10 ??? Takes About GTM (and Community) in 2023

Looks like we've got some changes around here. I've made the decision to change the naming and packaging on this newsletter to focus more on my thoughts on where GTM is and is headed.

Onwards to the10 takes!

Go-to-market has, and continues to change, right before our very eyes. It's exciting that we're in a time of trying new things and experimenting with fresh ideas. Here are a few of my potentially spicy takes on GTM and Community in 2023 and beyond.

1) Your current GTM process and strategy (probably) sucks.

Everyone is talking about salespeople not making quota and GTM being harder than ever. Most companies and teams are still trying to rest on the laurels of easy growth for the past decade, and aren't adjusting fast or strongly enough for where the world is and continues to head.

Now that the tides have receded, we're seeing just how many teams are trying to polish the sad turd of fundamentally broken strategies, and it's showing in their quota attainment.

2) Personalization is (mostly) bullshit.

The vast majority of personalization I see these days is surface-level, inauthentic, and objectively worse than zero personalization. It's the uncanny valley of personalization - it's just personalized enough to not feel generic, but it's not true personalization.

It's not possible to achieve true personalization with a cursory glance at a LinkedIn profile, and it's entirely impossible when generated by a computer. We should be replacing the concept of personalization with the concept of authentic connection.

3) Most community platforms kind of suck.

Community platforms are almost always compared to each other, and rarely are they looked at in a silo. X is better than Y, Z does things that X can't, etc. But when you peel back the comparison layer and look at each one subjectively, most of them do a really poor job of actually providing the right value.

And no, the answer isn't "more features". So what is? At the risk of saying too much, there's a deeper rabbit hole here than can fit in this post — stay tuned.

4) Community should be a cross-functional role, not a siloed pillar.

At the start of the Community-Led movement a few years ago, it was common to see calls for community to have a seat at the table, for it to be separate from marketing, support, success, etc.

While I still agree with that, I now disagree that it should be peeled away and become its own pillar within a GTM strategy. Just like Product-Led isn't just having a self-serve product, the best community strategies embrace the cross-functional power of Community-Led, rather than leaving it to a community team.

Check out how we're embracing this with our Head of Community-Led role here .

5) Your GTM strategy is burning bridges before they've even been built.

I've got a growing list of companies that seem like they have great products (great reviews, great communities of fans, etc), but their overly pushy sales and GTM tactics continually leave a sour taste in my mouth and uninterested in learning more or peaking behind the curtain.

If you auto-email me once every week (or sometimes more) in an endless cycle of faux-personalization without providing any real value to me at all, I'm likely going to actively avoid your product.

Many current GTM strategies are doing more harm than they do good.

6) CRMs, no matter how modern or well-designed, are actually terrible at accomplishing anything.

Much like community platforms, many of the CRMs that are held up as "best in class" are only so great because they're being compared to some truly painful and antiquated software. HubSpot is a great product, but often still held in higher regard because the bar for comparison (Salesforce) is so, so, so low.

The problem is CRMs themselves and maybe we don't need more "better-designed CRMs", but rather something entirely new...

7) 'Community' is a loaded term, and is getting in the way of actual community progress.

I love community. Belief in the power of true community is a core pillar of what makes me, well, me.

But the term itself is loaded, open to too much interpretation and misuse. It's too easy to slap 'community' on things without truly understanding what it is. On the flip side, it sometimes feels a little like 'community experts' are countering this by closing ranks — more concerned with finger-wagging about what community is or isn't than educating people about what community could be.

The fundamentals of what makes community powerful are still very much true. We need to rip the packaging off and get straight to the core building blocks.

8) Too many teams are focusing on AI while their GTM fundamentals are still bad.

See take #1. AI isn't going to fix a bad strategy.

9) Most current use cases for AI in GTM create a race to the bottom.

See #8. Most teams aren't going to pay attention and will keep automating what they're doing, making the strategies even worse. It's a tragedy of the commons. Everyone acting in their own self-interest has made, and will continue to make, old GTM strategies ineffective.

If you're all writing me AI-generated cold emails, the genuine cold emails will get even more lost.

10) Many sales leaders are woefully unprepared for where their world is headed.

See all of the above. Most sales leaders are not prepared for the changes happening beneath their noses. They're continuing to hammer forward on things that worked for them the past decade.

Many seem incapable of stepping outside of the crowd, thinking for themselves, and objectively building a strategy that is right for their business. Fear of change leads to being crushed by the very thing you're fearful of.

11) Bonus take - Go-to-market as a concept is flawed, go-to-network is the future.

What is Go-to-Network (GTN)? It's Product-Led, Community-Led, Event-Led, etc. It's growth through network building.

Read more in this post.

What do you think — do you strongly agree with these takes or do you vehemently disagree?