I’ve spent years watching B2B companies treat go-to-market growth like a black box-throwing money, headcount, and strategies into it while staring at the same frustrating metrics. Last week, I sat through a B2BMX session where a cybersecurity firm’s VP of Growth admitted their “scalable” GTM approach had turned into a cash drain. Their pipeline swelled with deals that never closed because they’d assumed buyers wanted the same thing as last year’s customers. Spoiler: they didn’t. The room fell silent when he revealed their customer acquisition cost had doubled in 18 months-despite doubling their sales team. That’s when the lightbulb clicked: B2B GTM growth isn’t broken-it’s being sabotaged by the wrong questions.
B2B GTM growth: Your GTM growth is lying to you
The biggest blind spot in B2B GTM growth isn’t tooling or tech-it’s the assumption that buyers are still the same people they were two years ago. Data reveals that 68% of mid-market SaaS companies I’ve worked with overindex on “enterprise scalability” in their messaging, only to discover their ideal customers are actually SMBs who want plug-and-play simplicity. Take DocuSign’s early days: they didn’t fail because their e-signature product was weak. They failed because they treated all buyers as if they had the same decision-making speed as a Fortune 500. Their pivot? A “self-service” tier that removed friction for small teams. MRR tripled in 12 months.
Three red flags your GTM is misfiring
Not every problem is a product problem. Here’s how to spot when your B2B GTM growth is misaligned:
- Your pipeline grows but your close rate shrinks-because you’re chasing “high intent” signals that don’t match your buyer’s actual path.
- Your sales team keeps “educating buyers” on features that don’t address their stated pain points (hint: it’s not about the product).
- Your product-led growth efforts feel like a demo rather than a tool that solves a specific job-to-be-done.
At B2BMX, a revenue ops leader at a fintech company shared their turnaround: they mapped the real buyer journey (not the one they’d scripted) and discovered 70% of prospects were stalled at the “proof of concept” stage-not because of price, but because their integration took three months to set up. The fix? They built a 10-minute demo environment that mirrored their customers’ actual workflows. Within three quarters, their demo-to-close rate jumped by 42%.
How to audit your GTM without overhauling everything
You don’t need a six-month overhaul. Start by asking these three questions-then test the answers before you scale:
- What’s the one question your buyers ask that your messaging never answers? (e.g., “How will this save my team time?” not “What’s the ROI?”).
- What’s your “weakest link” in the buyer’s journey? Is it your onboarding? Your pricing page? Their first interaction with your CSM?
- If you had to eliminate one touchpoint, which would it be-and why? (This reveals where you’re adding value vs. just moving faster.)
The company that nailed this at B2BMX was a healthcare analytics firm. Their original GTM playbook had them hosting “expert-led workshops” to educate prospects. Problem? Doctors didn’t have time for workshops. So they swapped it for a 30-second quiz that diagnosed a clinic’s biggest data gaps-and delivered a customized ROI estimate in seconds. Their demo requests quadrupled in six weeks. The lesson? B2B GTM growth isn’t about making things bigger-it’s about making them smaller and sharper.
The companies that win in B2B GTM growth aren’t the ones with the most aggressive strategies. They’re the ones who ask better questions-and dare to answer them with data, not assumptions. If your pipeline feels like a Rube Goldberg machine, start by asking your next five customers: *”What would you do if you could redesign our GTM strategy from scratch?”* The answers won’t be pretty, but they’ll be real. And in this industry, reality is your best growth engine.
