Not having a GTM strategy is a bit like choosing your next vacation by throwing a dart at the map. You could accidentally end up with something you wanted, or you could land in the middle of the Atlantic. There’s something to be said about living a carefree life, but when hundreds of thousands of dollars are on the line, it pays to have some idea of what you’re doing.

But what exactly does a GTM strategy do? Let’s assume you’re trying to build a house. Without a plan in place:

• You’ll likely order too many or too few supplies
• You’ll run into production issues when your construction team don’t know what they should be doing
• The house likely won’t be designed in a way that suits peoples’ needs or satisfies their desires
• You won’t know how to properly price the house to both entice potential buyers and make back your investment
• At the end of the project, you may find that on top of all the mistakes you already made, it turns out the location of a house matters and very few people want to buy an 6-bedroom apartment built in the middle of a swamp

When developing a GTM strategy for your product or service, it will greatly impact the odds of your success if you plan out every stage, including who the product/service’s targeted towards, what needs are being fulfilled, how you’ll engage with those customers, and so much more.

A GTM is designed to map out the creation and initial launch of a new product or service. A business plan is larger in scope and maps out how an entire company will achieve its proclaimed goals. While these two strategies are similar in their objectives, a business plan is inherently more widespread in what it covers as it focuses on a company’s plan for success as a whole.

A GTM strategy is simply mapping out all the potential problems you’ll run into when developing a new product or service, and how your company will plan to approach those problems. That’s why it’s a good idea to sit down with a team, discuss those potential problems, and measure out reasonable solutions to them. For example: