What I Got Wrong About Go-to-Market (and What I Do Differently Now)


Go-to-market works best when product managers treat it as part of product strategy, not a launch activity. Strong GTM starts with a clear understanding of the customer, a focused problem, and a value proposition to align around. Launch is not the finish line. It is the start of learning and iteration.

I did not always see it that way. Early in my career, I treated go-to-market as something that happened after the product was “done,” and I paid for that mistake with a hard lesson that reshaped how I approach product leadership today.

When Great Products Aren’t Enough

I led a small eCommerce company called AbleCommerce at a time when both the internet and my career were still young. Before anyone had heard of us, I created a press kit and spent months calling publications daily, pitching our story and our product. That effort paid off when we won PC Magazine’s Editors’ Choice Award, beating a competing IBM product. (Does anyone remember PC Magazine?)

Riding the confidence that comes from having an award-winning product, we built a new offering: auction software that would let anyone compete head to head with eBay. From a feature and UX standpoint, it was excellent—arguably better than what eBay offers even today. None of that mattered. Customers did not want better auction software. They wanted access to buyers.

That experience fundamentally changed how I think about product management and go-to-market. We did not fail because of technology or execution. We failed because we misunderstood the market.

Learning GTM from the Sales Floor

Later, I found myself embedded in the technology services organization at Microsoft, supporting enterprise sales by helping shape how ITIL services were taken to market. Success here depended far less on features and far more on how clearly value was communicated in complex customer contexts.

Meeting regularly with sales managers further shaped how I think about go-to-market. I saw firsthand that sales conversations start with understanding the customer’s problems, not pitching solutions. I authored sales guides that helped teams uncover customer pain points, frame them in business terms, and clearly illustrate how specific services addressed those needs.

Strong go-to-market strategy starts by diagnosing the customer’s problem and only then matching the right solution.

Go-to-Market as Internal Alignment

At Nike, I led the business case to expand the SNKRS product into 28 countries using a partner based checkout model. The product challenge was significant. We needed to integrate with a partner platform while also investing in complex business logic to support local market regulations and fulfillment constraints.

The harder challenge was go-to-market inside the organization. Success depended on clearly articulating the value of the expansion, aligning product, engineering, legal, finance, and operations around the approach, and securing investment through a well socialized business case.

The result validated the strategy. We launched successfully and drove more than $40M in annual demand. In this case, go-to-market was about internal conviction.

Go-to-Market Through Readiness and Adoption

Go-to-market for the Optum App started with a clear problem. The digital experience we were replacing had low customer satisfaction, and the EHR we were integrating with suffered from similarly poor satisfaction scores. Patients struggled to complete basic tasks. They wanted an easy way to schedule doctor visits and access their medical records. Improving those experiences was the core value proposition.

We also faced a structural challenge. Due to HIPAA requirements and internal constraints, onboarding into the app involved a lengthy and unfamiliar workflow. Without intervention, this alone could have stalled adoption, regardless of the value delivered after sign in.

To address this, I led the production of a patient facing onboarding video in partnership with marketing, business, and CX teams. The goal was simple: set expectations, reduce confusion, and clearly show how the app would help patients schedule care and access their records once onboarded.

Operational readiness was equally critical. I led the training and development of call scripts with the customer support team to ensure patient questions could be handled confidently and consistently. I also led the Southern California rollout, working onsite with clinic staff and patients to drive adoption.

By treating go-to-market as an operational capability rather than a campaign, we reached 100,000 patients within five months.

Go-to-Market as a Product Capability

Strong go-to-market strategy starts with product fundamentals. It is rooted in a clear understanding of customer problems, a focused value proposition, and alignment across product, marketing, sales, and operations. The most effective GTM plans treat launch as the start of learning, measure success through adoption and outcomes, and evolve as the product and market evolves.

The scope of go-to-market is broader than most teams expect. It includes internal alignment, operational readiness, enablement, onboarding, and support. Whether selling software, services, or healthcare experiences, GTM succeeds when the entire system around the product is prepared to deliver the promised value.

Looking back, the lesson I learned early in my career still holds. A superior product is not enough. Customers do not buy features or UX. They buy outcomes, access, and confidence that a product will work for them. Go-to-market is where that promise is proven.

For digital product managers, go-to-market is not a phase or a handoff. It is a core product capability, and one of the strongest levers we have to turn good products into successful ones.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nike’s Bold Global Strategy: A Case Study in Rapid Digital Expansion

Image
By the early 2010s, Nike had already established itself as a leader in digital commerce, setting a high bar with its groundbreaking launches of nike.com in Japan (2013) and China (2014). These markets were a testament to Nike’s ability to deliver large-scale digital experiences, but they came with significant investment—each project took 18 months and multi-million-dollar budgets to bring to life. As the global demand for Nike’s products surged, the company faced a new challenge: could it replicate the success of these digital rollouts on a much larger scale, but with fewer resources and in a faster timeframe? The stakes were high. While Nike had cemented its position as a global digital leader, the demand for full-scale global expansion was growing rapidly. Consumers in smaller, emerging markets were eager for access to Nike’s full product line. However, building localized infrastructure in every market wasn’t a sustainable solution. Nike needed to rethink its approach—one that would ...
Read more

The Product Model

Image
  The Product Model provides a structured framework that guides product teams through the critical stages of defining, solving, and delivering solutions, ensuring a customer-centric and successful outcome. In a recent article , I discussed Product Leadership and Coaching with “The two A’s and the three P’s framework.” 2A3P sounds like a cool new android in an upcoming Star Wars movie. If so, they would be a Product Manager fluent in over 6 million languages.  To recap… Alignment and Autonomy provide your foundation for building a successful product. Alignment across the organization on what you are doing and why you are doing it is your starting point, your shared vision on the current state and the desired future state. Autonomy enables teams to determine the best way to achieve the shared vision. When leadership provides clarity on the what and why, teams are free to focus on the how, using their expertise and creativity to solve challenges and deliver results. People, Proc...
Read more

Leadership in Product Management: Alignment and Autonomy

Image
In an interview, I was asked if I had a mantra or metaphor for my leadership style. At the time, I didn’t have an answer prepared. I did some verbal tap dancing but ultimately didn’t get the job. Reflecting on that question, my answer today is Alignment and Autonomy. Leadership in product management is about providing strategy—the what and why —and ensuring the organization is aligned around it. Once alignment is achieved, teams are given the autonomy to determine how to execute the vision. This balance creates the conditions for innovation, adaptability, and success. Vision and Strategy Strategy starts with intent: defining what you want to achieve and why it matters. Leadership connects the current state to a desired future, ensuring the team understands the opportunity, value proposition, and competitive landscape. Think of strategy as a staircase. Each step represents an incremental action, building toward a stronger position. Leadership outlines a multi-year plan that enables th...
Read more