FOUR STAGES OF GTM
What stage are you in?
The answer determines the scope, the sequence, and what success looks like. It also determines whether you should hire me at all. Two of these four stages aren't a fit for fractional leadership, and I'd rather tell you that now than three months in.
STAGE 1
Founders own everything
Product, sales, and marketing are the same conversation, usually led by the same person.
What it looks like:Â The founder is in every deal. Pricing changes per customer. You're still learning who the buyer actually is.
The GTM job: Proof, not scale. Find the narrowest buyer who'll act. Validate cheaply. Earn the right to build a funnel.
My take: You don't need a CMO. You need learning. Hiring marketing leadership now buys overhead before there's a function to lead. Advisory hours are the right size here: senior judgment on the decisions in front of you, no contract.
STAGE 2
Signals, but no system
Customers exist. Revenue exists. But positioning shifts every quarter, win/loss lives in someone's head, and sales, marketing and product are running off slightly different stories.
What it looks like:Â Five people describe what you sell five different ways. Deals close and nobody can say reliably why. The founder is still the best seller in the company.
The GTM job: Turn what works into something repeatable that survives without the founder in the room.
My take: This is where fractional leadership earns its keep, and it's most of what I do. Embedded, three to eighteen months. The goal is to hand off a function that keeps running after I leave.
STAGE 3
You have a system, and need scale
Marketing isn't hunting for signal anymore. It's amplifying signal. This is product-market fit doing what it's supposed to do.
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What it looks like: Pipeline is forecastable. New sellers ramp on a documented motion. The constraint is capacity, not clarity.
The GTM job: Scale what already works, and hire someone to own it.
My take: You should be hiring full-time. A full-time leader earns their place here because they're not spending two quarters figuring out what you sell. Where I'm worth more than a retainer is a defined sprint before that hire lands: a positioning reset, a messaging architecture, or a competitive intelligence build their first day inherits instead of rebuilds. I'm also happy to pressure-test the role and the hiring bar. That conversation is free.
STAGE 4
Complexity, and a focus problem
Multiple products. Multiple segments. Multiple markets. The challenge stops being demand generation and becomes focus.
What it looks like:Â Product and/or service lines competing for the same budget. The story doesn't hold together for a buyer who only cares about one piece. Every function has a plan and none of them agree.
The GTM job:Â Commercial architecture. Deciding where the next dollar goes, and what stops getting one.
My take: This needs executive leadership that can hold the whole board. Where I help is the outside read on which segment, which product, and what to stop. Advisory, or a scoped sprint if the answer turns out to be a repositioning.