5 questions to GTM + executive alignment
Turn skepticism into buy-in with these strategic prompts
Spring 2021: I’m at Refine Labs and am 2 quarters in with an absolute dream logo of a client.
Handraisers are up
Pipeline is up
Revenue is up
Things couldn’t be going any better. Then I got the email that every marketer dreads…
Sponsor: Noble
I've always been skeptical of customer references. I know the company cherrypicks one of their customers who will tell me exactly what I want to hear. So like most buyers, I turn instead to my peers and ask them for their recommendations.
This trend goes beyond me. Today, most buyers buy the same products our colleagues, peers, mentors, and thought leaders that we trust use. And this is also backed up by data:
👉 82% of B2B buyers seek advice from people they know before buying
👉 50% end up buying the same product their colleagues use
And this is why I’m excited about what Noble is building. They’re changing the word-of-mouth and social proof game by allowing prospects to see which members of their network actually use the product. It’s all about giving buyers the power to connect directly with customers they know and trust, making every decision easier.
“I can’t prove to leadership that our recent growth is the result of working together and they want to pull the plug.”
Mind you, this came from my POC there who was fully aligned to the strategy, understood the timelines, and intuitively knew things were strongly correlated to our efforts. They just couldn’t “prove” it.
Fast forward to the end of 2024, and this is still the number one thing that modern marketers and GTM practitioners come up against with leadership, board members, their sales team, and more.
So for any of you who have, or will, come up against this scenario during your career, here are 5 questions I’ve learned to counter this with and keep the forward momentum going with the new + improved GTM strategy.
1. “Would you rather…”
Would you rather:
✅ Hit your lead goal…
❌ …but miss your revenue goal?
OR
❌ Miss your lead goal…
✅ …but hit your revenue goal?
If they answer anything but the second option, run…fast. You’re on a sinking ship.
The purpose of this question is to get the team to explicitly state what is more important at the end of the day - leads or revenue. Remember: leads are not goals, they are a leading indicator to revenue.
2. “Tell me about the last purchase you made for the business”
“What brought the product/service to your attention?”
”How did you go about the path to purchase?”
”Did you already have a shortlist of options in mind?”
The purpose of this question is to get the individual(s) to verbally share the winding, partially untrackable, non-linear journey that led them to the purchase.
From there, you’re helping them understand that they probably already had a few options in mind from day 1 (aka demand creation was successful) and that many of the activities that led to that product/service making it to the top of their list weren’t “traditional” transactional marketing efforts, but were the result of a well-oiled GTM ecosystem at work.
3. “Is it more important to…”
Is it more important to:
❌ Assign credit/value to a department/channel/touchpoint?
✅ Understand what happens if a department/channel/touchpoint does OR does not occur as part of the buyers’ journey + the associated outcome?
We’re so caught up in trying to justify the ROI of every. single. thing. that the GTM team does that it results in over-analysis, cutting efforts that can’t be measured but are highly effective, and doubling down on efforts that can be measured but aren’t effective.
The purpose of this question is to zoom out on the purpose of attribution and evaluating the true efficacy of our GTM efforts. Successful GTM strategies don’t operate with an “additive” mindset, i.e. “what happens if we hire 2 more BDRs?” or “what happens if we add $10k more to Google Ads?”. Successful GTM strategies operate by leveraging the departments/channels/touchpoints as force multipliers for one another.
The most successful companies have built GTM ECOSYSTEMS. They use attribution and data to understand the interplay between all of their GTM efforts vs. trying to understand which singular channel they should be investing more/less in because of an attribution model assigning credit to it.
4. “What happens if we continue doing what we’ve been doing?”
“Are we limiting the growth levers available to us?”
”Are we accounting for performance degradation as this becomes less effective?”
”Are we missing out on future opportunities?”
Humans are wired to avoid change and discomfort. Why go into the unknown when we already have something that’s “good enough?”
Any time you hear the words “it’s working good enough” from a leader about a strategy or tactic that you know should be doing better, that’s an indicator that business growth won’t be what it could be. A true leader recognizes that GTM strategies and the market are CONSTANTLY evolving. This is why so many of the great business executives, leaders, and GTM practitioners have a growth mindset with a dash of imposter syndrome - they recognize that there’s so much out there that they don’t know. The difference between a good and bad leader here is if they embrace this knowledge gap by diving in to learn more about it or by digging their feet in and saying they know everything and their way is best.
5. “What’s the most important part of an orchestra?”
Go ask a conductor of an orchestra this question and they’ll look at you like you’re absolutely mad. But it’s a great question to ask execs and leadership to get them to see the parallel to their GTM team.
”Is it the conductor?”
“Is it one of the sections? Strings? Woodwinds? Brass?”
”Is it one of the instruments within a section? Violin? Flute? Trumpet?”
“Now, which department is most important in driving revenue? Sales? BDRs? Marketing? Partners?”
”Is it one of the channels within a department? Paid search? Email? Organic social? Podcast? Events?”
The beauty that comes from an orchestra is all of the different, individual instruments and sounds coming together that forms one harmonious output. And that is exactly how an effective GTM operates as well.
See you next Saturday,
Sam