The Root Cause of GTM Misalignment: It’s Not the KPIs

When go-to-market (GTM) teams—sales, marketing, product, and customer success—struggle to align, the issue is often misdiagnosed. Most assume the problem lies in agreeing on shared KPIs, metrics or incentives. But in reality, true GTM misalignment comes from something deeper: a lack of shared understanding of the buyer’s pain points and journey. To succeed, GTM teams must stop focusing solely on internal metrics and shift their attention outward—to the buyer. By mapping the buyer’s journey from the first moment of awareness to becoming a loyal customer, companies can align their teams around a common mission: helping buyers navigate their journey successfully. Let’s explore why buyer-centric GTM alignment is critical, how to map the buyer’s journey, and how this approach drives better messaging, positioning, and growth.

The buyer’s journey isn’t just a theoretical exercise—it’s the blueprint for how GTM teams should operate. Without a shared understanding of this journey, each team interprets their role differently, leading to conflicting priorities, inconsistent messaging, and, ultimately, a fractured experience for the buyer. What is the Buyer’s Journey? The buyer’s journey is the series of steps a buyer - really a buying committee takes from identifying a problem to solving it with your solution—and beyond, to becoming an advocate. In B2B, this journey often includes multiple stakeholders and decision-makers, each with unique concerns and objectives. Mapping the journey involves understanding:

• Pain Points: What challenges or jobs-to-be-done trigger the buyer to seek a solution?
• Stages: What steps does the buyer take to evaluate and decide on a solution?
• Influences: What information, resources, or conversations shape their decisions?
• Barriers: What objections or risks must be overcome?

Why GTM Teams Must Map the Buyer’s Journey

• Align Teams Around the Customer Mapping the buyer’s journey creates a single source of truth for all GTM teams. Instead of working in silos, sales, marketing, product, and customer success can align their efforts to support the buyer at every stage.
• Create Consistent Messaging Without a shared understanding of the buyer’s pain points and priorities, each team risks creating conflicting narratives. Journey mapping ensures that messaging—from sales calls to marketing campaigns—is consistent, relevant, and buyer-centric.
• Improve Solution Positioning Mapping the journey forces teams to clarify how the solution addresses the buyer’s pain points, what features are most relevant, and how to frame the problem in a way that resonates. It also ensures positioning remains competitive and differentiated.
• Define Internal Roles and Responsibilities Every GTM function plays a unique role in helping the buyer move through their journey. A mapped-out journey clarifies what each team needs to do at each stage, reducing friction and confusion.
• Drive Better Customer Outcomes When GTM teams are aligned around the buyer, they’re better equipped to deliver a seamless experience, leading to stronger relationships, higher retention, and advocacy.

Step 1: Define the Journey Stages

Map out key stages of the journey, such as:

• Awareness: The buyer identifies a business challenge that must be solved.
• Education: The buyer explores for possible solutions, including competitors.
• Selection: The buyer chooses a solution and secures buy-in from stakeholders.
• Onboarding: The buyer begins using the solution and evaluates its impact.
• Renewal: The buyer makes a desired impact on their business and renews.
• Expansion: The buyer expands their solution to additional products and makes a larger impact on their business.

Step 2: Identify the Buyer’s Pain Points and Jobs-to-be-Done

At each stage, determine:

• What challenges the buyer faces.
• What jobs they need to accomplish to progress to the next stage.
• What emotions or risks influence their decisions.

Step 3: Map Internal Roles to Each Stage

Define how each GTM function supports the buyer at every stage:

• Marketing: Creates awareness, educates buyers, and frames the problem.
• Sales: Builds relationships, addresses objections, and highlights differentiation.
• Product: Demonstrates value through features that address key pain points.
• Customer Success: Ensures buyers achieve desired outcomes and builds advocacy.

Step 4: Create Buyer-Centric Messaging and Content

For each stage and persona in the buying committee, identify the most relevant messaging and content. For example:

• Awareness: Thought leadership blogs, industry trend eBooks, problem-focused blogs that describe industry challenges.
• Education: Comparison guides/articles, industry eBooks, and case studies showcasing how others addressed similar challenges.
• Selection: ROI calculators, one-pagers, personalized demos, account pages, objection guides.
• Onboarding: Onboarding guides, training videos, FAQs, quick-start tutorials, and implementation checklists.
• Renewal: Impact reports, performance dashboards, and case studies showing measurable success with your solution.
• Expansion: Expansion playbooks, advanced use case guides, success stories from other customers, and feature/solution showcase webinars.

Step 5: Continuously Update the Journey Map

The buyer’s journey evolves as markets and buyer behaviors change. Regularly revisit and refine the journey map based on feedback, data, and insights.

Common Mistakes in Mapping the Buyer’s Journey

• Focusing on Internal Goals Over Buyer Needs: A journey map should reflect the buyer’s perspective, not internal sales or marketing objectives.
• Overlooking Buying Committee Dynamics: B2B decisions involve multiple stakeholders—failing to address their unique needs leads to misalignment.
• Creating Generic Journey Maps: Every buyer segment may have a different journey. Tailor maps to reflect specific industries, roles, or use cases.
• Ignoring Post-Sale Stages: The buyer’s journey doesn’t end at purchase. Failing to address onboarding and success stages undermines retention and growth.

The Business Impact of Buyer-Centric GTM Alignment

When GTM teams align around the buyer’s journey, the impact on business growth is profound:

1. Higher Engagement and Conversion Rates: Buyers receive messaging and content that speaks directly to their needs, increasing engagement and accelerating deals.
2. Stronger Competitive Positioning: Clear alignment on how the solution addresses pain points and differentiates from competitors leads to more compelling sales and marketing efforts.
3. Reduced Churn and Increased Expansion: When customer success teams are aligned with the buyer’s post-purchase journey, customers achieve their goals more consistently, leading to higher retention and upsell opportunities.
4. Increased Team Efficiency: With clear roles and responsibilities defined by the journey map, GTM teams avoid duplication of effort and operate more effectively.

Final Thoughts: Aligning Around the Buyer

GTM misalignment isn’t a problem that can be solved with more dashboards or better metrics. The solution lies in building a shared understanding of the buyer’s pain points and journey.

By mapping the buyer’s journey and aligning all teams around their role in supporting the buyer, businesses can create better messaging, stronger positioning, and more effective demand generation strategies.

In the end, buyer-centric GTM alignment isn’t just a strategy—it’s a competitive advantage that drives growth, retention, and long-term success.

Is your GTM team ready to align around the buyer?