GTM is Hard.

5 Valleys of GTM Death

GTM is hard.

And you’re never done. They even call buildings buildings when they have already been built.

Anyway, back to the topic.

There are 5 areas where companies find themselves in quite often.

1) They can CREATE but not MARKET.
You have a great product but the market isn’t receptive to it.

2) You can MARKET but can’t SELL.
You have leads coming in at the top of the funnel but having trouble closing those deals.

3) You can SELL but can’t DELIVER.
Customers are having trouble reaching value - whether we oversold something or implementation takes a long time or is too complex - and it’s hard to justify why though bought your product

4) You can DELIVER but not RENEW.
You can get customers live but struggle showing the ROI of your solution. Becoming a nice-to-have or sitting in the Competition Zone or Instability Zone (DM me if you want to see the ROI framework) will leave a leaky revenue funnel.

5) You can RENEW but not EXPAND.
Your customers are getting value but you struggle expanding their spend with you. Whether that’s because of packaging (giving everything away) or you don’t have incremental offerings, customers will be the bulk of your growth as you get bigger. You need to respond to this before it’s too late.

It’s great talking to customers about these topics because it gives you the opportunity to name your enemy and make progress against the issue. Moving as quickly as you can out of these Valleys of GTM Death can make or break a CRO/CMO/CEO.

I recommend companies review these every quarter. As you evolve as a company and the market shifts, you want to keep your pulse on the current state.

What do you do quarterly to make sure you’re focusing on the right things?

I’m a GTM OS certified partner. I work with B2B SaaS companies to provide guidance and advice on optimizing their GTM function to define strategy and connect the strategy to execution. DM me for details.