Is GTM Just a Fancy Name for Sales?

Good Morning. Meta just agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle lawsuits over teen social media addiction. They're also rolling out some pretty aggressive new rules for teenagers, like a 2-hour daily limit, no scrolling after midnight, and muted notifications during school hours. Honestly, I think they should roll this out to adults too. Think about how productive the world would be if Instagram kicked you off after two hours and muted notifications during the workday. Just sayin… Now, let’s get into today’s Follow Up. (:

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On August 11, Paul Graham asked a question that set off a big argument in the sales world.

One side thinks go-to-market (GTM) is a fancy new label for sales.
The other says GTM is a lot more than just sales and has existed for decades.

And to be honest… both sides make a pretty good case.

So today, I’m breaking down what GTM actually means, how it differs from sales, and why the term suddenly seems to be everywhere.

Sales is when you turn a prospect into a customer.

Go-to-market is the full plan your company uses to find the right buyers, reach them, sell to them, and keep them.

Let’s say your company builds software for restaurants...

Someone needs to decide which restaurants to target, how much to charge, and how to explain the product. Then the company needs a plan for marketing it, selling it, setting up new customers, and keeping them around.

All of those choices make up the GTM strategy. And an A+ sales team can still struggle when the rest of your GTM team is weak.

So in short, sales is one major function inside that larger GTM plan.

The term Go-to-Market has been around for a while.

We see a variation of it appear in an article from the 90s by Harvard Business School professor Rowland Moriarty and Ursula Moran.

Their Harvard Business Review article describes companies using direct sales teams, distributors, retail stores, and direct mail to reach different buyers.

So, the article gives us a clear record of companies using similar language more than 35 years ago. And the thinking behind it goes back even further.

Which means GTM existed long before every hot new tech startup started putting it into all of their job titles.

Most of the confusion comes from people using GTM to describe three different things.

A GTM strategy is the plan for bringing a product to a specific market.
A GTM organization is the team that carries out that plan.
A GTM job title could mean almost anything that has to do with sales, marketing, or growth.

The GTM titles have become my favorite.

Every day, I’ll click on profiles where someone's headline says GTM at a {insert hot tech startup}, only to find out they're an entry-level BDR who graduated college 3 months ago.

But I get it. ‘I’m in GTM at a hot tech startup’ sounds much cooler than ‘I’m an entry-level sales rep’.

As they say, don’t hate the player - hate the game.

Depending on the company, GTM can include marketing, demand generation, sales, partnerships, RevOps, enablement, product, customer success, and growth.

And growth is another one of those terms that can mean 27 different things, but that’s a fight for another newsletter.

The common thread with all of these roles is that they are an important part of taking a product and getting it into the market it’s intended for.

Paul Graham has a point. Some companies use GTM as a cooler label for regular sales work, and plenty of job titles make the term almost meaningless.

But I think the broader idea still matters here.

A real GTM strategy encompasses a lot more than sales. And obviously, it takes a lot more than just a sales team to bring a product to a market at scale.

So when someone says they work in GTM, you’ve just gotta ask more questions. Do they mean sales, or marketing, or general strategy?

There are a lot of flavors of GTM.

Check out The Follow Up Guy on LinkedIn.