WHITEPAPER
Bridging the Gap:
Aligning Product Development and Go-to-Market Strategies
Most organizations are focused on growing their business, scaling their operations, and expanding their market reach. However, many of these organizations struggle to achieve the growth they envision, often encountering barriers that stall progress or leave them falling short of their potential.
One fundamental issue lies in the disconnect between two critical functions: product management and go-to-market. Product management is responsible for creating solutions, refining features, and ensuring the product is market-ready. Meanwhile, go-to-market (GTM) teams are focused on getting the product into customers' hands, driving adoption, and scaling revenue. When these teams are misaligned, it leads to a range of problems that stifle growth—frustration between departments, inefficient sales cycles, low conversion rates, and confusion over why the product isn’t performing as expected, to name a few.
This white paper explores a framework we developed that helps leaders and organization reason over their current state, define a preferable “to be” state and create a more effective product management function that continuously improves.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
-
Introduction
-
The Shelf Analogy
-
Warning Signs of the Product-Market Disconnect
-
Understanding the Barriers to Alignment
-
Unleashing Growth with Holistic Programs
-
Conclusion
ABOUT AUTHOR
​
Greg Prickril
Product Management Practice Lead
​
In a 20-year career shipping software at IBM, Microsoft and SAP, Greg Prickril, a strategic product management consultant, coach and trainer, and co-founder career.pm. Greg has worked with many global enterprise companies to increase the strategic impact of their product management function.