The first and biggest mistake a CEO can make in embarking on a new Go-To-Market project is to delegate it to someone else. This is one hot potato that should never be passed!
Here is why:
- Team focus is critical: if the CEO doesn’t make go-to-market planning a priority, neither will the exec team and the project will never gain the alignment.
- Market vision is hard: at the core of the go-to-market plan is an educated bet about how customer needs are diverging from what competitors are offering, opening up a market gap that will make or break the company’s fortune. Gaining consensus around how the market is evolving requires tight cooperation across product, marketing and sales to “crack the nut”.
- Joint accountability is key: only if the executive team is fully committed can they make the hard resource trade-offs to implement a new go-to-market.
The CEO has the unique ability to bring product, marketing and sales leadership team together in building a new go-to-market strategy. They alone can force the team buy-in required at every step to drive company-wide transformation.