"Go-to-market" is a term that most product marketers think about a LOT. While go-to-market is a set of actions to bring a product to market, the typical scope of go-to-market, especially in early stage B2B SaaS companies, is generally thought of as organizing the marketing, and more specifically, communications for a product launch. "The product's ready and good-to-go, we only need you to send that email we told you about yesterday". Sound familiar? However if we take a step back and observe for a moment, it's not difficult to see how go-to-market is much more than just communications and marketing.
At the core of go-to-market strategy is launching a product in a way that drives whole product success in the most effective way possible. Holistically speaking, this goes way beyond communications to ensure you are collaborating across the company in achieving your revenue, market-share, competitive positioning, etc. goals in the most effective way possible. In a nutshell, go-to-market strategy can make or break a product or a company's performance for the year. Once you have a solid, well-thought out strategy, it is strong go-to-market execution that truly drives success for a product launch.
So if go-to-market execution is so central to a software company's success, why does it seem to be such a complex, challenging initiative, often the cause for strife and stress within an organization? What factors impact the successful execution of a go-to-market strategy?
It comes down to 3 key areas:
Upfront alignment on outcomes
Cross-functional engagement and accountabilities
Dedicated project management
1. Upfront alignment on outcomes
Go-to-market is a cross-functional initiative, and this is often realized when things start to fall apart. Participants from across the business including Product, Engineering, Sales, Product Marketing, Customer Success, Demand Generation and PR/Communications need to be included. While launch goals often originate from the Product Management team, each of the other functional groups come in with their own perspective on goals and outcomes. Alignment between these groups is critical in order to ensure everyone is rowing in the same direction. For example, what are we expecting from the launch? Are we going after a specific revenue target, or a new logo acquisition number, or a market share goal? Each play will require a different sales, demand generation, communications and customer engagement strategy, which will in turn inform the go-to-market approach and planning.
2. Cross-functional engagement and accountabilities
When I think of go-to-market, I think of a multi-team relay race with several athletes running at the same time, passing the baton and eventually converging into a single finish line. However if the right participants are not included and the roles are not clearly defined, the entire system collapses pretty quickly. A typical B2B software go-to-market initiative should bring together all stakeholders from across the business. Each functional representative needs to be actively engaged and their role and RACI (Responsibility, Accountability, Consulted and Informed) needs to be clearly defined, and a clear and consistent approach needs to be agreed upon and understood by all stakeholders. This prevents important tasks from slipping through the cracks, and at its extreme worse, finger pointing and failure.
3. Dedicated project management
While not every company is able to hire dedicated project or launch managers for their go-to-market initiatives, it is important to assign one individual to take clear ownership of driving the go-to-market execution forward. In absence of a dedicated project manager, this task often falls on the Product or Product Marketing manager's shoulders, resulting in a skewed perspective where activities get missed or dropped along the way. Great project management goes beyond tracking timelines and tasks and ensures strong communication and stakeholder engagement. It is the proverbial "herding of cats" but with a more strategic mindset. The stronger your project manager, the stronger your chances of success.
There are probably other view points on what makes or breaks go-to-market execution, but the points described above are ones that have been recurring themes I've observed across several organizations. Taking these three points into account should enable a start-up or a scale-up to propel their success through strong go-to-market execution.
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