What is the most critical part of your go-to-market strategy?

Wrong target audience will kill you. If you want to have immediate success, you have to talk to those most likely to buy from you. Even if you have product market fit, if you try to sell to the wrong people you will fail. 

I would say that the foremost consideration when devising a GTM strategy is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the competitive landscape. Often, companies tend to be swayed by the most vocal market demand, instead of investing time in discerning the true, underlying demand. This can be likened to addressing the symptom rather than the root cause. To truly succeed, a company should focus on identifying areas of latent demand that have not yet been tapped by competition, and then tailor their GTM strategy accordingly. This approach ensures a strategic advantage in the market by addressing the needs of previously underserved segments.

The most critical part of the go-to-market strategy is establishing sales, the sales process, and the overall strategy. You will want to start with key statistics that inform other things. For example, we wanted to understand the pipeline: how many leads it takes to get a single discussion, how many discussions it takes to create an opportunity, how many opportunities get to a proposal, and what's our win percentage of all of our proposals. If we combine that with the average deal size and what our budget is now, we'll have a better basis of understanding.

Until you have a foundation of understanding how clients or prospective clients move through your current journey — it's hard to determine if you need to change product, pricing, or messaging.