Summit Attendees Get A GTM Readiness Reality Check

2026-05-19 · Source: Featured Blogs - Forrester · Field: Business & Management — Corporate Strategy & Leadership, Marketing, Branding & Advertising, Sales & Commercial Development · Depth: Intermediate, short

Summary

At Forrester's B2B Summit in Phoenix, over 50 attendees participated in an "Assess Your GTM Transformation Readiness" workshop, revealing significant challenges in go-to-market strategy capabilities. Participants self-plotted scores across four core areas: strategic inputs, market strategy, buyer strategy, and GTM pathways. Findings indicated widespread struggles with defining strategic inputs like GTM scope and revenue targets, with most attendees scoring low-to-mid. Market strategy showed little follow-through on segmentation and difficulty in prioritizing segments. Few leaders have adopted an audience-focused buyer strategy, often defaulting to product-first approaches. Critically, GTM pathways, which codify strategic decisions for execution, were overwhelmingly in the lowest maturity range, highlighting a gap in operational clarity for revenue teams. The workshop underscored that B2B leaders recognize the urgent need for GTM transformation, even in mature organizations.

Key takeaway

For B2B leaders aiming to enhance your go-to-market strategy, recognize that significant maturity gaps often exist in defining strategic inputs, executing segmentation, and codifying GTM pathways. Your teams should prioritize a structured assessment of current capabilities across these four areas to identify specific weaknesses. By explicitly tying GTM execution to prioritized segments, offerings, and buyers, and documenting decisions in clear pathways, you can accelerate results and avoid scattered efforts.

Key insights

B2B organizations widely struggle with GTM strategy maturity, especially in defining strategic inputs and codifying execution pathways.

Principles

• Strategic inputs must clearly define GTM scope and objectives.
• Market strategy requires evidence-based segmentation and prioritization.
• GTM execution accelerates when tied to prioritized segments, offerings, and buyers.

Method

Participants completed assessment exercises across four core areas: strategic inputs, market strategy, buyer strategy, and GTM pathways, then self-plotted scores on heat maps for peer discussion.

In practice

• Evaluate GTM readiness via structured assessment.
• Define GTM scope, growth, and revenue expectations.
• Codify GTM decisions into clear, consumable pathways.

Topics

• Go-to-Market Strategy
• GTM Transformation
• Market Segmentation
• Buyer Strategy
• Strategic Inputs
• GTM Pathways

Best for: Product Manager, Entrepreneur, Executive, Consultant

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Featured Blogs - Forrester.