Who Owns Go-to-Market in a Startup?
Who Owns Go-to-Market in a Startup?
Spoiler alert: it's the CEO, with heads of marketing, sales, product, and CS all playing strategic roles.
There are a million definitions of Go-to-Market (GTM), but I define it loosely as the unified strategy a company uses to engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service.
A few things worth noting in that definition about what GTM is NOT:
GTM is not just marketing and sales but also includes customer success and even product.
GTM is not a one-time project or launch plan; it’s a long-term, cohesive strategy
GTM is not just about HOW you sell (inbound, outbound, events, product-led growth, etc.), it’s the broader strategy that informs how you sell.
Marketing, Sales, CS, and Product Roles in a B2B Startup
GTM sets the overall strategy:
Who is the customer?
What is the value proposition and positioning?
What are the key sales, marketing, and product efforts needed to drive success?
Marketing creates awareness and demand: It brings potential customers to the door.
Sales closes deals: It turns that demand into revenue.
Customer Success retains and grows customers: It ensures customers stay engaged and expand their product use.
Product builds and improves the product: It ensures the offering stays competitive and continues to meet customer needs.
Each function plays a crucial role, but go-to-market ties them together, ensuring they are aligned on strategy and execution for business success.
Who Owns GTM in a Startup?
GTM Partners (a partner of mine whose work on GTM is brilliant, and you will hear me reference them in almost every post) just posted a great research note advocating for a Chief Go-to-Market Officer.
But what about for a startup, under $10m in revenue that may not even have a CMO or CRO yet?
Go-to-market MUST be the CEO’s job for the first few years or the first few million dollars. The CEO is the only one who can align goals and compensation across sales, marketing, customer success, and product.
I see too many Series A and B companies make the mistake of making the most senior marketing or sales/revenue leader the head of GTM. I have played that role myself a few times. I have been guilty of being a marketing leader who amasses a lot of influence and mistakes a broad marketing role for owning GTM.
The challenge is that GTM needs to be aligned across so many silos, and a VP of sales or marketing probably doesn’t have authority over CS or product.
It has to be the CEO.
But how can a busy CEO oversee such a vast strategy given their many other responsibilities?
BUT HOW!?!?
For a CEO of a smaller B2B startup to effectively assert their authority over the GTM strategy while balancing other tasks, it’s crucial to establish a high-level, cross-functional structure that keeps them involved in key decisions but allows execution to happen smoothly without micromanagement.
Let’s look at the following areas:
Strategy
Team
Meetings
Projects
Oversight
Leadership
External Resources
1. Strategy: CEO Owns the Big Picture
The CEO's role in setting the go-to-market (GTM) strategy, especially in a B2B startup, is more high-level and visionary than the roles of the product, marketing, CS, and sales leaders, who focus on how their areas can support the overall goals.
The CEO’s role:
Visionary leadership and alignment
Defining high-level strategic objectives
Resource allocation and investment
Setting culture and leadership tone
High-level partnerships and strategic relationships
Making key strategic decisions
2. Team: Clear Lines of Responsibility without Silos
The CEO needs a lean, high-impact team where each leader is responsible for one of the core GTM functions—sales, marketing, customer success, and product—with direct communication lines back to the CEO. Here’s how to organize it:
Sales Leader: Head of Sales or VP of Sales responsible for generating and closing deals (could be a CRO as revenue increases)
Marketing Leader: VP of Marketing or CMO responsible for driving awareness, leads, and demand generation.
Customer Success Leader: Head of Customer Success ensures customer retention, satisfaction, and growth (earlier-stage startups generally do not need a C-level customer success leader, though there are exceptions)
Product Leader: Product Lead focuses on product development and market fit.
This team should have the authority to make tactical decisions but should align with the CEO on strategic direction. As you grow, having a GTM Operations Manager or Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) overseeing cross-functional alignment and metrics tracking might make sense.
2. Meetings: Keep It Strategic & Efficient
The CEO should keep a direct hand in the GTM strategy through well-structured, efficient meetings to avoid being bogged down in the minutiae.
Weekly GTM Sync (60-90 minutes): A weekly cross-functional meeting with sales, marketing, customer success, and product leaders to ensure alignment and progress. The CEO sets the strategic agenda, but each team leads their portion of the update.
Agenda: Key metrics review (pipeline, revenue, churn), major roadblocks, progress on ongoing GTM projects.
CEO Role: Drive strategy alignment, resolve cross-functional issues, and make final decisions on high-impact areas.
Quarterly Strategy Review (2 hours): A deep dive into the GTM strategy and performance with the full leadership team (consider going offsite at LEAST once a year for a day or two of planning).
Agenda: Review of customer segments and personas, feedback from sales and customer success, competitive landscape, marketing effectiveness, product development timelines, and quarterly/annual goals.
CEO Role: Set or adjust high-level strategy, realign priorities, and communicate the vision for the next quarter.
Ad-Hoc Issue Resolution (15-30 minutes):
If critical GTM issues need the CEO’s input, schedule quick, focused sessions as needed.
3. Project Structure: Prioritize, Delegate, and Set Clear Goals
The CEO can keep a handle on things without managing every detail by prioritizing the most impactful GTM projects and delegating execution to the appropriate leaders.
Define High-Impact Projects: The CEO should focus on defining strategic GTM initiatives, such as entering a new market, launching a major product update, or pivoting the business model. These are where CEO input is most valuable.
Delegate Execution to Teams: Once a project is identified, delegate execution to the appropriate teams. The CEO should establish clear goals, timelines, and KPIs for each project.
Use OKRs or KPIs to Track Progress: The CEO can maintain visibility on GTM projects by ensuring that each initiative has measurable outcomes (e.g., pipeline growth, sales velocity, customer retention, or product adoption). These metrics can be reviewed in weekly and monthly meetings without requiring constant CEO oversight.
4. Oversight: Stay Involved without Micromanaging
To have strategic oversight without getting buried in day-to-day execution, the CEO should maintain a high-level view of the GTM strategy through data-driven insights and focused feedback loops.
Centralized Dashboard: Implement a GTM dashboard that gives a snapshot of the most important KPIs across sales, marketing, and customer success. This allows the CEO to monitor performance at a glance. Metrics to Track: Pipeline value, revenue, NRR, conversion rates, churn rates, customer lifetime value (CLTV), product adoption, and marketing ROI.
Regular Feedback from Team Leads: The CEO should encourage team leads to surface critical insights from their departments, whether it’s feedback from the field (sales), market positioning (marketing), or product fit (customer success and product). This allows the CEO to make informed strategic decisions without micromanaging.
5. Leadership: Communicate Vision and Values
Leadership and culture are essential elements of any GTM strategy. By setting a clear vision, values, and a culture of accountability, the CEO can create a high-performing GTM team that stays aligned with company goals.
Communicate the Vision: The CEO must ensure that the GTM team understands the company's long-term vision and how their roles contribute to it. This will motivate and align the teams.
Create a Culture of Ownership: Encourage each department leader to take ownership of their GTM responsibilities. The CEO can assert authority by asking critical questions, ensuring accountability, and challenging the team to meet high expectations.
Coach and Develop Leaders: Too often in startups, leaders are eleveated because they are good at their functional area whether or not they have any leadership skills. All leaders at the VP level or higher should be coached by either the CEO or an outside executive coach. One bad leader can destroy a good GTM strategy.
6. Make Strategic Use of External Resources
Given how busy a CEO can be, leveraging external resources to support the GTM strategy is key.
Advisors and Consultants: Bringing in GTM advisors or experts can help the CEO maintain a strategic focus without needing to examine all operational details in depth.
Technology and Tools: Invest in tools (e.g., CRM, marketing automation, customer success platforms) that automate tracking and reporting. This reduces the burden on the CEO and the leadership team to collect and analyze data manually.
What Does Everyone Else Do?
Here’s a cheat sheet.
It’s Not Easy!
I get it. It is not easy to be a CEO or to maintain a hand in all these things. I hope this outline has been helpful. If you’re at a startup, I’d love to hear from you in the comments about who is the head of your GTM or whether you struggle with clear lines of authority and GTM ownership.
Delight of the Week
A few years ago, inspired by Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, I began documenting one small, everyday delight in my journal. This practice feels more meaningful than gratitude journaling because it encourages me to notice the little things. I want to share a “weekly delight” here to add a personal touch to this newsletter. Feel free to share your delights in the comments!
Last summer, I broke my ankle in three places in a hiking accident in Charlottesville, VA. I got a mountain rescue and the whole deal.
That’s not the delight, but it’s the setup for the delight.
My injury was a trimalleolar fracture, which, if you google it at 3 a.m. the night before surgery, you will find out is the worst ankle fracture you can have and that it will likely have life-long impacts.
I had surgery with pins and plates and screws. I was on crutches for months, had PT for what seemed like forever, and then a bunch of other stuff happened in my personal life that took my attention and energy away from recovery.
The resulting lack of mobility has been difficult for me. It impacts my social life, exercise routine, and mental health.
So, a few weeks ago, I returned to PT to get my body in shape so I could take long walks again.
Delight of the Week: this morning, I walked 10 minutes at a good pace with no pain. A month ago, I had extreme pain after just 7 minutes. Yahoo! And last week, I stood for 30 minutes to moderate a panel at the GTM is Better Together event in Atlanta.
The PT is working! That is such a delight.
I’ve been fairly active my whole adult life. I’ve done sprint triathlons, 10ks, weight training, swimming, boot camps, cycling, yoga, pilates, barre, and hiked miles and miles on the Appalachian Trail. In fact, in 2020, when everyone was home during the pandemic, our family did 25 hikes around Virginia in 9 months.
In fact, I broke my ankle in the middle of a 6-mile mountain hike on uneven terrain where we crossed boulders and streams (WATCH THOSE SLIPPERY ROCKS IN STREAMS, FOLKS!)
But even though I have been in far better shape, here I am, overjoyed, thrilled, and, dare I say, DELIGHTED to be on that treadmill in PT this morning and cross the 10-minute mark.
Whether or not I ever get back to what I could do before, I am starting to feel some hope that I will be able to walk a few miles without pain at least, and that makes me so, so happy today!
Thanks for reading this far, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments about who should lead GTM or your delight of the week.
Have a great week, everyone, and I hope this has been useful to you.
