How to create a winning go-to-market strategy that everyone will embrace

This article is based on Jordana’s presentation at the Product Marketing Summit in Tel Aviv. Use your PMA membership to watch the session in its full unedited glory here, and head to your membership dashboard for access to an abundance of other talks and resources.

Have you ever been blindsided by major features or a product that you didn't know about?

Have you ever encountered features that didn't really fit into your product but were included because they sounded cool? We've all been there, haven't we?

Then there's the challenge of working in silos, with product, sales, engineering, and customer success all pulling in different directions.

At its core, the problem lies in not planning and measuring together, and not setting ourselves up for success. A good framework shatters these organizational silos and gets everyone to focus on a single goal – and that’s exactly what I’m going to share with you today.

I’m Jordana Mozer, VP of Product Marketing at WalkMe. I've been with WalkMe for about four years now, and over the last couple of years, we've introduced a framework for new product introduction and market readiness.

This project has been a source of immense pride for me. While I can't take credit for the framework itself, I've been instrumental in its application. I'm going to share that framework to help you defeat those pesky go-to-market challenges and ensure that your product marketing team becomes a strategic backbone in your organization.

The focus today will be on three key areas:

1. New product introduction vs. go-to-market readiness
2. Identifying key stakeholders and driving accountability across the organization.
3. A five-stage plan to set your organization up with a mature go-to-market framework.

Meet the WalkMe product marketing team

Before we dive into it, let's talk a bit about WalkMe. We're essentially a digital adoption platform – a category that we created. We take a product management approach to how organizations view software, providing them with data on how employees use software and the tools necessary to use the software successfully. We boast over 2,000 customers and 35 million users.

Today, we have around 1,100 employees worldwide. When I joined four years ago, we were half that size. Our product marketing team is fairly new, having been re-established after a reshuffle about a year ago. We've combined product marketing and content marketing into one team, a setup that might not be the norm in every organization but works really well for us.

Our product marketing team is divided into four main areas:

• First off, we have the solutions marketing team, who focus on our audiences.
• Next up is the platform team, which works hand-in-hand with product management on all our upcoming releases.
• Then there's the content marketing team – the creative minds behind all our marketing programs.
• Finally, we have the expansion and retention team, who work in close conjunction with our customer success group, focusing on customer-specific needs and driving adoption, expansion, and retention.
  

New product introduction vs. go-to-market readiness

So let's dig into two key areas: new product introduction (NPI) and go-to-market readiness (GTMR). They're two different things, yet they go hand-in-hand.

Ideally, a new product introduction happens about 18 months before the product’s general release. That might seem surprising; I bet you’ve been in situations where you were told about a new product hitting the market only a few weeks before the launch – that’s a nightmare that we want to avoid. Instead, we get in front of the executive team early, so we can properly prioritize our GTM motions as a company.

The second piece is go-to-market readiness, which ideally takes place between twelve and nine months ahead of the actual release. It's an ongoing process, and we'll dive into what that looks like in a bit.

Now, none of this is to say you can't run multiple NPIs and GTMR processes at the same time. At WalkMe, we're probably running about three, four, or even five as we speak. But each one gets its own particular focus.

However, before you even start planning your NPI and GTMR, it's crucial to create a mindset change within your organization. You need teams, from executives to cross-functional groups, to start owning the process of introducing a new product to the market. It's not just about the product or product marketing, it's a cross-functional responsibility.

The goal is to make them accountable. For instance, we want our sales engineers to be as accountable as the product team for ensuring a successful product launch. Ultimately, you want to set your organization up for success and get everyone aligned on what that success looks like.

In short, you need to plan, align, and measure. Let's take a closer look at what that looks like.

The framework

There are two vital components of this framework: the executive readiness team, which is focused on our C-suite, and the go-to-market readiness team, which is more hands-on.

The executive readiness team is where the process kicks off, where we present a new product proposal to our C-level team to secure their buy-in. This is usually presented by the product and product marketing teams, who secure resource allocation, and then we get to work.

The go-to-market readiness team meets regularly, once a month, or more frequently as we get closer to launch. Shared accountability is key here. Our job is to unite all the different functions involved in bringing a product to market.

The five stages of a successful go-to-market-readiness process

So how do we achieve the oh-so-desirable streamlined alignment and professional accountability? We do so through a five-stage process. Let’s take a look.

Stage one: Informing

In stage one, the product, product marketing, and R&D teams come together in an initial meeting to describe the problem we aim to solve, our hypothesis, and our expected timeline. More often than not, our timeline projections are completely off, but that's okay. Our goal is to ensure that our stakeholders have the information they need to go back to their teams and start planning.

Stage two: Planning

Based on the information shared in the initial informing session, the stakeholders can outline what they need to succeed in stage two.

Just yesterday, I was talking to one of our field CTOs who was working on a similar framework, and he was ready to start mapping out what all the teams would need. Instead, I challenged him to let the teams define their own needs – that way, they’re going to take much more ownership and accountability.

In addition to R&D, product, and marketing, your stakeholders at this stage will include enablement, customer success, services, support, security, finance, information services, and legal.

Stage three: Aligning

Here, all the teams return and present their plans, and we then create a unified timeline.

For instance, R&D will update us on their continued development plans. And then there’s marketing – not just the product marketing plan, but also content, analyst relations, market research, PR, pricing, and more. The same goes for pre-sales, customer success, finance and information systems, security and legal, enablement, implementation, support, and professional services.

This comprehensive planning ensures that we're all on the same page, from the get-go.

Stage four: Go/No-go

This is my favorite stage. It's where we assess our readiness honestly. How many times have you approached a product launch and realized that you weren't ready? How many times have you pressed on despite not being remotely ready? That’s what we want to avoid.

In this stage, we go to our executive team and outline the risks. We might say we can launch in a month, but we also need to outline what we won't be ready with, or the potential risks.

For example, a year ago, we were preparing for a product launch, and we realized we just weren't ready. So, we changed our strategy, opted for a closed beta program to create excitement among our customers, and prepared for a bigger launch in the background. This was a huge shift in mindset for the company, but it ensured we were way more successful.

Stage five: Launch execution

This is an exciting time. Everyone has an important role to play, from your executive leadership team to product marketing and beyond. Everyone is accountable for the launch, and product marketing functions as the strategic backbone of the whole operation.

Shared accountability: Marketing

Let me show you an example of what a marketing plan could look like at different stages.

• Informing stage: We work with product management and R&D to design a brief.
• Planning stage: We begin our research, consulting with analysts and examining market fit. We start preparing our market announcement, even if it's set to happen a year from now.
• Aligning stage: We present our research and findings. This information allows the other teams to further prepare.
• Go/No-go stage: We determine with R&D if we're truly ready to meet our goals.
• Launch execution stage: Now, it’s all about getting our product out the door.

So, let’s recap

Before we wrap things up, let’s go over what we learned today, plus some final pieces of advice.

• This whole framework represents a significant shift in mindset, with the product marketing team functioning as the primary driver.
• A good go-to-market readiness strategy can span 18 months. I encourage you to aim for that, even though it's challenging.
• Your first attempts at implementing this process might fail. In the past, we’ve had to drop some launch processes partway through. However, after a little trial and error, we're now managing multiple processes simultaneously. Colleagues now approach me, eager to initiate NPIs. Product managers and R&D folks want to get in front of cross-functional teams to drive new products.
• When you’re successful, any naysayers will become your biggest advocates. That change in mindset will ultimately make your product marketing team the strategic backbone of your organization.