Four challenges, Building your Go-to-Market Strategy

Navigating your Go-to-Market Strategy: Four Challenges That Deserve Deeper Attention

Katy Moses, Founder Sage Connections

Go-to-market (GTM) strategy is often framed as a tactical exercise—launch plans, timelines, and channel selection. But beneath the surface, it’s a deeply strategic process that requires alignment, insight, and adaptability. When organizations struggle to execute effectively, it’s rarely due to lack of effort. More often, it’s because they haven’t addressed the foundational challenges that shape how strategy is built and lived.

Here are four common challenges that can quietly derail GTM planning—and why they matter.

1. Insufficient Market Research

Understanding your audience isn’t just a preliminary step—it’s the foundation of relevance. Without current, nuanced insight into customer needs, behaviors, and motivations, messaging becomes generic and positioning loses precision. What to consider: Invest in persona development, segmentation, and journey mapping—not just once, but as an ongoing discipline. Market research should be a living input to strategy, not a static deliverable. Differentiation is also understated. When you read your message, ask the "So what?" question. "So what, does our competition also say the same thing?" If so keep working on the offerings and messaging.

2. Poor ROI Measurement

When success metrics are vague or disconnected from strategic goals, it’s difficult to assess impact or make informed adjustments. Teams may default to vanity metrics or short-term indicators that don’t reflect long-term value. What to consider: Define clear objectives at the outset and build measurement frameworks that connect strategy to outcomes. Consider both quantitative and qualitative indicators, and revisit them regularly.

3. Lack of Cross-Functional Alignment

GTM strategy touches every corner of an organization—marketing, product, sales, customer success, and leadership. When these teams aren’t aligned, strategy becomes fragmented and execution suffers. What to consider: Facilitate structured collaboration early and often. Use shared frameworks, co-created messaging, and facilitated workshops to build understanding and ownership across functions. This is often one of the biggest challenges; silo's exist, one key functional area or another is left out of the plan, and this lack of organizational diversity at the table will break the best strategic plan down the line. Cross-functional buy-in is the cornerstone of a solid plan.

4. Dynamic Market Conditions

Markets shift. Audiences evolve. Competitive landscapes change. A static strategy, no matter how well-crafted, will eventually lose relevance. What to consider: Build flexibility into your GTM approach. Use modular planning, scenario thinking, and regular checkpoints to ensure your strategy can adapt without losing coherence.

Moving Forward with Clarity

Go-to-market planning is not just about launching—it’s about collaborating, learning, aligning, and evolving - with agility. By addressing these deeper challenges, organizations can build strategies that are not only effective but enduring. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s progress, guided by insight and grounded in shared understanding.