The GTM audit: Moving you from the hot seat to the driver’s seat

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been unfairly blamed for a go-to-market (GTM) failure at your company. A product launch went south, and suddenly all fingers pointed at you?

I've been there.

Back when I was working in-house at a startup, my team was asked to lead the biggest product launch in company history. You'd think that would be great, right? Well, it wasn't. 

We did mountains of research. We talked to analysts, prospects, and customers. And we kept hearing the same thing: "No thanks." They thought the product was cool, sure, but they weren't willing to pay for it.

So, we put on our strategic hats and went to the C-suite with our findings. "Hey folks, we probably shouldn't launch this thing," we said. Their response? "We're launching it anyway."

You can probably guess what happened next. The product launch was a massive flop, and sales immediately turned around and pointed the finger at us. 

I really didn't like that feeling of being blamed for something I'd warned against. So, I decided to do everything in my power to avoid that situation moving forward. That's why I created the go-to-market audit framework, and that's what I want to share with you today – how to avoid the hot seat and take back control with a GTM audit.

The universal truth about startup GTM issues

To give you some context, I run Blue Manta Consulting, a product marketing agency. Over the past three years, we've worked with dozens of startups across North America and Europe, and here's what we've discovered: every single startup has go-to-market issues.

Interestingly, these issues tend to fall into similar buckets. While this isn't an exhaustive list, these are the patterns we see again and again:

• Disagreement over ICP: You know how it goes – your sales executives are pushing hard to go after enterprise accounts. "That's where the money is," they say. Meanwhile, you're sitting there with product management, looking at a product that's nowhere near ready for enterprise complexity. 
• Unclear ownership: Ownership sounds simple. The events team owns events. The partnerships team owns partnerships. But what happens when you have an event through partnerships? Who owns it? Who takes the lead? These overlaps muddy the waters.
• Uncooperative or even hostile teams: Let's be real here – it's usually sales or product causing the friction. I know we like to talk about sales being our BFFs, but sometimes that relationship is more complicated than we'd like to admit.
• General go-to-market misalignment: Maybe there are no internal feedback loops. Maybe internal communication is broken. Maybe teams are working in silos without understanding how their work impacts others.

Why product marketing always gets the blame

So, why is it that even though every startup has these go-to-market issues, product marketing gets blamed all the time?

It comes down to our unique position. You've probably seen that famous PMA graphic showing product marketing at the intersection of all these different groups. 

Because we sit at that crossroads, whenever there's either an unclear owner or multiple owners for something, the default assumption becomes "yeah, it's probably product marketing's fault."

It makes sense in a twisted way. We touch everything, so we must be responsible for everything, right? Wrong. But that perception persists.

The good news is you can take back control with a go-to-market audit.

What exactly is a go-to-market audit?

A GTM audit is a diagnostic process that uncovers the root causes of your go-to-market issues. It reveals all the holes, gaps, and dysfunctions across your GTM engine and helps you understand why your revenue engine is stalling.

Running one of these audits involves three key steps:

First, you need to ask the right questions. Not surface-level questions, but the deep, probing ones that get to the heart of your GTM challenges.

Second, you evaluate processes and people. It's not just about what's supposed to happen – it's about what actually happens and who's involved.

Third, you analyze data. Real, concrete data that tells you what's working and what isn't.

I find it helpful to think of a GTM audit like a diagnostic checklist. When you go to the doctor with some mysterious illness, they go through a systematic process of ruling out potential causes. We're doing the same thing, except with a go-to-market strategy.

What’s included in a GTM audit?

A thorough go-to-market audit breaks down into two main sections: foundations and execution.

Foundations tackle the core strategic elements:

• ICP and personas: Who are we targeting?
• Problem/solution: What is the problem we are solving for them?
• Positioning and messaging: How are we communicating our value?
• Pricing and packaging: How do we monetize the solution?
• Competition: What does the alternative landscape look like for our customers?

Execution examines how you bring that strategy to life:

• Sales pitch: Is the story our sales team tells in the room consistent with our positioning?
• Marketing channels and partnerships: How are we reaching the market?
• Sales enablement: Are we providing the team with the right tools to win?
• Product adoption: How are users engaging with the solution?
• Internal alignment: Are all our teams rowing in the same direction?

Deep dive into problem/solution alignment

A go-to-market audit is a hefty undertaking. I won’t go through every single element, but let me give you a deep dive into the problem/solution part to show you what it's like in practice.