What a Go-to-Market Strategy Decides

A plan for one specific job

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is the plan for getting a specific product to a specific group of customers, at a price they accept, through a route you can afford, in a way you can measure. It is narrower than a business plan and wider than a marketing plan.

A business plan covers the whole company: funding, operations, people and finance. A marketing plan covers campaigns and communication. A GTM strategy sits between them. It answers one question: how will this product reach the people who will buy it, again and again?

You need a GTM strategy whenever something new meets a market: a new product, an existing product entering a new segment, or an existing product entering a new country. Each of these changes at least one of the decisions below, so each needs its own plan.

The decisions depend on each other

The six decisions are not a menu. A change in one forces changes in others. Two examples show this.

Example 1: a cheap product with a field sales team. A company sells a scheduling tool for 30 US dollars (USD) a month. It hires experienced field salespeople who visit customers. Each visit costs about 400 USD in time and travel. Even if every visit closes a sale, the company needs more than a year of payments to recover the cost of one visit. Price and motion do not fit, so the plan fails, however good the product is.

Example 2: a complex product with self-service. A company sells a plant maintenance system that needs data migration and staff training. It offers only a website sign-up. Maintenance managers sign up, cannot set it up alone, and leave. Complexity and motion do not fit, so the plan fails in the other direction.

A sound GTM strategy is one where all six answers support each other.