What are the aspects of operationalizing a Go-To-Market plan that might prove to be most risky?

One of the biggest risks of operationalizing a GTM plan is the lack of a common understanding of the time it takes to do good marketing work, internally. Marketing shouldn't slow down product; but at the same time, the more time and advance notice marketing has, the more we're able to enrich, adapt, and customize a GTM plan appropriately. A GTM playbook is a best-case scenario and a guideline which has to be adapted rapidly and practically to the lead time available. The marketing team for WordP ...Read More

This is a great question because, as every PMM knows, each launch holds a surprise hiccup. If you can mitigate as much risk as possible before that time comes, then you’ll be successful in solving those last minute snafus. Assuming your marketing brief and GTM plan are finalized and approved, a successful GTM execution comes down to organization, stakeholder alignment and (the hardest one!) seeing around corners. Here are the riskiest components in each of those categories and how to mitigate th ...Read More

There are probably three major questions to answer when operationalizing a GTM plan: What is the governance? Meaning who is in charge? What is the division of labor? Who holds what decision rights (e.g., decide, influence, escalate)? When do you scale? There are two broad options: launch-and-learn or test-and-scale. In a launch-and-learn model, scaling happens first as the commercialization comes online across the enterprise at once. Learning then occurs after rollout and across the enterprise. ...Read More

I'll answer this from the aspect of a GTM plan for pricing and packaging changes. The top 3 areas to identify and mitigate risk around include: 1) RISK: Did you get the Price/Packaging right?   Does the price and what's included in the packaging resonate with the buyer?  Is the price point in the ball park of what the customer is looking for and relative to alternative solutions? MITIGATION PLAN: Get input from customers, prospects, analysts and advisors in advance of the change and GTM roll-out ...Read More

Making assumptions about pricing and not vetting them with sales VERY early in the process Assuming that its a 'handoff' to sales enablement vs in reality its an ongoing partnership where PMM needs to lean in quite a bit to help Not factoring in global requirements VERY early on and discovering late in the game that its not just a 'localization' issue that will handled by the 'local' teams Not factoring in migration or EOL requirements and just focusing on the new, shiny products. Customers have ...Read More

Operationalizing a go-to-market strategy is not for the faint of heart. There’s a lot that happens between writing the doc (see narrative above) or slides and executing the strategy in the market. Here’s my list of the riskiest elements and how I solve for them. First, team alignment. In my experience, aligning the team is the trickiest element because the amount of stakeholder voices expands seemingly exponentially the closer you are to launching your GTM activities. This is just as true for th ...Read More

The biggest risk I typically see in GTM strategies is that it doesnt work. Somewhere, something was missed, or the messaging, product, etc. doesnt resonate with prospects and customers. ' I have found that your webiste is a great place to experiment to ensure this doesnt happen. It has historical data to anaylze various aspects of your GTM strategy including verticals, personas, messaging, sales motions, customer marketing, etc. Training the org is another big risk. If there is a new revenue-dri ...Read More

To me it starts with right people to target (ICP) and the right message. I've talked about ICP in other answers so for this I want to talk about clarity and simplicity in messaging. If you're not maniacally committed to simplicity and clarity in your marketing messaging, you're going to confuse your customers and prospects. Think about it: You spend 30-60 hours a week (or more!) thinking about your company, its product, and mission—probably even in your off-hours if you're like me. 🙃 But your cu ...Read More

Cross-functional collaboration, alignment, and execution are the most challenging aspects of operationalizing a GTM plan. Challenge: X-functional collaboration Solution: PMMs must ensure that a cross-functional team with clear roles and responsibilities supports every major GTM plan vs. chasing for support for every plan. A RACI framework will ensure your GTM plan is cohesive and connected across teams (e.g., your campaign will seamlessly drive traffic to your landing page, and leads captured th ...Read More

Almost every launch has something unexpected arise not matter how much you plan. To me, the riskiest items are the ones that might be harder to change or adjust post-launch. Making sure there is product market fit is make or break. By that I mean, the buyer you've identified has a clear pain point and the product that was build addresses that pain point. I've seen launches across different companies struggle because a product was built before fully understanding the buyer need. Lack of alignment ...Read More

A few things come to mind— You get the audience wrong. You’ve built something you think will be useful, but your marketing and messaging isn’t tailored to the right audience, so adoption wanes. You get the pricing wrong. I think every pricing change will feel like you’ve gotten it “wrong” because you’ll hear the loudest feedback from what may be a minority of your buyers. But if you haven’t tested your pricing in smaller groups or done adequate interviews to get the packaging, model, price point ...Read More

Great question. There could be many reasons why a GTM plan is deemed risky. Perhaps because a lot is hinging on a product launch, or a risky marketing campaign and the riskiest of all - you as a PMM are not completely on board with the product. (The later should not happen but it has happened to many us, I assume) IMO, the key is to  1. Over-communicate: Define a DRI, make sure every stakeholder is involved, follow a decision-making model such as the one I mentioned above (RACI model).  2. Plan ...Read More