Product, sales, and marketing teams are increasingly tasked with launching new products more quickly and with smaller budgets and teams. That dynamic can create significant challenges for go-to-market (GTM) strategies and the collaboration needed for success.
However, Mural’s recent survey data reveals that while GTM teams feel confident in their collaboration efforts, a critical issue lurks beneath the surface: misalignment. We found that 85% of teams are often working toward different goals, leading to reduced retention, lower conversion, slower time to market, and more frustration.
These effects can completely derail GTM motions and put marketing and sales leaders in the hot seat. Here, I will explain why they should care about getting everyone rowing in the same direction and the myriad benefits when they do.
Alignment Improves Speed to Market
Alignment is the most important driver of speed to market. It means that GTM teams operate with a shared understanding of goals, ideal customer profile (ICP), timelines, and key activities. This unified approach minimizes the friction and rework that delay product launches.
Take content creation for example. When teams aren’t aligned, marketing content or sales decks suffer from multiple and lengthy revisions, with some team members requesting drastic changes in direction. Sometimes, these changes can feel directionless as well. All of this rework wastes precious time and slows down the entire launch process. When teams are aligned from the start, marketing collateral is developed faster and with less rework.
Beyond content, a synchronized launch plan that considers everything from marketing campaigns to sales enablement ensures all activities support mutual GTM goals. When teams are in-sync all the way through to launch, they can also establish a strong initial market presence and resonate better with their target customer.
Alignment Increases Conversion and Retention
Alignment is also crucial for conversion and retention, with the ICP serving as the foundation to maximize both. The ICP details who your best-fit customers are, their pain points, and how your product solves them. But there’s a problem – our data shows that 3 out of 4 GTM teams say effective customer engagement and experience is a major challenge.
To overcome this challenge, sales and marketing should work together to develop a visual representation of the ICP. This exercise facilitates discussion and agreement on target customers, their journey, relevant content for each stage, and key messages to get them to buy and renew.
When GTM teams operate from a shared ICP, they can attract higher-quality leads with targeted messaging that aligns with the narrative that the sales team needs to sell – and that aligns with the product’s actual capabilities. The result is a more cohesive customer experience, leading to improved conversion rates and shorter sales cycles.
Alignment from the outset ensures realistic expectations are set and met, minimizing friction and frustration throughout the customer lifecycle. Customer success teams then spend less time addressing dissatisfied customers and spend more time helping them get more and better use from your product.
Read More:Â SalesTechStar Interview with Eric Willcox, CRO at Precisely
Alignment Improves Morale
A late-stage shift in strategy can be demotivating for any team involved in a product launch.
When GTM teams are aligned from the outset, these disruptive last-minute changes can typically be avoided. This reduces frustration, minimizes wasted time and effort, and fosters a greater sense of confidence in adhering to the GTM plan.
Alignment also minimizes the “blame game” that occurs when product launches don’t go as well as planned. It creates not only a shared understanding of who the company is selling to, but also creates a shared sense of what each team needs to be successful. Improved team morale keeps teams happier and focused on their shared goal while contributing to a greater sense of accomplishment across the organization.
Beyond Spreadsheets: Visual Collaboration Drives Alignment
GTM alignment ultimately helps product, sales and marketing leaders deliver on their commitments to the company, each other, and prospective customers. However, the tools teams use to achieve this alignment are critical. And It’s not spreadsheets.
Our survey found that 87% of individual contributors on GTM teams use spreadsheets to collaborate, yet they experienced misalignment frequently. Instead, opt for tools that provide a visual representation of GTM plans to create a shared understanding of who you’re targeting and why, along with which team is responsible for implementing the plan.
