When people think about going to market, sales and marketing tend to come to mind first because they produce revenue. But there’s another side to the go-to-market coin.

Every company is in the business of growing and therefore every CEO is faced with a similar problem: the strategy that fueled your company’s growth from zero to $25M is very different from the one that will take you to $25M to $100M, or from $100M to $500M and beyond.

Regardless of your stage, your go-to-market strategy is the foundation for growth. If the pipeline is drying up, if conversion, renewal or NPS rates are sinking, and even if staff turnover is spiking, these are leading indicators that your go-to-market strategy needs a tune-up.

I wish I knew this 15 years ago, but I had to learn it the hard way when I helped to grow a company from $30M to $2B. When I joined LLR Partners in 2021, I was determined to use that hard-won knowledge to help our portfolio companies recognize the need to make changes, sharpen their go-to-market plans and support rapid growth.

Here’s the harsh reality: Many companies lack a strong go-to-market strategy because their CEOs are too busy managing growth in other parts of the business and reacting to markets to take a step back and think critically about core go-to-market processes. Even if they make the time, they may not focus on the right areas because there’s very little consensus around what actually goes into a go-to-market strategy.

In this article, I’ll correct some of the misperceptions that can limit the effectiveness of a go-to-market strategy and offer a template for correcting the blind spots that inhibit growth.

For most companies, it’s not the product itself that’s the problem: it’s a lack of awareness that the product is the foundation of the go-to-market strategy.

A Go-to-Market Strategy Needs to Go Beyond “Sales and Marketing”

When people think about going to market, sales and marketing tend to come to mind first because they produce revenue. But there’s another side to the go-to-market coin that is equally important and frequently overlooked: product, market selection and product positioning.

For most companies, it’s not the product itself that’s the problem: it’s a lack of awareness that the product is the foundation of the go-to-market strategy. As a result, companies often take a shortcut directly to sales and marketing without clearly articulating the product’s value proposition. When I work with LLR portfolio companies to refine their go-to-market strategies, this is where I begin the conversation:

  • What market are they trying to reach with that product?
  • How does it serve the market they’re trying to reach?
  • How do we describe those products?
  • How do we frame the problems those products allow our customers to solve?

Only once you have that foundation in place does it makes sense to start thinking about how to distribute your product to the right audience through sales and marketing efforts. And to do that effectively, it takes a true cross-functional effort between your leaders of sales, marketing, product management and, in some cases, engineering.

Align with your Business Strategy

The go-to-market strategy is often developed as a stand-alone plan for market growth, but it must be closely aligned with your business strategy. It needs to take into account how your business operates, how you want to position yourself against competitors, the revenue goals you have set, and the company’s three-year plan. If these two strategies are not aligned, it will result in a lack of clarity and coordination throughout the company.  Your sales and marketing teams may end up pursuing goals that don’t support—and may end up undermining—the company vision.

This in-depth go-to-market exercise is aimed at deconstructing and demystifying realities while providing companies with bite-size topics to consider and clarify.

A Go-to-Market Strategy is Complex and Multidimensional

When I work with portfolio companies on their go-to-market strategy, they are often taken aback by the breadth and depth of the process. It’s such a robust topic that it can seem overwhelming, so it’s important to tackle with a programmatic and methodical self-evaluation. At LLR, we examine 11 dimensions, including:

  • Marketing and demand generation activities
  • The buying process
  • Product positioning, including value messaging and customer ROI
  • Structure and operations of the sales organization
  • Customer lifecycle
  • Talent management
  • Technology stack

This in-depth go-to-market exercise is aimed at deconstructing and demystifying realities while providing companies with bite-size topics to consider and clarify.

As we go through this process with companies, we perform a deep dive to unpack each dimension in detail. Our companies are asked to answer a consistent set of questions designed to collect relevant information and uncover any gaps in the existing systems. Then we identify the priority areas that have the potential to deliver the most impact toward achieving company goals. This allows the company to sequence the things that really move the needle and results in a value creation plan to accelerate growth and improve efficiencies.

 

llr go to market strategy template preview

Email us for a copy of the full GTM evaluation template.

 

The Go-to-Market Strategy Needs to be Measurable

For each dimension of a go-to-market strategy, there should be three or four metrics that allow companies to gauge how they’re performing against the goal. Once you’ve identified your areas of focus, you can translate your goals into data points. From that point onward, it’s about maintaining focus on those priority areas and checking in on those numbers regularly.

 

gtm strategy metrics

If you can move the needle for each of those dimensions by addressing the relevant impact areas, you have a go-to-market strategy that is effective, clear, and designed to drive measurable growth for the company.

Here’s the bottom line.

The go-to-market strategy is at the heart of every company. A good one can have a transformative impact, but most companies don’t have a strategy in place that’s broad and deep enough to cover every dimension with the potential to unlock growth. To strengthen your strategy, go beyond marketing and sales to examine the fundamentals of your product and market positioning, and make sure the go-to-market and business strategies are aligned.

Go deep, deconstruct your key processes, your market and your product, and ask yourself the tough questions. The results will show you what kind of growth trajectory your company is truly capable of achieving.