GTM Motions: A Framework for Choosing, Evolving, and Succeeding

A go-to-market (GTM) motion is the specific approach and model that a company uses to engage and acquire customers.

GTM motions are an essential piece of a SaaS brand's overarching go-to-market strategy, and will directly impact how a company operates and it's success.

Competition in B2B SaaS is fierce, selling has become harder, and customer expectations are higher than ever. As such, choosing the right GTM motion can make all the difference between growth and stagnation.

What are the core B2B GTM motions?

In the B2B space, generally there are three common GTM motions: product-led, sales-led, and hybrid motions. Each approach caters to different types of products and customers, and each has its benefits and setbacks.

• Product-Led GTM: This motion focuses on the product being the primary driver for customer acquisition. Customers engage with the product firsthand through "freemium" setups, trials, or other forms of low-friction entry.
• Sales-Led GTM: The traditional sales-led approach focuses on building relationships through human sales representatives. Complicated enterprise products that require detailed customization often fit this approach.
• Hybrid GTM: A hybrid or customer-led approach gives customers more control and allows them to decide how much they want to involve salespeople. The customer chooses their own journey and can blend self-service with human interaction as needed.

Product-led GTM, explained 

A product-led go-to-market strategy, also called PLG (product-led growth), focuses on the product itself as what drives customer acquisition, engagement, and retention.

Instead of relying heavily on sales and marketing, the product is designed to demonstrate its own value early on, often through free trials, freemium models, or self-service experiences.

This approach allows users to onboard quickly and experience the product firsthand.

What type of brands is it best for?

Product-led GTMs are suited for brands with simple or intuitive products that don’t need extensive onboarding or high-touch sales efforts.

SaaS tools that can be adopted easily (without too much training involved) often use a product-led GTM as well.

Tools like Calendly, Canva, and ClickUp, where users can get immediate value from trying the product with little to no friction, succeeded with leveraging a PLG motion.

What does team structure look like?

• Product team: Focuses on creating an intuitive user experience to drive adoption and product engagement.
• Growth/marketing team: Focuses on driving traffic and sign-ups through content, SEO, and other inbound strategies.
• Customer success team: Acts as a guide for users during onboarding and helps convert free users into paying customers.

Product-led growth vs community-led growth

Another emerging GTM motion, community-led, revolves around building a loyal and engaged community around your product. This leads to community-driven contributions like insights, crowdsourced feedback and updates, and templates.

It’s particularly effective for brands that thrive on user-generated content or community-based feedback.

Product-led models can overlap with community-led growth, as brands like Webflow and Miro have shown by letting users share feedback and templates they've created, improving the product, expanding use cases, and appealing to more users.

Product-led GTM pros and cons

Pros

• Rapid user adoption: With low-friction entry points, customers can make use of the product quickly.
• Scalable growth: Growth is driven by product usage and word-of-mouth rather than expensive marketing efforts.
• Customer-centric approach: A product-led motion is often aligned with user needs because it allows users to explore and find value on their own terms. 

Cons

• Lack of customer touchpoints: Some users may need more personalized touchpoints to understand and adopt the product.
• Complex products may struggle: If a product has a steep learning curve, product-led approaches may not be effective alone.
• Retention and churn risks: Users who sign up for a free trial or freemium model may fail to see enough value to become paying customers.

Real-world examples

• Calendly: this scheduling tool has a freemium model that draws in users quickly and allows them to see the immediate value of the product, contributing to growth via virality and network effects. Network effects: when the value of a product increases the more people use it.

• Canva: by using a freemium model, community-based learning, and UGC, the product was easily accessible and user-friendly, which helped Canva achieve rapid and mass adoption.
• ClickUp: the project management tool focused on improving activation, driving virality, and fostering product evangelists to succeed with their PLG motion.

Product-led GTM considerations

Many applicable companies employ a usage-based pricing model. This can be attractive to customers, but it might not always be the best option. If scaling your pricing based on usage doesn’t align with your business model, a different approach may be more appropriate.

Also, as companies grow, they may evolve to incorporate a sales-led model as they build out more complex offerings. Many start with a product-led model but later integrate sales representatives as their customer base or product offerings expand.

Looking to the future

The future of PLG will very likely be shaped or influenced by AI, with tools like personalization engines aiding in the creation of frictionless user onboarding, as well as faster time to value (TTV).

Additionally, as product roles evolve, roles like "product-led account manager" or "product success manager" will rise. This change will help blend customer success and product management skills to ensure ongoing customer engagement.

Sales-led GTM, explained

A sales-led go-to-market strategy depends on a dedicated sales team to gain new customers and grow revenue. In this approach, the sales team takes the lead in identifying a target audience, nurturing leads, and guiding potential customers through the buying process (which often involves personalized demos or sales POCs), negotiations, and relationship-building. 

What type of brands is it best for?

Products that call for more advanced technical knowledge or customization efforts often use a sales-led approach. These products cannot be effectively introduced or showcased through self-service trials or freemium models.

High-touch solutions like Salesforce or SAP do well using this approach because they require specialized teams to demonstrate the value of the product's features to prospective customers.

What does team structure look like?

With sales-led approaches, sales teams focus on outbound efforts, building relationships, and guiding customers through the involved sales funnel and buying process.

Marketing teams using this approach work closely with sales to align messaging and provide necessary support. They tend to create high-touch marketing materials like case studies, white papers, and ROI calculators.

After a sale is made, customer care representatives work post-sale to ensure customer satisfaction, retention, and expansion opportunities.

Sales-led GTM pros and cons

Pros

• Relationship-building: Relationship-building is a significant strength of sales-led GTM motions. Establishing trust early on will usually lead to higher retention and expansion rates.
• Custom-tailored solutions: Sales-led teams can offer personalized product demonstrations, proposals, and solutions tailored to a customer's specific needs.

Cons

• Buyer Preferences: One downside is that some buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience. With increasing buyer autonomy, not all customers want to go through a sales-heavy process.
• Slower deal velocity: Sales cycles in a sales-led motion are typically longer due to the complex negotiation and approval processes often required.

Long sales cycles? We spoke with sales and solutions pros to uncover their top strategies for accelerating sales cycles. James Kaikis, Chief Solutions Officer at TestBox, believes that “letting organization lines blend in the best interest of the customer experience has a net-positive impact on upsell, cross-sell, expansion, and renewals.”

Real-world examples

Take a moment to review examples of companies whose sales model is centered around a sales-led GTM.

• Salesforce: This customer relationship management company requires a sales-led approach due to its complexity and numerous customizable features.
• SAP: This enterprise resource planning solution has highly intricate configurations. Because of this, a high level of touch from sales teams is required.

Sales-led GTM considerations

Success in sales-led GTM motions depends quite heavily on aligning sales and marketing efforts to ensure that messaging, sales demos, and sales materials are both consistent and persuasive.

On top of that, strong sales cultures that value collaboration, transparency, and agility tend to perform well in a sales-led environment.

Looking to the Future

Buyers are demanding more tailored solutions, quicker responses, and smoother buying journeys. Sales cycles are getting longer, as they're driven by more complex buyer needs and tougher economic conditions. The pressure on sales teams to provide value throughout the sales cycle will likely only intensify.

As businesses try to make it through turbulent times, sales teams need to be ready to build stronger relationships while balancing the need for both scalability and speed.

Demo automation is something brands are leveraging to speed up sales cycles, give buyers the experiences they crave, and close more deals.

Learn how tools like TestBox help brands take advantage of the capabilities and benefits of demo automation.

Hybrid GTM, explained

Hybrid or customer-led GTM strategies can be quite diverse, as this approach involves elements of both sales and product-led methods. 

What type of brands is it best for?

Hybrid or customer-led GTM motions are ideal for companies whose customer base has diverse needs. These could range from self-service-oriented small businesses to larger enterprises that call for more hands-on assistance.

What does team structure look like?

A hybrid motion demands tight coordination efforts between sales and product teams to meet varying and evolving customer needs.

Hybrid GTM pros and cons

Pros

• Flexible sales team involvement: Customers have the ability to choose how much sales involvement they want. This offers flexibility and improves the overall customer experience.
• Ability to meet diverse customer needs: A hybrid GTM motion allows customers to choose their preferred level of interaction, which caters to both small and large businesses.
• Resource allocation: Companies can reserve sales resources for high-value or complex customers while allowing product-led processes to handle simpler customers. 

Cons 

• Resources Needed: Hybrid models can be more resource-intensive, which may mean they require strong alignment across multiple teams.
• Higher operational costs: A hybrid approach requires investment in both self-service technologies and a skilled sales team.

Real-world examples

HubSpot is a great example of hybrid GTM in action, as they allow smaller businesses to start using its CRM for free, while it offers larger companies more sales interactions as well as advanced product features. While initially HubSpot struggled with their sales-led motion because of misalignment, the brand has since found success.

Hybrid GTM considerations

When adopting a hybrid GTM approach, companies need to focus on seamless integration between sales and product teams. This approach ensures a smooth experience across a variety of touchpoints. Additionally, businesses should invest in a well-rounded data-sharing process to track customer interactions, enabling personalized engagement and optimized resource allocation.

Looking to the future

As customer preferences continue to change, the hybrid GTM model is likely to become even more prominent. Companies that can successfully blend product and sales-led strategies will gain an edge by delivering personalized customer experiences. Advances in AI and automation will also streamline hybrid approaches and reduce costs while improving the ability to scale different products and interactions.

A new(er) GTM motion: customer-led buying

One issue we see with PLG, sales-led, and hybrid motions is that neither primarily focuses on what's oftentimes best for the buyer.

Buyers today want the flexibility to explore and evaluate a product in a way that aligns with their needs, letting them take a "choose your own adventure" approach to a product and purchasing.

While the broader industry might look at this as product-led sales, at TestBox we call it customer-led buying. By focusing on the buyer and their experience, this approach drives growth by combining the best of PLG and sales-led models but giving buyers more flexibility and freedom during the buying process.

So how can you ditch the strict PLG vs sales-led model and take a customer-centric approach instead? 

1. Identify each buyer’s preferred path: Let buyers indicate whether they prefer a self-serve approach or sales-assisted guidance. This way, you create a process tailored to each prospect’s preferences from the start.

2. Offer hands-on product access, even in sales-led models: “Both sides benefit when buyers can interact directly with the product,” says Alex Poulos, CMO at Crossbeam. As Eli Rubel, CEO at NoBoringDesign, adds, “When a strong sales process is in place, you can confidently provide more upfront access to the product, allowing buyers to see its true value firsthand.”‍

3. Craft an outstanding trial experience: Don’t just hand over the product; guide buyers through its core benefits to make the experience meaningful. As Goyette explains, simply dropping customers into the product isn’t effective—you need to help them quickly understand its full value.‍

4. Make value transparent: Avoid concealing the product’s value behind prolonged discovery calls, opaque pricing, or unnecessary steps. “If you bury your value, you risk missing out entirely,” says Davies.

5. Meet buyer expectations head-on: According to Sahil Mansuri, CEO of Bravado, customers expect three things: straightforward, transparent pricing; hands-on experience with the product before committing; and access to a knowledgeable person to address questions and help them make informed choices.

Above all, remember that purchasing software isn’t the buyer’s main job. Anything you can do to simplify and clarify their experience is a step toward removing their burdens and fostering a better relationship with your brand. By keeping that and buyer preferences in mind, you can create a better buying experience and unlock growth that traditional models possibly couldn't.

Considerations when choosing a GTM

Decision-makers face a great deal of options when trying to find a GTM strategy that meets their company’s exact needs. To avoid pursuing the wrong frameworks, follow these simple practices and find the GTM strategy that aligns with what your team is looking for.

Target market and customer needs

Understanding who your ideal customers are and how they prefer to buy is essential. For example, are they looking for a more low-touch experience or do they need guidance through the buying and usage process?

Competition and value prop

Analyze competitors’ GTM strategies and determine how your brand's value proposition differentiates you from others in the market.

Product complexity

Simple products are often suited to PLG, while more complex ones are better handled through a sales-led approach.

Sales cycles 

Longer sales cycles often call for a sales-led GTM, while PLG tends to do well with shorter cycles.

Economy, pricing, & market conditions 

Poor market conditions and downturns can impact your GTM strategy, pricing, team, and other factors. Uncertain conditions and downturns usually favor leaner, more agile GTM motions.

Resources and team structure

Check your current team’s capabilities and scalability. Not every team can support every motion.

Alignment with RevOps

A well-aligned revenue operations (RevOps) team can improve the efficiency and cohesiveness of your chosen GTM.

Scalability and company goals

Think about long-term planning and solutions. Is your chosen GTM motion scalable as your company grows? If not, it may be time to reevaluate the approach you’re taking.

Company-wide adoption

The GTM motion chosen needs to be embraced throughout the company so that it breaks down barriers between marketing, sales, and success teams. Company culture plays an important role in both the alignment and success of any GTM approach.

When and how to evolve your GTM motion

One GTM strategy might serve a company for quite some time, but things change. In due time, you may need to plan how you’re going to evolve your GTM motion so that it continues to keep up with your team’s needs and responsibilities.

Signs it's time to transition

• Poor metrics: High churn rates, ineffective customer acquisition, or high CAC.
• Stagnant growth: Your GTM motion no longer drives growth.
• Evolving market conditions: Competitors and market shifts can point to the need for a new approach.
• Customer feedback: Feedback from customers and internal teams should be a guiding factor.

How to successfully transition 

Conduct in-depth customer and market research to understand new preferences. It's also wise to take a customer-centric approach when choosing a new GTM process. Your GTM should align with how your buyers prefer to interact with your brand and products.

Be sure to empower your sales, product, and marketing teams to work together effectively during the transition as well. When everyone is on the same page, new process adoption tends to be a success.

Real-world evolution examples

• Slack’s transition to enterprise: Initially a product-led offering, Slack shifted to a hybrid approach. This shift incorporated sales-led motions to meet the needs of enterprise clients without compromising its self-serve roots.
• Zendesk’s successful sales-led evolution: Zendesk started as a PLG company, but as its customer base matured, it transitioned into a sales-led GTM. This way, they could cater to enterprise customers and grow average deal sizes.

Choose, refine, and succeed

Selecting and refining a go-to-market motion is a difficult but much-needed process that directly impacts the success of a business. Whether you choose product-led, sales-led, or a hybrid approach, the right GTM strategy can unlock growth opportunities, improve customer satisfaction, and boost revenue.

By understanding your target market, aligning your teams around the strategy you choose, and continuously optimizing based on KPIs and feedback, you can create sustainable success in today’s competitive marketplace.

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