Look, I’ve seen enough startup corpses to fill a cemetery. And you know what killed most of them? Not bad products. Not a lack of funding. They drowned in their own strategic planning documents. HubSpot just published another one of those comprehensive guides to go-to-market strategies. It’s 10,000 words of frameworks, templates, and theory. And sure, there’s good stuff in there. But let me translate it into something you can actually use without an MBA and a consulting budget.
The Problem With Most GTM Strategies
They’re built backwards. Everyone starts with personas and buyer journeys, and value matrices. They spend three months mapping the perfect customer before they’ve had a single conversation with an actual human being who might buy their product. Meanwhile, their runway is burning, and their competitors are already selling. Here’s what actually happens: You build something. You think you know who needs it. You’re probably wrong. The market tells you who actually wants it. Then you adjust. That’s it. That’s the strategy.
What You Actually Need (In Order)
1. A Problem Worth Solving
Not a problem, you think it is interesting. Not a problem that sounds impressive at cocktail parties. A problem that makes someone reach for their credit card. The test is simple: When you describe what you do, does the other person say “oh that’s interesting” or do they say “holy shit, can I buy that?” If it’s the former, you don’t have a product-market fit problem. You have a product problem.
2. Someone Who Will Pay To Solve It
Notice I said “will pay”, not “should pay”, or “might pay” or “would pay if we just explained it better.” Stop trying to educate markets. It’s expensive and slow. Find people who already know they have the problem and are actively looking for solutions.
3. A Way To Reach Them
This is where most guides go off the rails with talk of omnichannel strategies and integrated campaigns and blah blah blah. Here’s the truth: Go where your customers already are. LinkedIn for B2B. Google for high-intent searches. Reddit for technical communities. Your aunt’s Facebook is for literally everyone else. Pick ONE channel. Master it. Then expand.
The Four Models (And Which One You Should Pick)
HubSpot breaks down four sales models. Let me save you some time:
Self-Service: Your product costs less than $100/month and explains itself. Think Grammarly, not enterprise software.
Inside Sales: Your product costs $500-$5000/month and needs some hand-holding. This is where most B2B SaaS lives.
Field Sales: Your product costs $50K+ and involves long sales cycles, multiple stakeholders, and at least one golf outing. Only do this if you have to.
Channel Model: Other people sell your product. Sounds great in theory. In practice, it’s like herding cats who don’t care if you succeed.
Starting out? Inside sales. Every time.
The Content Marketing Trap
Yes, you need content. No, you don’t need a 12-month editorial calendar and a content strategist and a taxonomy system.
You need three things:
1. Something that shows up when people Google their problem
2. Something that proves you understand their pain
3. Something that makes it easy to buy or talk to you
Everything else is procrastination disguised as strategy. Write one good article that ranks for a problem your customers search for. That will do more than fifty thought leadership pieces about innovation, disruption, and digital transformation.
Everyone wants faster sales. Here’s what works:
What Actually Shortens Sales Cycles
Talk to decision-makers first. Stop wasting time with users who love your product but can’t buy it. Find the person with budget authority and start there.
Kill bad leads faster. The best salespeople don’t have the most leads. They have the best qualifications. If someone’s not going to buy, find out in week one, not month three.
Remove friction everywhere. Every form field is a chance for someone to bail. Every “let’s schedule a call to discuss next steps” is another week lost. Make it easier to give you money.
The Metrics That Matter
Forget vanity metrics. Here’s what you actually need to track:
1. Customer Acquisition Cost: What it costs to get a customer
2. Lifetime Value: What that customer is worth
3. Time to First Value: How fast customers see results
4. Churn Rate: How many customers leave
If CAC is higher than LTV, you’re out of business. Everything else is just details.
The Real Strategy
Your go-to-market strategy should fit on one page. Here’s the template:
We sell [product] to [specific customer] who has [specific problem].
They find us through [channel].
We close them with [sales model].
We know it’s working when [metric improves].
If you can’t fill that out in fifteen minutes, you don’t have a strategy problem. You have a clarity problem.
Stop Planning, Start Selling
The best GTM strategy is the one you actually execute. Not the one with the prettiest slide deck or the most comprehensive framework. Launch something. Talk to customers. Adjust based on what happens, not what you predicted would happen. Every hour you spend planning is an hour you’re not selling. And selling is how you learn what actually works. The market doesn’t care about your buyer journey maps. It cares about whether you solve a problem worth paying for.
So stop reading guides (including this one) and go talk to a customer.
Keith Nallawalla runs Good Bad Marketing, where he tells uncomfortable truths about what actually works in marketing. No theory. No BS. Just results.