Go-to-market strategies are successful when it’s timed right. Businesses must plan every step with minute detail. And that is daunting

That is why we will create a checklist for you that walks through the steps necessary for a smooth GTM strategy.

The checklist will have details that an organization needs to navigate the strategy. And it is designed to allow for pivots.

The checklist is vital for a cohesive cross-organizational effort.

Go-to-market consists of a lot of moving parts. Many teams have to be involved in the conception and then the execution of the strategy.

The checklist brings the GTM team, the stakeholders, and C-execs on the same page. Creating a smooth and seamless process.

Missing a beat or facing roadblocks during the process is not optimal for the strategy. This can cause delays and missed opportunities that could have been capitalized on. This means the GTM checklist has to be conditional and prepared for contingencies.

A comprehensive checklist is made of two parts:

1. Ideation
2. Execution

Ideation

The ideation part takes into account the internal challenges the team will face and will help simplify the process for stakeholders.

It will prepare for conditions that might arise. You should try playing with the framework; we will make it agile and customizable to help organizations follow their unique pathways.

Execution

The execution part is for the market entry. It will deal with what is happening vs what ought to happen. It should answer these three questions: –

1. Is the strategy going as planned?
2. Is it performing better than planned?
3. Is the performance unsatisfactory?

While the framework’s basis is easy, the challenge comes in creating enough space for growth and pivots. All the while keeping stakeholders in the know-how.

What is in the GTM Checklist template?

The two checklists are designed to help you follow a path and increase the probability of your GTM strategy landing with the right customer.

And yes, it is about probability, which means there is a chance you may fail. That is the exact reason why pivots in the checklist need to be naturally incorporated.

Many organizations fall into the trap of thinking that GTM is just demand generation and ABM campaigns.

Misconceptions of GTM

Before you get into the checklist, let’s clear one thing up: GTM is a full-organization strategy. It is not just marketing; it is not demand generation and ABM packaged together. That’s a part of the larger whole.

Many products fail to enter the market because their eventual sale is positioned as a marketing or sales problem. However, everyone needs at least one person from each team to ensure the process aligns with the reality of your products and services.

If marketing and sales don’t grasp the differentiation of the product, the market won’t respond the way you want to.

Implementing the GTM Framework using the checklist

In our article on roadmaps, we discussed how roadmaps are essentially visualizations of strategies. They are living documents that change with time and ideas.

They are vast. And within these documents are nestled roadmaps. The GTM checklist is one of them.

It will grow, and the GTM team must keep it lean and clear.

GTM Checklist Part-1

The ideation of your GTM checklist begins with the ICP and data-gathering around it.

ICP

1. The crux of GTM success is research. That means knowing and investing heavily in audience and account research. Including identifying key stakeholders in an account.
2. Creating a criterion for segmentation. While some tools can create segmentation automatically, a good practice is to have conditions for it. That way, you can be in control of your campaigns.

Product/Service Testing

1. Through enough research, you must know what your users want by this point. However, through market feedback, there is only so much your teams can understand. People’s needs change, and it can be hard to track them down.
2. Your GTM must account for real-time feedback from some controlled group. Slack did this by providing its prototype free to friends and family and using the feedback to iterate.
3. The checklist must have space for this feedback, and the timeline should account for it. While Slack gave it 6 months, your teams can choose their own pace.
4. What feedback can you realistically incorporate within the launch time, including time for marketing campaigns? But with the right strategy and alignment, marketing will be running simultaneously and adapting.

Marketing Messages

1. Marketing needs to reflect the value your team aims to provide. And it should be clear. Each segment should receive personalized messages based on their journey and what the product/service does for them.
2. Based on the ICP, your GTM teams need to identify high-fit accounts and the stakeholders involved and tailor the message to each key player in the buying committee.
3. This is usually done by asking yourself: What will this X person want, and what does our solution do for them?
4. Are your marketing messages working, and are pivots necessary for greater impact? And what channels can be used for it?
5. Running multivariate testing and looking at your competitors here is one of the best steps you can take.

Objections

1. Your checklist is an information board for every stakeholder and POC. And as such, it must prepare for objections and changes. While alignment is seamless in theory, real life is an executional mess.
2. The checklist and timeline must account for this- any delays because of objections should ideally take place in the ideation part. Though objections will arise in execution, it is good to shift the probability here.
3. Who is objecting? Why are they objecting, and at which step?
4. Considering these factors will strengthen the GTM campaign.

GTM Checklist – Part 2

Execution is where the excitement begins. You will get to see your product/service unfold and watch in real-time as customers interact with it.

Pre-Launch Prediction

1. What are the sales numbers you’re hoping for?
2. Have you gathered sentiment through demos or beta-testing?
3. What does the pre-launch data say about the product, and are any changes in the strategy necessary?

The Marketing

1. Here’s where the notion of GTM being ABM and Demand Generation comes from. It is one of the most vital parts- that’s why it gets conflated with GTM.
2. Yes, you must drive demand. But importantly, does your messaging grab attention and communicate value to its core customers?
3. Have you picked an effective partner channel to distribute your content, and what does real-time monitoring show you?
4. Is the core buyer interested, and through what measures are you tracking the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns?
5. What does sales have to say about the conversations they’re having and the effect of marketing on the core buyer?
6. Through the collection of data, has marketing identified adjacent frontiers to market to?
7. What is the CAC: CLV, and does the spend justify the cost behind it?

The Sales

1. Are the conversations your sales teams have with the prospects effortless, and what changes should your GTM team make based on them, if any?
2. Identification of any new market behavior through conversations or pain points that are only apparent through on-call conversations.
3. Are there any specific bottlenecks that the teams are facing, and what are they, and where did they originate?
4. Are the sales figures satisfactory?

The Customer

1. The checklist should be used to understand the product’s effect on the customer.
2. What type of conversations are your sales teams having with the core customers, and are they responding to the product as you hoped they would?
3. Have you identified why they are not buying from your competitors, and have you distinguished why you’re the better choice?
4. Do they feel or accept that?
5. Has your GTM team understood the perspective of your customers and their needs, and are there any pivots necessary after the product has hit the market?

GTM Summary and Future Steps

1. The checklist, ideally, should account for the final sales figure and the cost of the GTM campaign.
2. Identify KPIs that can be used in the future and derive new insights from them.
3. Understand and convey the successes and pitfalls of the current GTM strategy. Pivot if necessary or if available for time.

Why organizations need GTM? (It cannot be an afterthought)

In most organizations, they don’t have a defined process for GTM and lack a plan to do so.

Even though, when done right, GTM is a strategy that pays in dividends, organizations shirk away from the complexity of it. Of course, managing GTM is no small feat; it just has too many moving parts.

There are trade-offs to be considered. However, the saturation point of the product/service industry has made GTM crucial for success. Cross-departmental work is the stuff of winners, even if it requires all-hands on deck.

The checklist, even though simple, will empower you to think more widely. It has gaps, yes. But those are intentional, and it reads like a document for a reason: to help you make your process.