What is a GTM Tech Stack?

A go-to-market (GTM) tech stack is a collection of integrated software tools and platforms that sales, marketing, and customer success teams use to facilitate the entire process of bringing a product or service to market.

Your GTM tech stack supports the entire customer journey—from initial engagement to deal closure and ongoing support—by automating tasks, providing data-driven insights, and facilitating efficient operations. This makes it one of the most essential considerations for your GTM strategy.

Synonyms

• Go-to-market technology stack
• GTM technology stack
• GTM software

Essential Functions of a GTM Tech Stack

Successful GTM execution starts with the right software. If you don’t have tools that streamline sales, marketing, customer support, and reporting for those teams, your GTM strategy will fail to reach its full potential.

A complete GTM tech stack will have one or more systems to perform each of the following functions:

• Lead generation and customer acquisition
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Marketing automation
• Sales enablement
• Customer support and service

Let’s dive into each and what they entail.

Lead generation and customer acquisition

Lead generation is the process of attracting potential customers (called sales leads) to your business.

There are a number of ways to do this:

• Organic marketing
• Email
• Paid ads
• Outbound sales development
• Referral programs
• Product-led growth (PLG)

From there, customer acquisition is all about qualifying those leads and moving them through the sales funnel until you ultimately close them.

Your GTM tech stack should enable you to execute your lead gen strategies with ease. It should have all the necessary tools for creating, promoting, and tracking your sales and marketing efforts across those channels — web, email, social media, paid ads, you name it.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

Customer relationship management is the process of managing interactions with potential and existing customers.

When it comes to your GTM strategy, this is important for a few reasons:

• Tracking the status of leads in your sales pipeline
• Identifying cross-selling and upselling opportunities
• Reporting on sales, pipeline, and performance metrics
• Maintaining a good relationship with customers for future business
• Gaining insights on customer behavior and preferences to inform future strategies

Sales, marketing, customer support, and customer success teams all need access to a centralized database of customer information, interactions, and activities. That’s where your CRM system comes in.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation pertains to your GTM tech stack’s ability to help you:

• Create automated marketing campaigns
• Manage email lists and send targeted messages
• Optimize your website for conversions with A/B testing
• Track website visitor behavior and engagement

A huge part of your GTM launch is going to be marketing through the channels we mentioned above. Marketing automation tools are what help you distribute your marketing collateral at scale.

Sales enablement

Sales enablement is all about equipping sales teams with the necessary resources and information they need to engage potential customers and close deals. While marketing teams use automation tools to generate and nurture leads, sales reps rely on a whole different set of tools to close deals.

To facilitate a repeatable sales process, you need tools that:

• Score and segment leads
• Set up cadences for outbound sales
• Provide real-time insights on deal progress
• Create and send proposals, quotes, and contracts
• Centralize product and pricing information for reps
• Automate time-consuming tasks like meeting notetaking and scheduling
• Help reps deliver the right types of content to prospects in their pipeline

You also need a sales playbook, which ensures that your sales team is following your company’s best practices, sticking to the right messaging, and qualifying leads correctly.

Customer support and service

Customer support and service team members need tools to help them manage their day-to-day tasks, such as:

• Tracking and responding to customer inquiries
• Monitoring and managing support tickets and escalations
• Collecting feedback from customers
• Managing knowledge bases for self-service support

They also need access to customer information and interactions, which is why your CRM system should integrate with your support tools.

Go-To-Market Technology Categories

The exact tools you’ll need will depend on the types of GTM strategies you use. Inside sales is one of the most common models, but it requires completely different tools from channel sales, enterprise sales, and self-service approaches.

When you build your GTM tech stack, you have to consider how each piece of the puzzle will facilitate a part of the process, based on how exactly you acquire, qualify, and move leads through the sales funnel.

Broadly speaking, you’ll need tools from the following categories for a successful product launch:

Marketing automation platforms

Marketing automation software automates and streamlines marketing tasks. That inlcudes, lead generation, content marketing, email campaigns, social media management, and more.

• HubSpot
• Marketo
• Pardot
• Eloqua
• ActiveCampaign
• Constant Contact
• Mailchimp

Tools like these will help you deliver marketing content to your audience at scale, track its effectiveness, and generate qualified leads.

CRM systems

A CRM system helps you consolidate customer data into one central location, keeping track of all touchpoints and interactions. Tools like Salesforce Sales Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Zoho CRM provide a holistic view of your customer interactions, helping you improve relationships with them.

For your go-to-market team, essential CRM features include:

• Centralized customer information (contact info, interactions, activity history)
• Lead and opportunity tracking with pipeline visibility
• Pipeline reporting and customizable sales dashboards
• Integration with marketing automation and other tools
• Customizable workflows for marketing and sales processes
• Mobile accessibility (in some cases)

On top of that, there are tools your leaders can use to delve into your sales pipeline data and identify areas for improvement. They can use the insights to conduct deal reviews and give tailored coaching. And they always have an up-to-the-minute look at how their team is performing against business objectives.

Sales enablement tools

The sales tools your team needs to sell a new product and execute your GTM strategy include:

• CPQ (configure, price, quote) for quoting, proposals, and contracts
• Contract management software to automate contract creation, redlining, and approvals
• A digital sales room for customer communication and negotiating on complex deals
• Sales coaching platforms for onboarding, upskilling, and training reps
• A sales engagement platform to help you share content with prospects and track engagement
• AI tools for repetitive tasks like meeting notetaking, recording, and transcribing

Some tools offer several of these consolidated into one. For instance, DealHub handles CPQ, contract management, digital sales room (see: DealRoom), and additional features like sales playbooks and, through Gong integration, insights on deal sentiment.

Customer support software

Customer support teams need tools that offer:

• Ticket tracking and management
• Self-service options like FAQ pages or chatbots
• A knowledge base
• Live chat for real-time assistance
• Integration with CRM

Some popular customer support software includes Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, and Intercom.

Analytics and reporting tools

Analytics tools give you access to actionable insights you can use to improve your sales and marketing strategies over time. You’ll need tools that can report on website visitors, lead sources, email campaigns, social media engagement, and any other metrics that are relevant to your business.

As part of your go-to-market tech stack, you’ll need:

• Web analytics tools like Google Analytics to track website traffic and behavior
• Social media analytics tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Buffer for tracking engagement across your socials
• A customer data platform (CDP) like Segment or Lytics where you can consolidate customer data from all your channels (email, social media, website, etc.)
• Sales performance management and sales intelligence tools to track sales activities, trends, and results
• RevOps software that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your GTM model and pivot when needed

Importance of a Unified GTM Tech Stack

An integrated stack of tools facilitates a smooth handoff between each stage of the sales funnel. It helps marketing, sales, and customer support teams collaborate better, access the same data, and work towards the same business objectives.

When your GTM tech stack is perfectly integrated, you can:

• Have a single source of truth for all customer data (70% of organizations have silos)
• Improve accuracy and speed in lead qualification, analysis, and decision-making
• Streamline processes and drive operational efficiency
• Create a seamless customer experience through personalized messaging at each touchpoint
• Identify gaps and inefficiencies in your GTM strategy
• Make data-driven decisions about your strategy’s successes and failures

This means that, when picking tools and platforms for your GTM team, you need to consider whether or not they can integrate with each other. This is especially important for your CDP, which relies entirely on every data source seamlessly feeding into it.

How RevOps Optimizes the GTM Tech Stack

RevOps plays a fundamental role in your GTM strategy. The primary focus of your revenue operations (RevOps) team is to optimize your business’s customer-facing operations and processes. This includes aligning your GTM strategy, technology, and data to make sure marketing, sales, and customer support efforts are all working towards the same goals.

RevOps helps you connect the dots in your tech stack by defining the functions of each respective team, and keeping them aligned around the common goal. They can also use their insights to make sure tools are properly integrated and connected.

Beyond that, the RevOps team is responsible for identifying and addressing data silos, finding gaps in your revenue-generating processes, and establishing data management best practices. So, they facilitate a smooth implementation process and scalable GTM technology infrastructure.

Determining Your GTM Tech Needs

Use the following steps to figure out with your GTM team which software tools fit your business needs and goals, budget, and internal processes:

1. Evaluate your business needs.

Like we mentioned earlier, the tools you need will depend on your business model, sales and marketing channels, and more. That’s why the first thing you need to do is take the time to map out your GTM strategy and identify your business’s specific needs as it relates to technology.

• Identify the teams and stakeholders in the GTM process
• Define their roles and responsibilities
• Analyze each team’s goals and objectives

Once you’ve identified the exact processes you need to facilitate and streamline through technology, you need to look at your current business processes and where the challenges are. Look for gaps in your current tech stack, and what tools you might be missing that could help improve efficiency and effectiveness.

For a smooth implementation and long-term software adoption, it helps to involve your individual team members from the beginning, since they’re going to be the ones using the tools every day. Set up a focus group to discuss your current tech stack, where it’s failing, and what features they would like to see in new tools. Those same users should be a part of the testing and selection process.

2. Define your goals and objectives.

The main goal of any go-to-market strategy is to successfully sell the product(s) in question to your target audience. Beyond this, you need to establish specific goals and objectives for your GTM tech stack.

Some common considerations include:

• What are the main KPIs that matter most to your business?
• How can you use technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness in reaching those KPIs?
• What specific features and capabilities do you need in your tech stack to achieve these goals?
• Are there any gaps or inefficiencies in your current processes that can be addressed with technology?

Also consider scalability. Chances are, you’re going to grow your business over time. And you need to make sure that the tools you invest in now can support expanding needs.

In the near term, that includes additional users as you grow your team. But, if you start selling into new markets and adding new departments across the country (or world), it’ll have to support a whole new level of complexity.

3. Prioritize and research potential tools.

Budget is, of course, an important consideration here. But it’s also important to have a realistic understanding of what software costs. That’s why you need to do research based on your business’s specific needs.

Start with your CRM software. You almost definitely already have one. If you’re happy with it, narrow your product search to tools that integrate with it. If you aren’t, pick the right one first, then consider options that integrate with that.

Then, move on to your core systems, like marketing automation and customer service tools. When you’ve built the foundation of your GTM process, you can look at the point solutions, like sales intelligence, content marketing platforms, or AI tools to support your workflow.Make sure you pay close attention to per-user pricing and usage-based components. The product in question might be more affordable at your current projected needs, but be conscious of how much it will increase as you grow your company compared to other options.

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