are SO many examples of companies and products that may not have been successful if they were launched in a different time. So much in the world is outside of our control, and sometimes if things just aren’t in your favor, you fail. 

Execution

It’s funny how execution comes up as #2 on Bill’s list. As a recovering MBA, I used to have a gag reflex reaction when I heard startup founders say things like “strategy is useless, execution is everything”. Having now launched several products myself, I tend to agree more with the founders than my professors (although not fully). Execution however is a complex thing and should be broken down into three distinct parts: 

Execution = (People x Capacity x Incentives) 

The more I thought about this formula, the more it made sense to me. Especially given the definition of execution being: “the act of carrying something out or putting it into effect.”

For any organization to carry something out well, they need to have the right people with the right skills (and relationships  - see above) in place, those people must have the capacity to do what they need to do and the right incentives must drive the right behavior. 

In the context of GTM, there are two obvious examples I can think of where this can come up (but SO many more exist): 

1. Launching a new product without ensuring your sales team is properly incentivized to sell it. 

2. Trying to drive adoption of a newly released product when your Product function is paid only to release features and Product Marketing is only paid to “launch” them. 

Wrapping Up

I hope you now understand why I think GTM is so freakin’ hard.

If you are a PMM, this probably isn’t shocking to you. I’ve spoken with many of you to put this article together because I think it’s important to acknowledge how many places GTM can fail. 

If your GTM isn’t firing on all cylinders, don’t beat yourself up about it. I know you are trying your best.

There is only so much that’s in your control when it comes to taming the GTM monster. Heck, according to the Product Marketing Alliance, most PMMs, executives and GTM leaders think Product leads Go-to-Market anyway. 

Source: PMA State of Go-To-Market Report

Until next time, 

Ginger P.

P.S 

If you want to read an article from a much smarter person than I about why GTM is hard, check out this one from Roger Martin. 

The Ginger Professor explicitly represents the personal thoughts and views of the author only. It does not reflect the thoughts or views of any current or former employer or client of the author. All information referenced and contained in the article enclosed is for informational purposes only and does not represent advice of any kind.