Successful companies don’t just grow—they choose to grow. 

While sales deliver immediate rewards and are often the headliner for conversations about revenue and business growth, leading companies also understand that GTM strategy is crucial to nurturing the roots of your company to ensure a robust and resilient foundation. 

Your GTM team lays the groundwork for long-term success by focusing on building relationships, exploring new markets, and creating strategic partnerships that will lead to future sales. Eighty-six percent of B2B customers are more likely to buy when a company understands their goals. However, according to the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer report, almost 60 percent of those companies say most sales reps don’t take the time to understand them. 

By prioritizing GTM strategy and investing in automation that supports those priorities, you open up new avenues for opportunity and innovation that ensure that your business is reacting to market demands and actively shaping them. 

By examining these elements with a discerning eye and answering these five questions, GTM teams can determine if their business development strategies are surviving and thriving. 

1. Are you generating quality leads consistently?

The operative word here is “consistent.” Generating a steady stream of high-quality leads is foundational for business growth. Half of organizations list lead conversions as a top priority, but only 29 percent nurture existing customers beyond their initial purchase. 

With Fullcast, managers can take the guesswork out of qualifying leads by analyzing real-time and historical sales data to identify trends and characteristics of high-converting leads. 

With this information, sales teams can

• refine their ideal customer profiles,
• target prospects who closely match these profiles,
• implement lead-scoring systems, and
• assign values to leads based on factors like engagement levels and demographic information.

By prioritizing leads with higher scores, sales teams can focus on the most promising prospects, track the performance of different marketing channels and campaigns, and determine which methods produce the best leads. 

2. Are You Nurturing and Converting Leads?

More companies are discovering that converting leads into customers requires effective nurturing strategies, provided that customers hurry up and make a buying decision. Remember, a big part of Go-to-Market is playing the long game. This involves personalized engagement and addressing potential customer’s pain points and needs. 

“B2B marketers should understand that every lead is not instantly ready for a sales call. Just because they’ve downloaded your whitepaper or attended a webinar doesn’t mean that marketing should hand them over to sales, no matter how much they are clamoring for leads,” say experts at Madison Logic, an ABM marketing firm, referring to a Forrester study that found companies excelling in lead nurturing generate 50 percent more sales leads at a 33 percent lower cost per lead. “From the first interaction to the point of purchase, building relationships with buyers during each step of their journey helps you move accounts through the pipeline more quickly.” 

Analyze your lead-nurturing processes, including the effectiveness of your email campaigns, follow-up strategies, and engagement tactics. Measure conversion rates at each sales funnel stage and identify improvement areas.

3. Are you Meeting or Exceeding Key Performance Indicators?

The premise behind KPIs is simple: Either you’ve achieved performance goals or you haven’t. The real question is, what are you going to do about it? Treating KPIs as benchmarks that help gauge the success of your business development efforts helps drive a business-forward mindset. 

“The leaders who choose growth and outperform their peers not only think, act, and speak differently; they align around a shared mindset, strategy, and capabilities,” say experts at McKinsey & Company. “In turn, they actively track leading and lagging growth indicators to tie their aspirations to clear and measurable key performance indicators (KPIs).”

Consistently meeting or exceeding these indicators—such as revenue growth, new customer acquisition, customer retention rates, and sales cycle length—shows that your strategies are effective. Compare actual performance against targets and analyze any deviations.

4. How Strong Is Your Market and Competitive Positioning?

Understanding your market position, particularly in relation to your competitors, helps RevOps teams craft GTM strategies that leverage your strengths and address your weaknesses.

Your secret weapon is data. 

According to HubSpot’s The State of Marketing 2024 Report, “77 percent of marketers agree that having audience data is important to marketing.” Surveyed marketers credit this data with helping them effectively reach their audience, identify successful strategies, launch the right media formula, and create more effective content.

Evaluate market share, customer feedback, and competitive intelligence. Assess your unique selling proposition (USP) and how effectively you communicate with the market. Monitor industry trends and adjust your strategies accordingly.

5. Are You Aligned Internally and Externally?

If there’s one thing teams can agree on, it’s the need to maximize revenue opportunities. But when teams disagree on what that entails, revenue growth pays the price—literally. 

“The business world no longer has a place for an adversarial relationship between the CRO and the CMO,” say David Satterwhite, CRO, and Michelle Huff, CMO at Act-On Software. “In today’s digitally-driven marketplace, with so much of the buying process taking place online before a prospect even talks to a sales rep, a disconnected sales and marketing team is simply not an option; the two teams must work hand in hand as they guide the customer journey.”

Read how Degreed consolidated its RevOps team here.

Known as “smarketing,” internal alignment between business development, sales, marketing, and product teams ensures cohesive strategies and messaging. External alignment with market needs and customer expectations ensures relevance and effectiveness.

By consolidating data into a single source of truth, GTM teams can leverage collaboration and communication between departments and evaluate how well market insights and customer feedback are integrated into business development strategies. This ensures that all teams work toward common goals and reinforces a consistent customer experience across touchpoints.

Is GTM on the right track?

Regularly asking these questions and analyzing the answers will help you spot your strengths and uncover areas for improvement to make sure that your GTM efforts stay effective and aligned with your overall goals.