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Unifying GTM is not just a fad: interest is up 4x in 4 years
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This week’s research note includes:
GTM Research: The rise in interest in a holistic approach to GTM that crosses silos
GTM Poll of the Week: Who owns GTM at your company?
GTM Problem of the Week: What should my first GTM hire look like?
GTM Research:
A weekly deep-dive into new GTM research and insights
We're approaching the 2 year anniversary of our beloved catchphrase (we love it so much we even have it on t-shirts). When people first see it, they chuckle but ultimately enthusiastically agree!
For newcomers to our community, this might be your first time hearing this, but for our long-time members, you know what’s coming!
This slogan has become a driving force for everyone in leadership who has lived through blame pointed at one functional area when a company is experiencing pipeline, sales, or churn issues.
It's so simple and obvious, yet it’s the answer to the finger pointing that has happened in countless meetings in your career.
Why didn't that perfect marketing campaign succeed? Must be marketing’s fault.
How did we sell half as much last year with twice the resources and more products? Our sales team must be terrible.
Every customer said they wanted this feature—so why isn’t anyone using it? Product has some explaining to do.
Customer churn has increased in SMB. What is customer success doing wrong?
The real answer to each of these frustrating questions is simple:
You have a Go-to-Market Problem and so you need a Go-to-Market solution. Trying to fix each of these problems in isolation is ill advised.
Now of course, at GTM Partners, we believe GTM is a holistic strategy that transcends any one department, but are we alone?
Is GTM a fad?
Is it just a new label for the same old processes that we'll manage as we always have, or is there something more transformative happening here?
We looked at signals from a few sources to better understand how much traction GTM has gained in the past few years.
Google Traffic for “Go-to-Market Strategy” Has Quadrupled
Since 2020, we have seen a significant increase in interest in the idea of better understanding Go-to-Market Strategy.
As we rolled into the economic slowdown in mid 2022, we saw peak interest in the topic of Go-to-Market strategy with an ongoing and steady heartbeat of interest since then.
Job Postings
As of May 30, 2024, there are over 1,700 jobs postings active on LinkedIn with “GTM” or “Go-to-Market” in the title across the US, Canada, Europe and APAC.
These roles are skewed towards B2B organizations, and are most common in the US, followed by EMEA, APAC and Canada.
In some cases, these roles appear to be evolutions of existing roles:
GTM Enablement
Manager of Product Strategy and GTM
However, some roles seem to be clarifications of roles that people were likely taking on, but not necessarily with the clarity offered by the new titles:
Manager of GTM Operations
GTM Business Operations Lead
Founding GTM Sales Lead (more on this in our ask and answer section)
Significant Shifts in GTM Ownership
Two years ago, when we asked who owns GTM, 77% of respondents said “Marketing.” Yikes!
When we asked again in March 2024, only 24% said Marketing and 43% said the CEO. Getting better!
Here’s more data from the State of Go-to-Market 2023 Report from the Go-to-Market Alliance (formerly the Product Marketing Alliance).
In 2022, 81% of respondents said Product Marketers were in charge of Go-to-Market. However, in 2023, only half of the respondents still see Product Marketing as the owner. To be fair, this is a survey of Product Marketers, so of course they think they’re in charge! But at least they're moving in the right direction.
What is equally interesting is that product marketers don’t all agree on who the owner of GTM should be. This is a good example of the confusion around GTM that exists in companies today. CRO, CMO, CEO and a newer title of Go-to-Market Director or Manager are all under consideration.
In Conclusion
At GTM Partners, we're more confident than ever that Go-to-Market is here to stay. Especially when it can transcend and unify the silos of Sales, Marketing, CS, RevOps, and Product.
Don’t look at it like adding more cooks to the kitchen. Look at it as a way to harness the energy and expertise of all these teams and point it towards efficient growth.
By finding organized and constructive ways to involve the whole GTM team (for example, using our GTM Operating System), we can ensure all our GTM teams are resourced and aligned, allowing you to drive your business forward.
The GTM Operating System approaches Go-to-Market from a perspective of strategy and execution that transcends teams and silos. Sign up today to get your team trained and certified.
GTM Poll of the Week
GTM Problem of the Week
Send us your most pressing GTM problem, and you’ll get a short session with an analyst to answer it!
Dear GTM Partners,
As a founder, I've been successfully handling connections, relationships, and sales, but it's slowing down other areas of our business that I need to focus on so we can continue to grow.
I'm looking to hire my first Go-to-Market employee. Should I hire for sales, marketing, or a Go-to-Market generalist?
Founder in California
Dear Founder in California,
For your first non-founder business development hire, start by understanding how you build your pipeline and drive revenue today.
Identify tasks you can delegate without disrupting your workflow.
Remember, this person won't be your model for scaling sales or marketing — they'll be your partner in crime, helping you test Go-to-Market approaches and setting the stage for your future hires.
It is for this reason that considering a Go-to-Market generalist may give you the chance to begin finding patterns of success in your current business development processes. Some traits to consider as you go through the hiring process:
Team Chemistry: This is not the hire you make to challenge you. You will be spending a lot of time together and ensuring you can build a system where you can anticipate what the other will be doing and how to back each other up through the customer development lifecycle.
Cross-funnel Generalists: They won’t be your top demand gen marketer or SDR, but that's okay. We're not seeking specialists. We need someone with an entrepreneurial spirit who can handle a variety of tasks—social marketing one day, writing emails the next, hosting a webinar, and joining sales calls. They might not excel at everything, but they’ll get the job done, helping you build your pipeline and close essential deals, giving you the space to innovate and improve your solutions.
A Doer: At this moment in your company’s evolution, you need to find someone who can take on tasks and move through them quickly. Because you are looking for someone with a variety of experience and expertise, it is natural that they will have led teams in the past as they took on more responsibility. Be wary of ambitious leaders looking to make their mark and grow a large team. You want someone experienced enough to know how things should be done but still hands-on and ready to do the work themselves.
An easy-button-finder: Right now, you need to find and deploy as many shortcuts as possible to test various processes and see what works. Your next hire should build, test, and adapt programs quickly. They should be skilled at finding and managing contractors or freelancers, leveraging cost-effective technologies, and trading mutually beneficial favors instead of always spending cash.
Worth noting: this answer will be different for startups, scale-ups, and established enterprises. A founder looking for her first GTM hire needs very different things than a multinational, billion dollar platform looking to unify GTM.
Take the MOVE assessment to assess where you are on the GTM maturity curve so you can hire accordingly.
GTM News
What we’re reading, watching, listening to, and paying attention to this week.
Share your thoughts with Demand Gen Report for their 2024 B2B Buyer Survey
From Heinz Marketing: Building the Ideal Customer Experience
From Demandbase: Leveraging Emotional Intelligence in B2B Sales
GTM Events
A list of upcoming events of interest to GTM professionals
June 6, Boston: Pavilion CRO Summit
June 7, Boston: GTM Made Simple Roadshow
June 10-11, San Francisco: Ascent’s GTM Mastery Summit West
June 18, Virtual: Death to the Old Inbound and Outbound Playbooks - How to Fix Your Pipeline
July 9-11, London: GTM EMEA from Pavilion
September 18-20, Boston: INBOUND 2024
Are you a B2B company between $10-100M in revenue who needs help with your GTM strategy and execution? We’d love to chat.
We are excited to share an announcement soon about a big upcoming project and event series we have planned. Stay tuned for an announcement on June 11!
Bryan and Sarah will also be in Boston this week at the TechTarget HQ, hope to see you there!
Love,
The GTM Partners Team
