Go-to-market (GTM) teams are critical for business growth. However, according to recent Mural research, 85% of them frequently encounter misalignment that significantly slows down the GTM motion.
Our research shows that reasons for the disconnect between sales, marketing and R&D teams range from a lack of strategy and goals to unclear deadlines and priorities. All these factors lead to failed products and competitors beating you to the punch. That’s not something many teams can afford in an era of tighter budgets and reduced headcount.
Here are five ways to overcome these common alignment issues so that GTM teams can get products to market faster and more successfully.
1. Define the Customer Together
Too often, this step gets skipped or is delegated to a single team. That mistake leads to teams charging full speed ahead with assumptions, then scrambling to update everything when customer feedback isn’t what was planned for.
Successful GTM plans start with a clear, shared understanding of who you’re building for and why. That means product, marketing, and sales all agree on who the customer is, their unmet need and why they should care about your product.
Customer journey maps are a valuable tool to identify the customer, their needs, and pain points. These maps illustrate the steps a customer takes, their interactions, goals, positive moments, negative moments and more.
Ultimately, this mapping exercise helps teams create better solutions for the end-user, reduce frustrations, surface opportunities earlier to avoid rework and shorten time to market.
2. Agree On Success Metrics
Companies might skip this step because it feels too early to set metrics. But when every team defines success differently, sales velocity turns into customer churn. Or worse, no customers at all. In fact, Gartner found that when teams aren’t on the same page, they’re 37% less likely to achieve their revenue goals.
That’s why it’s critical to figure out your shared “North Star.” In other words, what metrics will define success for the product?
Metrics vary based on the product, but they should be concrete and specific. Your GTM metrics might include something like:
- Acquire 100 high-quality leads within two weeks of launch.
- Close deals within 30 days.
- Reduce customer acquisition cost by 10%.
- Reach $1 million in sales within three months of launch.
By aligning on what success looks like upfront, you can make faster decisions and avoid misalignment that slows your GTM motion.
3. Use AI Intentionally
AI can generate hundreds of ideas, analyze data and help you move faster. But the best GTM ideas still come from humans with a sharp understanding of the customer.
It works best when it’s grounded in real insights. Feed it customer journey maps, interview transcripts or other research to help it surface patterns and connections you might have missed.
AI can also act as a shared team resource. Build prompts and workflows into your GTM plans so everyone can move faster, without losing alignment along the way.
By using AI intentionally, your team spends less time starting from scratch and more time analyzing results, making decisions and driving the work that actually matters.
4. Prioritize What Moves the Needle
Two or three great ideas beat 50 good ones any day.
With AI in tow, teams can now come up with more ideas than they can act on. But without consensus on what matters most, you’ll end up with scattered efforts and stalled momentum.
Establishing a clear set of criteria can assist in faster decision-making and in cutting low performance tactics early. That could include things like:
- Impact vs effort: Prioritize ideas that are low-effort, high-impact.
- Feasibility: Big ideas are a great starting point. But be realistic: Do you have the skills, resources, budget, etc. to accomplish them? If not, try scaling the idea back.
- Validated customer need: Great ideas only work if they truly address an unmet need. If the idea doesn’t, cut it.
5. Show, Don’t Tell
Another reason GTM plans fall into disarray is due to a maze of documents, email threads, direct messages and calendar invites.
Ever heard the adage “show, don’t tell”? It works for go-to-market, too.
Visual collaboration shows everyone what’s happening when and who owns what. There are no version control issues or hilariously long document names that look like hieroglyphics. Go-to-market also becomes collaborative rather than siloed; not to mention you avoid hand-waving and the awkward “I thought we decided” conversations.
When plans, priorities and ownership are visible to everyone at any time, go-to-market can happen faster.
Alignment = GTM Success
Most GTM timelines drag not because the team is slow, but because they’re not aligned. They’re solving different problems, chasing different goals, or waiting on someone to make a call. The best and fastest GTM teams align early on the customer, the goals and the few ideas that will make the biggest impact.
