In a number of my posts this year I’ve talked about the key elements of a GTM program for a product or an alliance in terms of “Building a Bridge” between your products and your customers. The “Bridge” analogy is an apt description because for a product or an alliance to drive revenue, companies need to complete all of the key pieces of the bridge (who wants to go halfway across the bridge and then fall in the abyss below).  The Four Key Elements of the GTM Bridge are shown below in Figure 1.

• Solution
• GTM Program
• Field Readiness
• Sales Channel Execution

The question we are looking at in today’s post is where in this process do technology vendors generally have problems?  In my experience there are two parts of the GTM Bridge that consistently cause problems and lost revenue in technology vendor GTM programs. These challenges are highlighted by the Red in Figure 1 below.

1. Solutions are not clearly defined and messaging does not connect with customer challenges (often “product push”)
2. GTM programs are not adopted by field marketing, sales and channels teams (and programs are perceived to be “thrown over the wall”)

Figure 1: The GTM Bridge and Common Gaps in Execution

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